Ups and Downs

I hate to call the girl out but this is how it went down. First, I'm not sure if this makes us a perfect couple or unable to ride together...but this is what's up. I like to go up. And she likes to go down.

That sounds a little dirtier than it really is.

So the girl likes to be on top. Again, you are thinking dirtier than it is. She doesn't like to be whipped...ahh, again. Let's just say, she's competitive. And I am kicking her ass...fancy bike and all.

From my position uptrail, I heard quite the clatter. She threw her bike. THREW her bike. In the woods. Things were definitely NOT looking up. Ah, but if only that meant it were all downhill from here. That could fix everything.

I hesitated to say it, but  baby, can you find it in your heart to try NOT to throw your bike into the woods? To which she replied, I knew I should have never let you buy me a bike. It is true what they say, you should never buy a girl a bike. But I married her so I thought it was okay.

No, it is your bike. Technically you can do anything you want with it. I'm just asking you to try really hard not to hoist it above your waist and shotput it into a pine tree. See, technically, I will be the one fixing it when it's broke...so there's that. And I'm not that great a mechanic. Besides it's not good for the pine tree, worse for the bike, and do you really want to walk back to the car?

Heeheehee Banana. Let's RIDE.

Marco. Burger.

Half way through the vacation and a mere month newly married...and I'm still settling in. Getting used to each other in a small space can be a lot of work.

Is that a hamburger in the glove compartment? Cheeseburger, cheeseburger.

Needless to say we are working on our communication. I can't tell you how many times I put something in its place only to come back to that place and find it missing. Apparently it was not the girl's place...which, was somewhere else, I could never find.

Like a hamburger in the glove compartment. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger.

I'm mean car camping comes with its limitations. Mostly space. And nothing drives me nuts like trying to find something in a car packed with gear and gadgets. Try coupling that with the complications of a couple. And then try to find something you thought you put...in the glove compartment.

No, it wasn't a hamburger. Say cheese.

The first rule of marriage is: your way is not necessarily wrong, it's just probably not the best way...and will soon cease to exist. Second, your preference will probably not be hers so get over it. Third try not to make the girl cry. I still have a long way to go.

But I now know where to find the hamburger, I mean if you ever need a two day old fair burger. And chances are...you won't.



2 States, 2 Countries, 2 Posts!

Well this is a little odd for me, but there's just no way around it. Two posts under the same date. Give us a break we rode all the way to another country and back...we deserve TWO posts!

So if you're following along you know how the trip began. Keys, bag, passports...Yeah. Now let's get to the ride. The goal is simple...Vermont to Canada to New York and back to Vermont. In one day. On mountain bikes. With one tube. Ah....yep.

I carry a (1) tube and tools and a pump. The girl does not. I know this about her....or at least it's a really good guess. But I still only carry for myself...knowing full well if anything happens it's on me no matter who goes flat first.

So she's up ahead cruising down the hill and as I catch up I start to hear (to me) the unmistakable sound of a flat tire happening. I check my rear. My front. I'm good. So I ask the girl, do you have a flat? She says, no but there's a rattlesnake in the weeds.

A rattlesnake?!? Did you see it? And are you sure you don't have a flat? The noise is still there. The snake is not. She is convinced of both. Snake in the grass, air in the tires. Okay, I pass her and pedal on. I hear her call from the back, falling further behind, I think I have a flat.

Ah...yep. So we pull over and I start to dig into my bag...being extra special careful not to lose the passports.  Meanwhile the girl surprises me by taking off the rear wheel. I should hope she can change a flat, after all most of our beneficiaries can and she is my wife. Found the tube and levers, but I now notice the girl is removing the tube from the tire....Strike that, removing paints an incredibly toned down image of what was happening.

She is actually snatching the tube from the rim where it is being held captive by the nasty tire. Baby, what are you doing? You have to remove the bead of the tire from the rim before you take out the tube. I've never done this before, she quips. NEVER? Well, clearly, duh.

So here we are on mountain bikes being passed by 700c if at all and my one tube is already put into play. And we haven't even left Vermont. I'm a little panicked. What if we get another flat...in Canada? Do we walk back to the States, well, yeah I guess we would. Round trip was about 30 miles and 15 kilometers. Be a long walk. The girl is oblivious.

I actually assayed the situation and thought in a pinch, no pun intended, I could take the duct tape on the edge of her seat and possibly patch a tube if it happens again. If it's simple like a snake bite, that pun WAS intended.  But that's as long as I can get to her before she puts a choke hold on the imaginary rattlesnake and tears the living schrader out of it.

Passporting the Buck

It would be remiss of me to not include this story for the blog, although most will have already heard it in person had we met. It involves border patrol, passports, and visiting a foreign country...permanently.

Have I got your attention? I thought, what a great tale it would be - movie even - okay, the movie would be mediocre...but wouldn't it be funny if we rode our bikes all the way to Canada, got in, and then, lost our passports out of our backpack or something...it's always the or something that gets you.

What had happened whaz...we rode our bikes all the way to the road and we stopped. Still in the U.S. of A. mind you. To check the map. The girl wanted to go one way and I was sure the map said the other way. I'm usually wrong so I pulled out the map to check. Well, I went to remove my pack to pull out the map and the keys to the car swung around and whapped me in the face. Before I even opened the pack.

