Monday, July 21, 2008

CanAmeXico

I'm sitting at my parents' house in Arlington, relaxing a bit before I head out to Alaska tonight. I'll be there for the next ten days. I'm pretty excited to see friends I haven't seen in over a year and enjoy the beauty of the Alaskan summer. And it will be in the 40's when I get there. That sounds so wonderful right now. Following that, I'll have 2 more weeks in Abilene before I "visit" my parents for the remaining 3 weeks before the CanAmeXican Ride. After much deliberation, I decided to go ahead and leave Abilene a little sooner than I had anticipated. The major deciding factor was that Chris is moving back into the house August 16th or 17th. So it was either move or try and cram my stuff in with my brother's stuff in his room. I broke the news to my boss at Los Arcos yesterday and I'm breaking the news to the rest of you now. So I'll have plenty of planning time with my dad before we fly out. We just bought our tickets last night for the flight to Vancouver, BC on September 4th. We'll wait to buy our return tickets from San Diego, CA until we're halfway through the ride. We're estimating it'll take us about a month. So I'll be all over the place in the next couple months. Beginning October 1st, I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. Any suggestions?

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

A Frustrating Afternoon

I set out to ride 55 miles miles yesterday. A few miles down the road, I decided I would ride 40. Then I decided to ride 60. Then somewhere along the way I became very confused and decided to ride 90. To top things off I decided I would even stretch for a few more miles to hit an even 100. At 45 miles, I got a flat and it wasn't fixable. So I threw on my spare. At mile 72, I got another flat. I patched it, but it was already flat again by the time I got to my rest stop at mile 75. I decided that the hole was more than I could conquer, despite still feeling quite feisty, and I was out of spares. I threw in the towel and went for my phone to call for a ride... only discover there was no phone to be found. I had used it back in Cross Plains at mile 45 of the trip and apparently left it sitting on the table at Subway. Lame. A guy offered to let me borrow his phone and then offered me a ride back to Abilene. I accepted. It turned out that he's the dad of one of my friends from ACU, Kendra. Weird. I called the Subway to see if they had found it, and they hadn't. I guess someone jacked it. The person who stole it had to figure out that it would be useless to them after about 2 days when the phone died. That's just being plain inconsiderate. So, I'm back to my old phone minus all of my phone numbers. Unless you give me your number again, don't be offended if I don't call you ever again. So ya, yesterday was a frustrating day.

In other news, I started learning how to play the drums a couple days ago. My friend Drew is being kind enough to teach me and let me use his set. The first song I'm learning is "Brain Stew" by Green Day. If it weren't for that bass pedal, the song would be easy. Drums are harder to play than you would think.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Miles and Miles of Bubble Wrap

Pop.
Pop pop.
Pop POP pop pop POP pop.
Pop.


I started to get a little worried and adjusted the Gatorade bottle.

POP POP POP pop pop pop.
pop. pop. POP POp. PoP. POP. POP POP POP POP.
Pop pop pop POP. Pop.

This was not normal. 25 miles into my 60 mile ride, I was sure my tires were about to disintegrate mid pedal. I stopped and inspected my bike. Everything seemed to be in working order. I hopped back on.

Pop. POP pop pop POPOPOPPOPOOPOPOPPOPPOPOPPOPOPP.

What the?!?!

I stopped again and called my dad thinking he would surely know. He did. Apparently, when the asphalt gets hot enough, it gets covered in tiny little air bubbles. Weird. Assured that this paved rapid-fire-machine-gun popping was normal, I continued on my way enjoying the thought of riding over miles of bubble wrap.

Pop. pop pop pop pop POP Pop poP PoP pOp POP pop pop pop. POP.