Archive | August, 2009

Wow!  What a way to spend one’s 49th birthday and 18th anniversary.  What a day! In many ways it was a fabulous day.  We had awesome weather – bright blue skies and cool mountain temps all day.  The terrain was a bunch of up and down – along with some pretty awesome downs.  Andrew was [...]

“You’ve got a bit of a climb leaving Yarumal,” the hotel guy told me, “but it’s not bad – just a little hill.” Good God Almighty!  They call an 11-km climb a little hill here? Fortunately, it wasn’t all that steep so it wasn’t bad.  Even so, I’m sure we are now at least 1000 [...]

“There are some other cyclists in town,” the bus driver told Andrew as he got his bike off the bus.  “A family of four.” “Yeah, I know,” Andrew replied.  “I came here to visit them.” “They’re in a hotel down the road.  I’ll take you there!” And so it was that Andrew came knocking on [...]

I never realized how controlled by climate society is!  For ages now we’ve been cycling through hot lowlands.  I mean HOT lowlands.  I never really thought about how that affected the way people lived – I just kinda took it for granted that everything would shut down and the streets would be deserted in the [...]

We survived!  ’nuff said. Kilometers today:  36 Vertical feet climbed: 4750 There were lots of small houses along the way – all with bright, colorful flowers in front. You can see the road snaking up the mountianside.  We thought that was the top – but ended up being only halfway! Up in the Andes – [...]

It was a long day – four hours each way on the bus – but I got the part I needed and made it back!  We’ll get the bike fixed up tomorrow and hit the road the next day. I want to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who  helped me out – [...]

 We slayed the monster – half of it anyway!  Probably the tail part… which means the head is still to come. We packed up this morning not quite sure exactly what was coming – but knowing it would start immediately after the bridge 50 meters from our hotel. I jumped on my bike and set [...]

 I’m sitting on the balcony of our tiny hotel in Puerto Valdivia gazing up at the valley we’ll climb tomorrow.  It’s a daunting thought when I see headlights far up above me – and know that tomorrow my legs will somehow have to propel me up there.  Transition is an apt description of today – [...]

Dang, I felt strong today!  Rather than my normal pace plodding along, I was flying (relatively speaking).  My legs felt like someone had injected some kind of super-power-energy-tonic into them.  What is going on? In all honesty, I think the reason was that it was cool.  Yes – I really did say that.  It was [...]

I’m too old for this stuff – someone tell me how to avoid this, please! So today I was walking through town with my boys and noticed all the local girls going crazy.  Whispering…  pointing…  obviously thinking Davy and Daryl were something special (which they are, of course – to me!).  How in the heck [...]

We didn’t leave until 10:00 this morning – the latest we’ve left for months and months.  Our typical plan of getting up at 4:30 in order to hit the road at 5:30 was blown by the holiday yesterday.  A nearby store opened at 6:30, so we changed our plan to a 7:30 departure. John and [...]

Just a quick update to say all is well and the bikes are working well.  My chain – albeit short- is hanging in there and we seemed to have been successful in fixing Davy’s brakes. The Andes are getting closer – only 130 miles till we start the big climb.  YIKES!  I know I’ve been [...]