Miss Cycle Del Rio 2008!

Last you heard, Team Ontario was about to be chopped in half, Elissar returning to Montreal and Trish taking a bit of time in Mexico before returning to Bowmanville, via Los Angeles!?! All this took place about one week ago in Austin. We enjoyed our last night together watching Juno at the Alamo Draughthouse. We also got the chance to swim at Barton Springs with Elissar on our last day in Austin, which was chilly but fun... We will miss you Trish and Elissar!

Mare and I took off after a few lovely days with Kerry, an acupuncture student in Austin who cycled us around to some cool spots. We rode and rode for six days, camping in various parks, library yards (right), camp grounds etc. Over the past six days of travel, we covered about 310 miles and made it all the way to Del Rio.

The weather has been awesome, getting warmer and warmer but we did encounter some insane, INSANE winds. On day two out of Austin, while we had hoped to go to Enchanted Rock State Park, this was made totally impossible by a head wind clocked at thirty miles per hour! We were nearly being nocked off our saddles, needless to say! Also, for the most part, the terrain has been very, very hilly. I can't even remember if I was going up or down in this one! (Mare saying you were going down.)

We arrived in Del Rio yesterday and spent the afternoon and evening with Tim, who just finished his pilot training. He is the next door neighbor of James, who is our most excellent host here in Del Rio. We had lots of fun checking out the town, going out for dinner and meeting up with James after his play rehersal.

Our second day in Del Rio has been spent mostly shopping for camp stoves on the internet but I will spare you the boring details and skip straight to the good stuff: DRESSES!!!

After driving around with Tim yesterday and spying a rather exciting dress shop, I couldn't resist going back this afternoon to try on this particular number. We are told Del Rio is very big on beauty pagents, which is likely the reason a town of 33 ooo people can keep more than one shop like this in business... The shopkeeper only spoke spanish but it proved not to be a problem for me to try it on and take a couple pictures. Maybe I can strap this bad boy to the back of my trailer for any formal events I might encounter between here and San Francisco. If you can believe it, the dress was even pinker in real life.

After trying on the dress, we enjoyed ice cream, coffee and letter writting in the local soda fountain... Tonight, we will cook dinner and brownies for James when he gets home from work and play rehearsal.

On Thursday, we continue on our merry way towards Alpine and El Paso before we say goodbye to Texas and move towards New Mexico and Arizona.

So long for now!