So Close...D-1

Sara is right, I am so wound up about this upcoming trip that I can't sleep.  We are now past the 'good idea cut-off point'.  That's where you stop implementing good ideas.  All too often they turn out to be half baked and just do not work.  The last two good ideas were a cover for my fuel/water bottles (Sara sewed that up yesterday) and setting up the Spot Tracker I have on loan from my friend Nick.

The cover makes it a little less obvious that I'm carrying a gallon of fuel, maybe it will be less tempting to steal.   As an aside, for the past few years we have been busy with so many projects that Sara has not used her sewing machines much (we have 5 of them!).  She started the cover project using her fancy, computer controlled, 10,000 stitches possible, sings and dances machine...but could not get it to work so she resorted to the old faithful one that just sews a simple stitch.  Maybe the super hot weather will give her an excuse to sew more since it's cooler inside.

The Spot tracker is a GPS/satellite system that will allow Sara, Beth, or you to track our daily progress on a map.  The unit updates every 10 minutes.  I'd like to change the update frequency but can't figure out how...yet.  Yesterday I tried the unit out, turning it on in the driveway, and pretty soon I had a bunch of pins on the map.  It looked like the unit got a bit confused just sitting there so it appeared that my location changed in a 50 ft radius.  That's still good enough to let everyone know that we are actually making progress.  The link to the map is http://tinyurl.com/trackPeter.  I deleted all the tracks from yesterday so don't expect to see anything until Friday when I turn the unit back on.

My major concern now is heat.  I don't put much faith in weather predictions more than 24 hours out.  Now the forecast for tomorrow is both steamy hot and 50% chance of thunderstorms in Roanoke.  That kills my hope that it would be cooler riding in the mountains.  Based on that, and the fact that the hot weather extends all the way to the Rockies, I'll start out with a mesh jacket and CamelBack.  If that's not enough I'll add the cooling vest.

For the past two weeks Sara and I have been watching Long Way Round and Long Way Down.  These are documentaries of two motorcyclists who rode from London to New York...going east through Russia, and from England to Cape Town, South Africa.  Although we get to see them crash countless times it's really not the same as my trip.  They were mostly off roads and we will never leave the hard surfaced roads.  Of course they also had a support group consisting of two SUVs, a doctor, a couple camermen and a security guy.  We have credit cards and cash.  I'd say we have the better deal.  The one thing their trip has in common with ours is the adventure of meeting people and seeing the country.  Our destination is just incidental to the trip, the journey is what's most important.  I'll try to keep that thought for the next 2+ weeks.