50 DAYS, 120 HOURS and 1003 MILES LATER......


This is us on Orcas Island where Shane's parents met us and we camped together for the last 2 nights of our 7 week bike tour

Apparently there were a few people who were following the blog during our bike tour and they got used to seeing posts on a somewhat regular basis.  It has been exactly one month since my last post and I have just left everyone hanging.  OOPS!!  Did any of you wonder,  WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM!!!  Did they ever get home???   If you have no clue what I am talking about, you can start by clicking this link.....YOU'RE DOING WHAT????

I am flattered that there are people out there who actually want to hear more of our story.  Yes, I still have 25 days of our trip to write up....No, I have no idea when (or IF) that is going to ever happen! So, in the meantime, I will provide a brief summary:

We did finish what we set out to do.  We rode 1003 miles total, spending about 120 hours on the bikes.  We stayed with 16 wonderful hosts through WARMSHOWERS.  Four of the hosts...(Suzanne and Christopher, Tony and Wanda, Jim and Cory and Alan and Sandy) actually let us stay with them for two nights.  Many others offered to let us stay longer but we were on the move A LOT!!

 It was especially fun to stay with Alan and Sandy/Jim and Cory on our last 2 days in Canada because they had been our 2nd and 3rd hosts when we had just started out.  What a treat to be able to share how much we had learned and experienced along the way and how much we had all grown because of what we had accomplished!

One couple - Joann and Doug - met us along the way and asked us to stay with them even though they had never heard of warmshowers....they just wanted to hang out with us!!  They let us stay at their house for two nights also. 

The rest of the nights we camped.  Not one night did we pay for a hotel....although we did pay $38 to put up our tent on a grassy field, REALLY....$38!!!!  We pulled in at 9:15pm and packed up at 7:30am and we had to pay $38!!

We went out to eat at a sit down establishment 5 times during the entire trip.  Two times were fancy places that we probably should never have stepped foot in (remember we were wearing the same
clothes all 7 weeks and usually covered in grease and sweat!!)  The rest of our out to eats were pizza places - cheap gluten free pizzas and salad.  Those were great meals!

We had ice cream every single day, sometimes even at 10am!!  We lasted strict paleo for 3 days, then our bodies started craving sugar so badly that we had to give in.  We were working too hard to live off protein and fat.  At one point we bought 4 POUNDS of jelly bellys, no joke.  That was what got us up the hills of the sunshine coast!  


Coffee was another serious vice. We had only been drinking green tea when we left on this trip.  But there is nothing like caffeine in coffee to give us the energy we needed to pedal for the 4th hour into a headwind.  Speaking of....out of 50 days of cycling, we had a tailwind for FOUR days.  Yes, that is right...we had a headwind for the other 46 days.  No wonder we are in such great shape, hills and a headwind.

Our trip cost us about $1000 more than we had budgeted.  Can you guess why???  


FOOD

...food was about 70% of our expenses!!  So much for saving money by not buying gas!

This trip will forever be one of the best experiences we could ever have wished for.  The memories we made on this trip will last a lifetime, as will the characteristics that were developed in our girls during this trip.  They are different now, more mature, more open, more adventurous (if that is even possible, HA!!) We all changed in many positive ways during those 7 weeks.  

We have been home for almost 4 weeks, more than half of the time we were on our bike trip.  On our trip I wrote 16 blog posts.....since being home I have written ZERO!!!   As it is, this post has taken me 4 days to even TRY to put together something even remotely coherent. I am trying, but really...not very hard.  I can easily tell you what has happened to us (or more specifically me - since I am the one who writes all this mumbo jumbo!).

Well, it's pretty simple really.....we got home!!  It was REALLY easy for me to take 2 hours out of my day to sit at a library and write up a blog post after having spent 3 - 6 hours on a bike all day.   The girls would sit in the kids center and look at books, Shane would get online and research Land Cruisers (yes, we got one) and I would write to my heart's content.