 

I looked at the girl. Who was last in my pack. And I remembered saying, be careful the passports are in there. And sure enough the pack was wide open, passports blowin' in the Vermont breeze. See now, I was already whining about riding my mountain bike all the way to Canada and how I was going to regret it on the way back...and already we had to make a detour...back to the car.

 

Because then the girl says, do you think the car is locked? Really? Do I think it's locked? When I clearly impatiently rode away before you were even out of the car! No, it's not locked. It's wide open. And I feel like there was a moment of hesitation when the girl actually thought, do we need to lock it? No, on second thought I'm quite certain that actually came out of her mouth.

 

See the irony of the whole tale is I just spent a buttload of cash fixing a window because I was afraid we would drive to Canada and it would be stuck open with our masses of personables trickling out of the Civic. And here we were about to consciously drive away with the car absolutely unlocked. Exactly how lazy are we?

 

We rode back and it wasn't as far as I thought. Together. We rode together, because we are a team. We both left the car unlocked. We both left the pack unzipped. We both rode back to fix the problem. It's not like we were in the wrong boat or something!

 

Oh, and that window I had fixed just for the trip...did I mention it's still broke?

Little Black Box

The girl shares a GPS with her mom. I'm not entirely sure how this works, the sharing not the GPS...mostly because it doesn't help me get to work on time, but it does have its advantages whilst exploring the land on vacation.

On second thought, I'm not entirely sure how the GPS works either. But if you know me, you are not at all surprised to see a paper map sprawled in my lap whilst in the passenger seat.

The girl is also a driver. She'll tell you straight up she doesn't navigate well. I will second that emotion. It's not entirely her fault. I blame Mini Driver. Not the accomplished actress/singer-songwriter but the irritating voice in the car who thinks she knows more than we do...I don't always agree.

It may have been an awful movie, but Barbra Streisand had it right in that silly movie where she drives across the country with her son...you can't expect to react in feet when you are driving 70 miles an hour! I don't drive in feet.

So here's the deal. We are in Vermont. On beautiful, winding, steep, foggy country roads. I drive my Honda like it's a race car but even here it's not unusual to find yourself going 60mph at any given moment. They are routed roads...not really small town country roads. Just give me a route number and I will follow it. But the girl does what the woman wants. Talks to me like I live there. Mini, if I knew each and every little tiny road and the name by which it goes by, I wouldn't need you.

But that's not how Mini Driver rolls...in route numbers. I think it's job security. If we find out we can use a road map or better yet an actual road sign...she's toast. Molasses topped toast. And instead of just doing her job, she likes to brag and boast her knowledge across the dashboard.

Turn left at Log Hollow Road. Talk to me in numbers Techno-Queen. Route numbers. Log Hollow Road? Are you kidding me? Is she expecting me to see a tiny green road sign tucked around the curve of a Vermont country road in time to actually make the turn?!? With a neighborhood Subaru on my ass spitting windshield washer fluid above its roof like a welcome mat on Barnard Road?

Recalculate this Aviation Blondie...

Key To Happiness

WARNING: A budding exaggeration may flower.

It's been just over 40 days since the big day and already I am locked out. In an odd twist of marital strife and not to be outdone, because the girl is uber-competitive, she is also locked out.

Perhaps because this has nothing to do with us and everything to do with modern technology. I miss the days of keys. Good, old fashioned, cut metal, ringable keys. Gone by the wayside, replaced by unpredictable, finicky plastic. We may in fact hold the key to our happiness but most definitely do not have a workable, usable key to our stuff.

Nothing against the Inn. It's stood the weather of time, lasting longer than a nickel-plated brass key. Go figure. Imagine if the pilgrims had landed on the tip of Provincetown after grueling months at sea, hungry, wind burnt, laundry layered in the salt of the mer only to be locked out of America...the thin plastic rectangle they had been issued by the Queen granting them entry to the new land, beeping and flashing a red light: DENIED.

Okay, so our plight was not nearly that dramatic. We just couldn't get back into our room after a long, shaded, chowder filled day, escorting wealthy fundraisers to their champagne laden shower oases. Now that I see it in print...oh it's dramatic all right....just maybe doesn't match the photo above. At. All.

And considering our day ended with us being incredibly late to dinner...lending to us leaving for town AFTER the sideways rainstorm...making us wait for the town trolley skipping the long walk where we would have inevitably been soaked AND in turn seeing a wonderful rainbow giving a big gay hug to Ptown. Are you kidding me? Well, I guess it all happened as it should is all I'm saying.

Despicable Me

Well, the vacation started off with this little, how do we say...issue. For those of you staring at the big ass crack, that ain't it Dion. You are probably also the same group who read big ASS crack instead of big ass CRACK. I'm just guessing.

So starts the, technically, honeymoon. Banana. Oooh Banana. If you are still wondering, it's really not important, but the issue was the minion not the crack.

This is the first posting from the first vacation post wedding. It sounds like it may have started off shaky but that's just for blogging purposes. All is well in the land of Us. But for your reading purposes, we give you some of the funny hiccups....