Ice Through the Door

 

Yes, I AM the guy who can spend up to a year choosing a new backpacking stove –- months of catalog reading, price comparisons,  a few hours of peering over fellow hiker’s shoulders at dinner time and suffering several cuts and puncture wounds from constructing little alcohol stoves from cat food cans.

  “Who do we know that owns a cat…?”

So it came as a surprise to see  the lovely faux stainless glow of a new refrigerator staring back at us as we returned home last month.

“Remember?”

“The old one died just before we left two trips ago.  We just cleaned it out and left .  We bought this one when we got back last time.”

Apparently I can part with enough cash to fund several months on the road (even at these gas prices!) and forget it completely. The Ice Through the Door is cool,  though not enough to hold us in thrall as the leaves begin to turn. 

We are planning to Head Out, first  South to tag the Gulf Beaches and measure the rebuilding dunes, then North to where trout fin quietly over stony beds and bears forage for Winter.  We will join family and friends at the National Storytelling Festival at Jonesborough TN in early October and then file our flight plan “in the air.”

Patty has begun therapy for her long neglected shoulder and, star patient that she has always been, is making measurable progress; she expects to try out the bike on this southern swing and in mountain campsites chosen for their level bike trails. When the Physical Therapist asked what her goals were, she replied, “to ride my bike, and  bump a volleyball with my grandchildren” 

“…and were you able to do this before…?”

Al got his bike out at home and reports that “getting back on our bikes” will entail a little more than just adding them to the traveling payload. Wow, those first few miles after a long layoff are like starting to run again –- painful.

In retrospect, we have named our last four month tour to the “shores of Gitche Gumee" and back as the “NO BIKES TOUR” , the first long enforced separation from our bikes since we were dating; who knows what this adventure will bring?  For now, we are calling it ESCAPE FROM ICE THROUGH THE DOOR.