So much for great planning.  I'd thought it would be a good idea to bring some CURVE and side mount kits with me to Florida...it is, after all, a Catrike rally and perhaps I might actually sell something.  So I made up more than a dozen extra CURVEs and a bunch of "T", "L" and side mount arms, and had John weld them up before he left for Mexico.  Well for some reason I can't understand there have been a flurry of orders lately, so I have next-to-nothing left.  So much for planning.

Msafiri is about ready to sit on the ground again.  I just need to hook up the click box and install the DualDrive cable.  I probably won't get to ride it before I leave but it's sure nice to have one more project done.  I wonder how it will be with two great but very different trikes...which one will get most of the riding?  Since I took Sam's advice and installed the side mount kit the other way I took some more pictures to prove the handlebar bag ends up in about the same spot, but now it uses less tubing and doesn't interfere with the Catrike Arkel bags.

Here are some of the latest embroidered covers I just shipped.  The stallion looks electric.  I'm hoping there will be three or four more from Zubin in today's mail so I can pretty much clean up all orders before I leave on Tuesday night.

 
















On a totally different subject, I think it was 1985 or 86 that I did my first long distance bike tour.  It was the year of the World's Fair in Vancouver.  I was living in Minneapolis, building my first Tour Easy clone in a one-room apartment and my personal life was kinda in the toilet.  So I decided I'd finish the bike and then ride it to Vancouver.  I figured that having all that time to just pedal and watch the scenery I'd ride my way through my mid-life crisis and discover the true purpose of my life.  While it was a spectacular trip and amazing experience I didn't really discover the meaning of anything...I mostly enjoyed the ride, although there were days riding across North Dakota into headwinds, rain and locusts that if someone had stopped, offered me $50 for the bike and my gear and a ride to the nearest town I'd have seriously considered the offer.  And I watched my knees go up and down.

The point of all this is that there were times before I left that I had serious second thoughts about heading west by myself on such a big adventure.  But what ended up getting me through my fears of leaving was something I never anticipated.  I kept telling my clients and friends that I was going to be gone all summer on this bike trip.  And as the departure date got closer and my brain was working overtime coming up with reasons NOT to go, all the folks I'd told began asking excitedly when I was leaving...turns out many of them were taking the trip vicariously through me.  Well, so many of them kept asking eagerly that in the end I HAD to go...not just for me, but for them.

I think I'm coming up on another one of these times.  I'm a lot older now and don't really know how many, if any, trips like that I have in my wreck of a body.  So while it's still in the daydreaming stage I've been thinking of riding one of the trikes home from TOT in Idaho the end of June.  I haven't thought about a route nor am I really much beyond the "hmmmmmm..." stage.  But like I discovered before, the more I start talking about it the more likely I am to do something.  So now, assuming anyone's reading this, I've told you.