Fun and Games

3 days until I leave...8 until the actual riding starts. Last night I broke down my Rodriguez coupled bike and packed it into its case...1hour and 6 minutes. Here's hoping the baggage handlers are kind. I am busy just telling everyone good-bye. Tomorrow I am headed to Yakima where 2 of my children live with their families to love on all my darlings there. The past week has been crazy with trip preparation and a mountain of things that need to be done at home before I go. I probably shouldn't have said it, but I told my sister-in-law that riding 100 miles a day was going to feel like a vacation. Jinx.

And I'm not saying it hasn't been fun. I'm all about fun. For example: over the winter I like to leave my tubes in and keep patching them after a flat...see just how many patches I can put on them until I have to pitch them...and this year I had a personal best...13 patches on one tube. That tube might have been 2 years old, come to think of it. You know, reuse, reduce, recycle.



When I rode my coast-to-coast in 2005, I used a line from a song everyday to sum up how the day went. On this trip, I'm using movie lines. Each day I will add a line from a movie to my blog post...either something taken from a movie that was filmed in that state, or the state was mentioned in the line, something like that. When I have finished Alaska, I will post a "key", and you can see how well you did at guessing the movie and who spoke the line. I'll give you the first one, Hawaii's: "I don't need easy...I just need possible."

I am taking a little friend with me on this trip even though he cannot drive yet. His name is Stanley. Laura, one of my biking buddies, had her third grade class create Flat Stanley, and he will be going to all 50 states with me. It's a great way to help teach about geography and her class will be following the blog www.cyclingwithflatstanley.blogspot.com. They will be reading about Stanley's adventures and making sure he doesn't get into any trouble.



maybe you can't...because you won't...