Monday, June 6, 2016

Getting Here In One Piece



Two mornings ago the chirping birds woke Apricots at five am. She threw a handful of profanities at the choir or bluejays and robins and slammed the window shut. She turned to me and said, "thank god I only have to deal with that for one more day." I laughed in reply, and reminded her that we were about to return to living in a tent for two months, and she grumbled about it being okay then.

I suppose it is like my reaction to spiders: in the house equals freaky bloodsucking evil satan spawn.... Outside of the house, snazzy arachnids which serve the greater good.

....... for the greater gooooooood.......

I told a coworker about my bike trip. He said that it sounded exciting, but that I shouldn't bike more than thirty miles a day. Uh oh.... We are aiming for around 60 miles. So.... Uh.... Maybe we have bitten off more than we can chew. Time will tell. One thing is for sure, I am feeling pretty anxious. I think Apricots is more relaxed than I am.

This morning my brother's wife made us breakfast (Thank you Miho) and my parents took us to SeaTac airport. A couple of bumpy flights later we arrived in the chilly city of El Paso, TX. It was only 97 degrees. Upon walking out of the plane, I received a call from Philip Skinner. He was 90 minutes ahead of schedule for picking us up. Sweet, no sitting around at the airport.

Apricots and I both jumped in excitement when we saw our luggage in tact and not lost. Then 90 minutes later, we were shuttled by Philip Skinner to his hotel Martha's Place in Columbus. We jumped again in excitement when we saw that our bikes were here, delivered on time. Thank you River City Cycles.

Amazing hospitality here from Philip and his wife. He knew that our bank cards wouldn't work in Palomas across the border, so he gave us cash and had his wife drive us into Mexico so we could have dinner at La Fiesta, an authentic restaurant just south of the border. He even gave us his cell phone to use in case our service provider wouldn't work at the border. After dinner he picked us up, and told us that we could borrow his car tomorrow if we needed to run any last minute errands before taking off.

Tomorrow we will build and outfit our bikes an do a quick run to the border. Then we will probably stay one more night before hitting the road for our crazy summer bike trip.





Live life at a slower place.

1 comment: