I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for my entire life. Out here, winter means cold, wet, wind, and most often all three at the same time. It's as depressing as it sounds. But every few years, when the ocean waters off the western end of South America heat up by a couple of degrees, things change. While different parts of the world have to deal with widespread drought and flooding and a long line of natural disasters, we get clearer skies and warmer weather and all of those insufferable people who own convertibles start driving around with the top down even though it's only like forty-three degrees.

I always thought of El Niño as the kind of thing that only affects America on its coasts, but it isn't. It turns out that it makes a difference everywhere, including all across the southern part of the country where we're about to start riding. What has been a mild winter is giving way to temperatures way below normal and a lot of rain. It's supposed to go on like that until right around the time we head back home. We learned all of this about four days after making our non-refundable flight reservations. So it goes. It means that in addition to trying to make sense of the rural Alabama accent and accepting gravy as the sixth food group we have to prepare for wrinkled fingers, the showers of road filth thrown up by passing cars, and sleeping in a tent that smells like an over-full dumpster and a wet opossum got together and then died.

We're still looking forward to all of it.