Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Overall rating of the USA: Very good.

Distance cycled to date: 3950 km
Days spent in the USA: 48
Number of times that we have been asked if we are twins: 7
Number of grocery store club cards applied for: 5

Our time spent cycling in the USA has come to a close; tomorrow morning we'll ride south across the border into Mexico. Although we never really looked to our first leg of the journey through the US as being one of our "prime" destinations, we have had a really great time here and have been constantly amazed at the breathtaking scenery, amazing people and the wonderful bike-friendly route set up along the coast. It's been a good time. We'd recommend biking across this country.

After a great sleep in the LAX airport we got back to the beaches, and eventually got a little lost in some upscale neighbourhoods. We finally emerged to our first "Ralph's" grocery store of the coast, and after becoming members of yet one more grocery store, we found our best day-old bakery section ever! Everything had been marked down to 50 cents, and so with such deals before us, we went a little crazy. One old lady looked at our mountain of baked goods and remarked that we had better have an empty freezer at home. She obviously had never been a touring cyclist. We proudly came out with 6 loaded grocery bags of day-olds, spending only $5.50 for 30 muffins, 12 bagels, 12 glazed donuts, 4 turnovers, a chocolate cake, a pudding pound cake, and even a lemon merangue pie. Even more miraculous than the deal was the fact that we fit it all on our bikes. (By the next morning, we has polished this all off.)

After packing up our bikes at the grocery store, we were waiting at a red light to turn back onto our route, and our 3 Canadian friends biking to Argentina pedalled past. We caught up to them at the next light, and spent the rest of the day biking through the urban sprawl of southern California with all 5 of us in a convoy. Speeding down city streets we felt nearly invincible in our pack, and we all had a lot of fun watching the stares as we biked by. We made it to San Diego in our planned timeline; we arrived November 1st to the marina where we were able to spend the night sleeping on a boat belonging to one of my good friend's parents. They gave us a sailing lesson around the bay - we considered trading in our bicycles for a boat to make it the rest of the way, however we soon found out that a sailboat costs a bit more than a bicycle. We're sticking to Plan A.

Over the past 3 days we've been in San Diego, and our hostel room closely resembles our living room in the days before our departure. We've sent stuff home, we've bought more stuff, and as is our style, we've waited until the last minute to do almost everything. (It's 11 pm, and we're finally doing our laundry so that we can start to pack everything back up).

We're now just over 2 months into this trip. We've cycled nearly four thousand kilometres. And still, we feel like we don't really know what we're doing or what we're getting into. It's kind of crazy that we've already made it this far, I don't really know how we've made it through this many maps already. The kilometres have flown by, and now it's time to start the next big adventure. Mexico is waiting, and we are pretty excited about everything that's still to come. We've had a lot of people ask us how much Spanish we know, and our answer usually involves a universal shrug of the shoulders, along with a very hesitant "not so much". But we'll learn. We bought ourselves a little dictionary. How hard can it be?

The adventure is about to begin; as unprepared as we are, tomorrow morning we'll be in a completely foreign land. We hope you're as excited to hear our stories as we are to tell them.

Also - we put up our Southern California photo album. Check it.

Our overall rating of the USA: Very good.

1 comment:

MickeySueD said...

Here's what I know from watching "Dora the Explorer":

Vamanos - I think it means, "let's go", or something along that line.

I haven't watched Dora in a while, so that's all the Spanish I've got.

Love you, miss you!
Sue