Right, So.

I started this blog about 100 years ago so that I could record the grand adventure I was sure I would soon be embarking on. Unfortunately, it didn't really work out that way. While I was looking for a job to finance said adventure, though, I found one in British Columbia, so I flew out there and had a very different kind of adventure. I likely would have stayed there forever(ish), had Christmas not come creeping up to make me homesick. I've never missed Christmas with my family, and the resort doesn't give employees time off at that time of year.

Now, my sister Rhiannon and I are planning a different kind of trip to B.C. A trip that involves us, our bicycles and between 35 and 60 days of gruelling, back-country riding. We are not experienced cyclists, we are not athletes and we definitely are not sane. What we are is enthusiastic and mostly hopeful.

Paying for this trip, all things going well, will be medical experiments - and no, I'm not kidding. There is a decent amount of money to be made in the guinea pig business, and there aren't many jobs that will earn you as much that fast.

The kicker in all of this is that we want to leave by the beginning of August. That gives us less than a month to train for something that many experienced cyclists, backpackers and/or campers wouldn't attempt, and there's a chance that we'll spend a large chunk of that month in the basement of a medical research facility. It gives us a month to get our bikes (Gene and Jethro) in top-notch condition and outfitted with things like sadle bags and speedometres - it gives us a month to work out where we'll be staying along the way, to get all the stuff we're not bringing packed away... it gives us one hell of a busy month.

I'm still pretty excited about this. For every daunting task that gets added to our increasingly daunting task pile, I find myself with a new mental image of Rhiannon and I on a beach in Vancouver, looking AMAZING, chugging water and explaining our trip to a rapt audience, or in the very distant future, utterly transfixed little faces looking up at me and saying You did what, Grandma? Basically, if nothing else, this trip will give me one hell of a story to tell.