Well, here's a bit of a disappointment: I intended to continue developing the historical context for modern Sicily but seem to have gotten stuck in the Age of Rome. Too late to pick up the thread again at this point though, as we depart in just over a week. Time to start wrapping things up on the home front.

We do this often enough that we have the drill down pretty well. We finalized our itinerary and booked all of our reservations a few months ago, and we are down to the last minute tasks - checking the state of our equipment, packing the Bike Fridays, loading routes onto our GPS units, and finally packing our bags. We travel very light so there really isn't that much prep work needed.

My current top priority task is replacing one of the tires on my bike - the casing was starting to show through in a few places so it seemed prudent to start over rather than try to squeeze another 1300 miles out of it. Easier said than done though - replacing our Schwalbe Marathon tires is a bear of a task because they are such a tight fit over Bike Friday rims. They're really awful to pry off and replace, which is why I want to start with a fresh tire - much better to wrestle with it at home than on the road when we might be chasing sundown or caught in a rainstorm.

This time, it goes about as expected - I get the old tire off and the new one on with some difficulty, but discover that I've flattened the tube in the process. It's pretty badly damaged, so I decide to replace the tube as well. I'm out of spares, so packing is on hold until I make it back from the bike store.

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Our main challenge for the past few months though was to stay healthy and in decent condition so that we'll be ready to hit the ground rolling when we land in Palermo. We've done surprisingly well, especially given how wet the winter has been in Portland. We've managed to put in 200+ miles per week for the last several months.

I've been helped a lot by Kathleen's Bicycle Life Challenge - it was a real motivator and helped me get out the door on some days that I might have just frittered away otherwise.

Mostly though the credit goes to Rachael, who challenges and inspirers me and puts me to shame if it sit out too many rideable days. I'm a lucky guy. Thanks largely to her, we're ready.