This, then, becomes the first journal entry.

Rules of the road include:

1. Misspellings, grammar, dangling participles and such will occur with great frequency in spite of my best efforts.  I am doing this on the road between martinis and enjoying the ride.  I will correct all errors on my return to a stable base.

2. I will travel as far in a day as I want to.  At my stage in life I want to slow down time...not speed it up.

3. My route may not follow the plan.

4. I enjoy my breakfast and can skip lunch if need be (and often do).  On occasion, I will stop for a good steak in the evening with escargot and other non-healthy foods.  I have survived cancer, have lived longer than many of my dearest friends, have promised them I would enjoy what I have left, and have lived twenty years and more in their honor.  Every day is a gift - and I treat it as such.

5. I do this trip for my own feelings of accomplishment.  I do it not to be done...but to enjoy the doing.  (See rule three above.)

6. Any friend along the way who waves a hand will find me there to join in camaraderie for a time. We pass this way but once and we must never pass by our friends without a salute.

7. Journals may not be written in the order of the trip. Consequently, a few may seem to be out of order because I will place them in sequence regardless of when I write them.

Preparations:

I have that natural queasiness that precedes any adventure. Have I done enough to prepare? Have I thought of everything that could go wrong?  Can I handle bad weather along the way?  Will my butt hold up? Why am I doing this?

The only other long trip of this magnitude (and quite longer than the Big Bend Trips I made) is the mid-America trip I made last summer to Milwaukee and return. That was over 3,500 miles and this trip is twice that amount.  At least this time I start out with a friend instead of solo.  I am a member of a loosely knit group of mostly senior citizens who go by the moniker of Hill Country Road Riders.  We mostly ride the Texas Hill Country, some of the finest roads in America, each Saturday morning. What we really do is either have breakfast and ride or ride and have lunch. In either case we tell as many lies to each other as possible and try to get away with them.   One of the members has agreed to ride with me.  He is Bill Alexander from New Braunfels. He will be riding a Honda Gold Wing (1992).  I will be riding my 2002 Yamaha V-Star Classic.

I have installed a power supply for the GPS I recently purchased.  I have figured out the rain gear, the spanish lessons I will study along the way, the proposed route, and the estimated stops.  I am uploading the maps to the GPS, making certain the addresses and phone numbers I have are correct, and washing and packing the clothing stuff I'll need.  The supplemental power supply I built for the digital camera didn't work (something to do with available mw)  so will have to proceed with OEM stuff and an extra battery.

Otherwise, I'm good to go and will launch this Saturday, April 16, 2005.  Keep in touch and keep the faith.  I will add journal entries as I find the time.

g