(side note regarding our "new" car: We put the Subaru on craigslist on a Aug 22 at 1pm.  It was sold, $3500 cash in hand by 6:30 that night.  Monday, Aug 25th - I pulled $1700 out of our savings - and we found this beauty (1994 - $5200) in Lincoln.  Shane is a proud papa! to see how we saved more than enough money in only 8 months start with my first post on this topic....BUY NOTHING NEW)

We have enough money left in our savings for him to start working on some of the systems that need an overhaul (it is 20 years old, after all!).

Shane went back to teaching August 11th (INSANELY EARLY, I know!)  The girls and I went to Southern California for 10 days - Santa Barbara with my family, then the girls and I stayed with my friend Noel..(BFF's in high school).  We took our girls to Magic Mountain instead of going to our 20 year reunion.  Did you know Colossus is getting demolished??  Well, we rode Colossus the day before it closed and Alli and I made it onto the Los Angeles newscast that night.  Click on the LINK below.  We are about 1 min 40 sec in.

Jen and Alli on Colossus

After a week, we were ready to come home.  My orthodontist
squeezed me into his schedule so I FINALLY got those terrible things off, YAY!!! 


And then I started school with the girls.  



Reminder to self, I homeschool.  My girls are not gone for 6 hours a day for me to get things done like cleaning, cooking, laundry and exercise!!!  I do not have 2 hours to sit down and write a blog post.  I dont seem to have 15 minutes to even get onto Facebook anymore.  I have forgotten how in the world I had time for either of these things prior to embarking on our huge bike trip.  

In the morning, I sit with Shane on our front swing before he leaves for work.  We usually have one or two of the girls on our laps as we hang out and start our day together.  It is hard to drink our coffee or have a meaningful conversation, but we are together, holding hands and loving our little family for 20 minutes every morning. 

After Shane leaves, the girls and I sing a song and start our day with an art, craft or nature activity.  We have embroidered our names on canvas,
painted butterflies, gone on a nature walk for leaf rubbings, created clay figurines to go along with Alice in Wonderland, created a color blending activity with tempera paints and another with watercolor, started our knitting, and practiced their keyboard lessons. 

School is usually done by 10am, and then we go on a bike ride or rollerblading or to visit my parents (they live behind us, you know.)  Sometimes we go to the library or the creek.  Sometimes we sit on the couch and I read books for HOURS to the girls.  Sometimes we go to a park, or a bookstore or start a sewing project.

All of these wonderful beautiful things are what I am doing instead of posting on facebook or writing my blog.   I KNOW that all of these things are more important than the blog or facebook ever will be.  A few days ago I was actually writing a post about why I am giving up my blog and facebook.  




But then I heard from someone who found out about Vision Therapy through Facebook and my blog and was SO grateful.  And then a friend told me they had cleared out a bunch of their STUFF because of reading Shane's post - The Gravitational Pull of Stuff Then I met someone at our local bank who is friends of a friend (who I have actually never met - crazy Facebook, right?!) and we chatted for so long about so many things that are dear to my heart, all because of Facebook.  

I need to figure out a balance.  I dont know how or when I will figure that balancing act out, but I will take it one day at a time. Today, I am happy that I found the time to finish this post.  Who knows what tomorrow holds, but it will probably include sitting on the swing with my family, doing some art, spending time with friends and riding my bike.  I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook and my blog, there is so much good to go along with the bad but I have faith that I will find a balance somehow.

Maybe if I find 30 minutes here and there I might be able to post a story from our bike trip....but if not I hope to see you in the real world and give you a great big hug.  So much more important, right?

2 comments:

  1. Awesome adventure! So glad you guys did that trip. It will probably mold your two bugs in ways you could not imagine. There lives are changed by every action we, as parents, do to them - sometimes good, sometimes bad. But getting them on a path that allows them freedom to develop their own perspectives on life is one teaching lesson they will never forget. Nice job you and Shane are doing. Looking forward to watching Cat and Bug's lives unfold.is going to be a wonderful experience.

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    1. How did I miss this comment?? thanks Uncle Danny. We are having the times of our lives, I just wont be blogging about it anymore. I am so glad you were able to follow us along for our adventure on our bikes. I hope we get to see you sometime in the future. Maybe it is time for us to take a trip east?!?!?!

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