So, here we are at last - gear assembled, bicycles suitcased, not much left to do but wait for the morning's ride to the airport. As always seems to happen, after months of anticipation the final few weeks seemed to fly by and suddenly it's time to move out.

My father is an engineer, by profession and temperament. He's one of those exceptional people who somehow always knows the perfect tool for any job; usually already owns one or more instances of it; or has an unfathomable (to me at least) talent for envisioning what's needed and crafting one himself. I've always been a bit in awe of him and others like him in this way.

I'm not like that. I think our apple tree must have grown on fairly pitched ground because I appear to have rolled quite far from it when I hit land. I'm actually pretty good with a hammer, screwdriver and simple wrenches, but after that things get shaky pretty quickly; and I've got a propensity to reach for the hammer too readily to solve problems that don't look much like a nail.

Because of this I don't do much of my own bike maintenance beyond repairing flats, adjusting brakes, and improvising on emergency road repairs. This is why both of our Bike Fridays were newly tuned up by Paul, our favorite mechanic at our neighborhood REI. We've done our best to minimize the odds of a disruptive breakdown that is outside my limited technical skill set.

Disassembling and packing a Bike Friday at one end of a trip and reassembling it at the other is pretty simple technical work that one would think would be within reach of just about anyone. This wasn't the case for me though, and I struggled a bit at first. With 5 years of experience now I seem to have it all down finally, but I'm still a bit surprised and relieved to look at the finished work and see that it's gone as intended. Hooray - we get to go!

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Keith AdamsI seem never to do the job twice the same way. But it always ends up getting done.
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Keith AdamsHow did you dredge this up? This photo makes me feel nostalgic. It was taken in our condo, in the old days when we used to have a home. That rug is on the floor of my sister’s condo, waiting for us to have our own place to lay it out again someday.
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2 years ago

Keith AdamsTo Scott AndersonI went to your/Rachel's profile and scanned the list of journals. While awaiting updates in the "Three Seasons..." trilogy I am treating myself to some of your other, earlier writings.

We did a shorter, fully supported, much less ambitious tour of some of this area in 2019. It's fun to compare what struck your eye as worth photographing with what we shot on our own.
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Keith AdamsI’m glad you did. I’ve been rereading it ever since, reliving some of the best tour of our lives. Neither of us can still quite believe we did this.
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2 years ago

Keith AdamsTo Scott AndersonI plan to see the world, vicariously and through the eyes of The Redoubtable Team Anderson, over the coming weeks and months.
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2 years ago

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