GOING, GOING, GONE

Jani - I remember when Gary asked me if I would be interested in driving across the U.S. Visions of vintage Levi’s danced in my head. They would be everywhere I visited. Now the reality will hit the fan. It’s been hard work getting the house/life ready for a 3 month sojourn. I knew when Womeldorff asked me if I wanted to do this excursion that it would be happening. He doesn’t mess around when it comes to play time. We’re still trying to leave Everett, just waiting for our son to finish cleaning his apartment at college, so that we can coordinate with him. Many thanks to Lea, Amy, Sheryl, Lisa and Linda for the sweet bookclub send off.

Gary - We’re finally off. It won’t officially start for a couple of days when I get on the bike but at least we’re packed and leaving home. Everything is in the van except for the kitchen sink….nope we have that also. I keep going over my lists and wondering if I’ve forgotten anything. Antarctic explorers from a hundred years ago probably spent less time worrying about what gear they were taking. Making it even worse is the fact that we’ll probably never be more than a few miles from a store, can order anything we could possibly want on the internet, and will have all kinds of technology at our disposal. The laptop I’m typing on must be many times more powerful than the computers on the Lunar Lander. The bottom line is that this planning has been a substitute for actually riding. I just need to start spinning the cranks, cranking out the miles, and hammering the hills. There is nothing wrong with me that a good dose of lactic acid won’t fix.

Hopefully the next post will tell how I dipped my bike tires in the Pacific and finally started gnawing away at the 4200 miles between me and the Atlantic.