Boxed In

Today was "Bike to Work Day," and I definitely saw a fair number of rookies out there. I hope they enjoyed it enough to try it again, and again, and again. I suspect that the spike in fuel costs has inspired a few to try bicycle commuting. Although I did not see any wildlife today, my pheasant buddy gave a war cry as I passed by on the nice rain packed gravel this morning. The balloons cruised low over the trail after they made a quick drop across the Rio Grande. Everyone in the gondolas looked like they were having a lot of fun.






Just before dinner the Fed Ex truck arrived with three more boxes from Cas. It was the same driver as yesterday with the bike, and he asked me how we were going to carry all this stuff on the bikes? I had to admit that it was a mystery to me. So, after my granddaughter and I hauled the boxes on a dolly into the library I called Cas to ask him how he planned to carry that much stuff. Cas did about half of the GDMBR four years ago, which means he is the most experienced rider of the group for this route. I know New Mexico fairly well, but Cas knows more about points north. We had a few good laughs and he claimed that the boxes were much larger than the contents inside. I said that was good, because I could not figure out how we were going to get that much volume down to the Mexican border next week and still have room for us. Tomorrow I will open the boxes and release the genies inside.




While I am on the topic of shipping boxes, I received an email today that my first drop box arrived in Mimbres at 12:15 pm today. How cool is that? Now I need to finish getting the rest of the drop boxes ready and call the various post offices to find out about their General Delivery holding policies. Apparently some will hold a package for a month, while others will only hold it a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, it looks like the last shipment of freeze dried food has been delayed and probably will not arrive at the house until after I am gone. I have tried very hard to minimize the impact of this trip on my wife. However, it looks like distributing the food of this last shipment into the appropriate drop boxes will fall entirely on her shoulders. Remarkably, based on shipping notices it looks like everything else will arrive in time.

A week from tonight day one of the trip will be complete, and we will be sleeping in Sam Hughes' backyard in Hachita!!!