Hi Gram,
I love visiting family on my travels. I woke up this morning in a comfortable bed about probably hit snooze on the alarm a few too many times before I got up and headed downstairs. Elizabeth was having her morning cup of coffee, so we sat and chatted for a good long while. It was great catching up about life, work, kids, college, my upcoming road trip with Howard, science, parenthood, being young and getting older. I really enjoyed our chat. It made for a great start to my day. Seeing the temperature rising, I decided to go for my morning walk before the sun got to be too much.

I did a loop around the neighborhood, stopped at the grocery store for some essentials, then headed back to the house to do my brain exercises and read a little. A friend that I haven’t talked to in a while called, giving us a few hours to chat and catch up on life. It was a pretty calm and lazy day, but Tom and I mustered the energy to head out and grab Indian food for dinner. The restaurant wasn’t that great, the food was kind of mediocre, but we had some good laughs and shared stories. It was fun riding in Tom’s new electric car and seeing him excited about all the features. I might buy an electric car in a year or two. I like the idea of them, but just haven’t bitten the bullet yet.

Sunday I got up and had breakfast, then unloaded my bike and tools from the car. I decided to take the bike for a ride, which led to an adventure! I planned a path to a park a few miles away on my phone map, then headed out. Usually Google Maps does a good job of keeping me out of traffic, but it must have been taking today off. The route took me out of the neighborhood and onto a busy road. After about a mile, it had me turn right and go down a main thoroughfare with just as much traffic, but the added challenge of steep downhill. I got up to 41 MPH on my bike, the fastest I’ve ever gone.

At the bottom of the hill, I turned to get to the park and the map led me onto a path through the park. I thought, “great, this is what I’m looking for!” without considering that I was going to have to go back up the hill that I’d just coasted down. After a nice jaunt through the park and across a boardwalk, the trail turned back up towards the house. And up. And up. Except now I wasn’t on any kind of pavement – this was a loose dirt path with switchbacks that made it hard to pedal and stay on the path. I got off the bike and walked it for a bit, figuring “hey, I’m in nature, this probably won’t be that long, I have trees all around me…” and then I saw the stairs. Narrow stairs in the middle of the woods, no path for the bike to roll. I thought “alright, I’ll climb these few stairs and then the path will resume, right?” I did a combination of carrying the front of the bike and rolling the back wheel up the stairs until I got to the top and saw more stairs about ten feet away. I continued this up several flights of stairs until I reached the top, exhausted. After a rest to catch my breath and let my muscles recover, I continued on back to the house, through some sketchy gravel paths, up some paved hills, and through a little more traffic before reaching the safety of the neighborhood. That was definitely a ride to remember!

Monday, I ran a few errands and got my international drivers license. That sounds fancy, but it’s just a booklet where a AAA employee copies the information from my US drivers license into a booklet too big to fit in my pocket with translations into a few languages and writes my departure date on the front. Apparently, a booklet with handwriting is valid overseas but a government issued plastic card with encryption and anti-tamper technology and holograms is no good. Who knew? In any case, I got back to the house, took the kids to lunch at Red Robin, and loaded up the camping gear to get ready for our road trip. Tomorrow is going to start an epic road trip with Howard and I!