Some Summary Statistics and Such

I am back in the Puget Sound, the Pacific Northwest. My jet-lag might be diminishing because I actually did sleep last night and only woke at 5am this morning. Now I am listening to piano music on my computer (finding myself involuntarily moved by this: I have missed music that is not karaoke). I heard a train whistle at 5:30am--an unmistakable sound that made me freeze with delightful memories--the Sounder Seattle Commuter train. Birds that are not everyone's roosters are making delightful songs. And so now I drink tea (thank you Leah, Lemongrass chai) and sweep together a few last thoughts.



Some statistics:

• Photographs: 925.
• Kilometers pedaled: 2,675 (1,662 miles). This is like going from Rochester NY to Laramie Wyoming. 
• Other transportation with bicycle: 1 Toyota Camry, 2 ferries, 4 buses, 2 trains, 2 big taxis. 
• Flat tires: zero. (at this good luck I am amazed)
• Bicycle accidents: zero (and considering the driving in Cambodia and the motorbikes in Vietnam, this is a blessing indeed) 
• Money spent to fly my bicycle on international flights: $0.
• New skills acquired: bartering, pepper-spraying dogs in the face, performing charades to get needs met, bicycling while eating bananas.
• Top speed: 57 kph 
• Books read: 3.66
• Number of hotels we patronized: 40
• Substances used to wash my hands in cafe/restaurant/shop bathrooms (because they often don't have soap) when I forgot to carry my soap: Mop detergent (you do what you have to), Powdered laundry detergent, Body Whitening Cream Soap, and some sort of highly perfumed men's body wash.
• What am I doing next: Finishing two projects with my WSU professor for the first couple weeks in April, then Playing Easter service for my old favorite church people in Idaho, taking a job interview, looking for jobs, and continuing to gleefully drink out of the faucet. 

We became quite adept at picking up local bicycling habits: bicycling on the edge against traffic, wrong way around round-abouts (that's a hilarious endeavor), crossing seas of motorbikes, navigating great crushes of intersections where there's no right of way: everyone just piles into the middle, plays a game of Twister for a while, and then eventually makes it to the other side. I learned to pick a motorbike to follow, letting it be between me and the opposing traffic, inching along just as

We got lost on dirt paths in rice paddies, were novelties down single tracks in remote villages, coughed through dusty construction, banged through potty-sized potholes, got sucked along on speeding 5-lane highways, rode in quiet awe on deserted teal-ocean cliff-edges, glugged sweat climbing passes in 96 degree heat, and woke up the next day and did it again.

We didn't come down with Malaria (I did not take prophlactics, actually, because they're not 100% reliable and have unsavory side-effects), there was no pick-pocketing, we were not gunned at the Bangkok Protests (I bought my mother a scarf, instead), and nobody stole our bicycles.  My only injuries were inadvertently self-inflicted, being such a tall unwieldy thing: walking into posts and people's tent poles and the like. I did have a few days of Unidentified Gut Complaints, feeling lethargic and aggrieved, but we'd take a day of rest and whatever it was would pass. Lady Elise had more excitement, with proper pain and energy loss, and visited an English doctor in Battambang Cambodia where she was given medicines for amoebas. Her dogged sense of humor and resolute "This To Shall Pass" mentality were amazing examples for me; one doesn't have to freak out if feeling ill, and this helped me on my few ill-feeling days, just to wait it out and stay calm.  Lying on the bed, she's speaking to her belly: "Stop playing! Don't make me stop the car." Then she added, "Seriously, it feels like a boisterous...Southern Gospel choir in there." But after a few day's recovery we were back on the bikes and moving again.

.....................

If someone asks me, all friendly, polite, oh how was your trip? I cannot possibly describe anything in one little reply of a sentence. "Fantastical, delicious, gloriously scenic, frustrating, eye-opening...."

Lady Elise put it best, if we could design the "ideal" experience: "The people of Cambodia, the food of Thailand, and the riding conditions of Vietnam."  But nothing is perfect, and thus the frustrations put the good things into place.

But mostly all I can feel is grateful. For the freedom to travel like this, for safety in the experience and safe returns, for my readers and all the support. Thank you so much for coming along; you cannot know how bolstering it was to me to have you all.