One Day To Trip Start

It is time to get started writing about this trip.  Day before it starts, filled with last minute 'to dos' and nervousness.  At this point a month looks like a long time, for me and for Kelli and for my faithful pet (Chance).  

The bike and gear were shipped and have arrived at Skagit Cycle in Burlington, WA.  The boarding pass is printed and I have reviewed my list of items to pack way too many times.  

Tomorrow Jim Smith and I will meet at the bike shop, get the bikes and gear ready to go and head out for our first night's destination.  It will likely be raining and depending on when we get under way and the weather we will go somewhere between 10 and 30 miles.  That will get us in position to ride into the Cascades on Wednesday and over Rainy Pass and Washington Pass on Thursday.  I am looking forward to that night in a soft bed in Mazama, WA.  I followed this same route the first 3 days of my cross country trip in 2005.  I remember Mazama fondly as it was a welcome end to a hard day of climbing and descending.  That year I crossed with the Redmond, WA cycling club and talked my way into joining their end of day banquet.  Stayed in a B&B and had a great breakfast the next morning.  Also, a personal forcast from the B&B host who is a weather service observer and had all of the NWS software to tell us exactly how long the rain that morning would last.  Fond memories now to be overlaid with some new, hopefully even better ones.

It is always a nervous time just before a trip like this, especially as the years and health issues accumulate.  Have I trained enough?  No.  That is easy.  Can I make it through the first few days until my legs toughen up?  That we will see.  Is this really the right thing to do, to leave the home and wife to fend for themselves all this time?  Well, I think it is.  Nothing is free or easy and we all need to indulge ourselves from time to time if we can.  Life, as they say, is short.  And don't we all see that more and more everyday.

I hope this system for the blog works well.  I will try to write something everyday and then upload it when I get WiFi access.  This iPad is pretty cool.  It just hyphenated a word by itself.  It is different than what I am used to though so I hope I can learn how to do it right as we go along.

I have a couple more things to get done today, writing this was one of them, and then I get a massage later from my favorite therapist.  That should get me all ready to go tomorrow.