Day 1   

   4/28/01
   Mile 87
   Dancieger, TX
   
   After months of planning, it was great to finally get under way.
   My climbing partner Mike Wood gave me a great sendoff in Galveston,
   posters and all. That will be the last I see of him until we meet up
   in Talkeetna, Alaska, about the third week in June, ready to climb
   Denali.
   
   It could not have been a better day - perfect weather, barely cracking
   80 degrees. I rode along the coastline some 35 miles to the town of
   Surfside, passing rows of beach houses and scrub plains, then turned
   northwest towards Lake Jackson.  Massive, sprawling petrochemical
   plants were a reminder than the plastics we use in our daily lives
   don't come from nowhere. Gradually the landscape changed to thicket
   and farmland, while spanish moss draped the trees.
   
   Did I pack everything I need? Did I remember all of the hundreds of
   details necessary to pull off both the bike trip and the climbing
   part? Is there some mechanical problem with the new gear? Can I really
   do all this? It's hard not to replay these things in my mind. There
   are an endless number of things that could put a stop to this trip,
   but in the words of George Eliot, "No great deed was ever done by
   those demanding certainty".
   
   I now sit in the tent that will be my home for two months, writing
   this log, and getting ready to catch up on all the sleep I've missed
   over the past few weeks.

Today's Photos - Tomorrow