Friday, September 05, 2008

The Final Preparations

Sigh. There is nothing like doing six loads of laundry at the laundromat to point out how bad ones clothes really look. The muted light in the basement where I usually do my laundry is much kinder than the stark fluorescent tubes at the coin-operated washateria making my clothes look dingy and unloved. Plus, everyone there gets to see your dirty (and clean) laundry. The only plus to all that is that six loads of laundry were washed, dried, and folded in 90 minutes. You may ask why I did our laundry at a laundromat, but that has to do with the foundation project I haven't gotten back to writing about. The pertinent part to this story is that we've been without our washer and dryer for two and a half weeks at this point.

Otherwise, we'd made a list, and all the items were assembled this evening for car loading in the morning. The list of non-clothing, non-toiletry items looks something like this:

bike pump
spare tires and tubes
baby powder
allen wrenches
bathroom and food scales
laundry detergent
cotton balls
betadine cleanser
chamois cream
lotion
aloe vera
sunblock
GPS device
bike light
rain jacket
etra water bottles
cleaning rags
chain cleaner
repair stand
camera
tent
sleeping bags
first aid kit
California atlas
beef jerky
energy and protein bars

We'll see how well that all fits in the Mini. It's been fun getting ready for the trip. The bike got a major tuneup and is running great. Now, I just hope that the trip itself will be good. Tomorrow morning, the biking starts north on the 101 out of Santa Barbara, and we'll see how far he gets. I'll be keeping you posted on the progress we make as I have internet access along the way.

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

Have a safe trip! Like my grandmother would say, I'll keep a candle lit for you both! :)

revjustin said...

Have a good trip. He's not going to hold his breath the whole time his riding is he?

I had two good friends who rode from Seattle to San Fran with little training and they had a great time. They met up with a bunch of other cyclists who were doing the same thing along the way and formed a little "tribe". They would all camp at the same spots and share food and such. Sounds like a great adventure!