Edging Towards Sanity

It's now August 23. The bike arrangements are all set. My flight is booked. I've gotten tougher tires and thorn resistant tubes (6 of them!) and am prepared for the struggle it will take to get them on. I won't promise my big girl words won't come out.

I tested our 2 man tent and found it wanting when it came to rain. Ellen will let me borrow hers, although I will need to reseal the seams and redo the waterproofing on the fly. I found a 20 degree sleeping bag in the garage which I probably will not use but have leads on two others I may be able to borrow. I took a quick trip to LLBean to get more info on bags and it was worth the effort. Jen is bringing dry bags. It is slowly coming together. I am still panicking but at a much lower level. Tammy at Adventure Cycle has been great about answering my questions quickly. And I still have 4 weeks.

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Day 50- Mexico Beach FL

We worried about the cool temps predicted for this morning, but the truth was, 46° in the sunshine was pretty pleasant with the right layers. I had a chance to work out some navigation because ride with GPS gave me an old route that didn’t start at the La Quinta, but at a point 7 miles away. I would’ve done better with a paper map, but struggled enough with the phone to figure it out. Even a little win feels good. We rode the 18 mile Timpoochee trail. It went past several lakes and state parks and through some rather fancy planned neighborhoods. Ankur made a statement yesterday about how much of what we’ve seen has been man-made or planned by men, often as a result of hurricane damage. I found this to be a great contrast to parts of the southwest where nature seems to be taking back the land, growing up over abandoned houses. When I turned onto 98 E. I noticed beach access and headed down to look at the water. There was a kiosk there about artificial fish reefs that caught m...

Day 37- Silsbee Texas

It’s Halloween and I’m sorry I could not pull together any sort of costume. I did take a stab at it in Austin, but Target let me down. Ann, however, managed to get her friends to take her somewhere where she got pieces to make a very patriotic character. It was fun to ride with her as the drivers honked their approval. As we prepare to leave Texas tomorrow we are beginning to see more water. This morning we crossed the Trinity river right off the bat. We made a stop after lunch at the Honey Island General Store and met Chuck, the owner. I asked him how the town got its name, and he said “here’s the story I believe…” The people of the town did not own slaves during the Civil War, and as such, did not want to fight for slaveowners rights. The powers that be didn’t approve and decided to set fire to the area they thought the resistors were hiding in. This area was known as the big thicket, a Jungle-y type area with such thick underbrush that it still has not been developed. The...

Day 56- Gainesville

What a horror show last night was. I should’ve known when I walked into the bathroom and heard a woman tell a kid she’d “beat him like a stepchild” if he left the building, that she was probably part of the advance party for the evenings upcoming entertainment.. No owner on site and no campground host equals no sleep on our part. A crew rolled in around dinner time, set up tents, commenced to drinking and laughing and having a generally good Friday night time. By 11 o’clock the music went off and we were hopeful but the party went into Floritucky overdrive (apologies to my friends from Florida and Kentucky who were raised right.). I decided not to act on my “ask all the questions“ strategy because this time all my questions started with “What the f*#%?”? They carried on till 3:30 AM at which point the roosters next-door took up the slack. Happy birthday Kayla! I hope you have a two day hangover. I felt better at wake up than I thought I would; actually, we all did. We headed...

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