tbaroundtheworld

I woke up to ominous skies, gray, cloudy and at least in the distance threating rain. Not a good sign when the intent is to spend the better part of the day on a bike. For grins I went out and started my car to check the temperature - 48 degrees. At least now I has an idea of how to dress and I was suddenly quite happy that I'd brought equal complements of summer and winter clothing.  It was cold as I rolled down the hill from my apartment. Very cold especially since I lacked gloves. The ride to our coffee shop meet-up was short and I was the third person there pulling up just as two others arrived. We went inside so I could fortify myself with a hot Americano and a huge freshly baked chocolate chip scone. Other riders dribbled in and around 9 we were ready to roll. There were two routes planned, one to the east and one to the hills of the west. I knew the latter, the A Ride would be a killer in spite of all the talk I was hearing about conversational pace and no drops (no rider le...

The rain progressively got worse as I wound my way across the hills to the west of Paso and down towards Cambria. I stopped a couple of times to take pictures while minimizing my time outside the car because my camera was getting wet. The hills were an absurd shade of neon green, alpmost imaginary. I suppose by August they'll be brown and ready to ignite but for the moment in spite of the heavy sky and steady downpour, the were breathtaking.  These hills got me thinking about coastal California in general as it was my first time in this part of the state. Up north the hills are densely covered with pine and oak. In the Bay Area, coastal redwoods get thrown into the mix, making a drive say from San Mateo to the coast very different than what I see where I live. South of that around Monterey the hills get scrubbier and further down south towards Mexico, you have genuine desert tumbling into the ocean. Here it's verdant and different in its own way. I was glad to see it like this....

It's amazing how much better you feel after a decent night's sleep. Even one punctuated by two or three sleepless periods and some time spent in an altered state where you're convinced that you're participating in some sort of pillow research involving articulating the finer points of the stuffing material and naming it accordingly. I woke up to a blue sky framing tall palm trees and a hotel swimming pool. I also noticed the train tracks whose use had contributed to the afore mentioned two or three sleepless periods.  As I'd driven so much further than planned I was in no great hurry to leave so I made a nice breakfast from the yogurt, fruit and cereal I'd brought along and sat back, listening to Bach concertos. When finished I went out and cleaned the bugs off the windscreen confirming once again that there is no  Windex like Mexican Windex. The glass was so clean that I suspected its overall thickness had been reduced significantly. While I worked a passel of ...

I haven't had a solo road trip in perhaps a year and the last time I sallied forth I drove off into a blizzard on my way to see my kids and attend the North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Denver. But I've driven that route up I25 so many times that it hardly feels unusual. So when I was offered the chance to have a bike ride and party with 30 or so of my cycling e-friends I jumped at it. Not only for that particular experience but to drive beyond the western edge of my motoring experience; that is to say well beyond central Arizona.  Just out of college I took a couple of grand tours of the west sleeping in my pickup truck and visiting all the major sites. I visited the north rim of the Grand Canyon on one of those trips driving in from Utah before finally turning left and heading back to my home of the time in Rochester, N.Y.  The Grand Canyon visit was as far west as I've driven in the US, at least from somewhere east. Of course I've driven all over Oregon and Cali...

Last fall I decided to get a tattoo - not so much to express my individuality (as just about every other person has now done) but more to have the experience of getting needled as well as to see how having a permanent piece of portable art would make me feel. The problem was what to get. Tattoo shops are loaded with catalogs of both standard drawings and freelance work. The breadth of options is staggering if you only want something canned. My thoughts went in the other direction - I wanted something that meant something to me, characteristic of my life experience. So I thought about meaningful statements, written in Sanskrit or some other obscure language, or maybe something to do with a bicycle. Or maybe something Chinese. Or who knows, the only thing I did know was that I didn’t want a giant orange Japanese Koi wrapping around my biceps. One day it came to me. While wandering around Sevilla last year, we saw the same logo over and over, on anything that had to do with the m...

And so - all wonderful trips come to an end, and we trade the urbane vacation lifestyle of coffee corto , tapas and Mudejar culture for Mulberry pollen, tax bills and sinking foundations. We spent the final hours of our trip sitting in the Admiral’s Club at DFW drinking ice water and trying to stay awake. We found a couple of chairs in a corner next to a rather odd looking (for the lounge anyway) young man. Anyone who has spent any time in these places knows the pecking order. You have the loud business people congregating in the middle, making the world aware of their importance. You have the sophisticated traveling couples, trying to get out of the way. You have the families sitting around in goggle-eyed wonder finally understanding how mom or dad spends their time when they’re on the road. And you have the guy that no one wants to sit by because he doesn’t fit in those other groups. This was whom we chose to sit by – long trenchy kind of coat, knit hipster hat, scraggly beard...