Stats from Thailand Week 2
3.26.2007 – 04.01.2007
3 days cycling, 4 days resting
185.38 kilometers
61.79 km / cycling day
10 hours, 33 minutes, 51 seconds in the saddle
3:31:17 / cycling day
US$222.70
US$31.81 / day

Sarah and I have spent the last two weeks in Thailand trying to decide where to go next on our trip. This is the first time where we have no concrete future plans. No onward plane tickets. No hard dates to meet. It feels a little strange not knowing what is going to come next and we are struggling to figure out what to do. We have discussed whether or not we should try to find the best places on the planet to tour on a bicycle or should we really try to get remote and adventurous? Maybe Southern China, northern India, France, Argentina? Should we stick to our original plan of one year or travel for longer? We have talked about teaching English in Taiwan or volunteering in India too. It feels like everything is up in the air.

We spent today resting in Chumpon, which isn’t that great of a place but it does have a large, interesting night market where they sell everything from fruit to fish to dishes.

We are staying in a guesthouse in Chumpon called the Farang Bar. Farang is the Thai word for foreigner and the owner even has a fat little Pug named Farang. Not sure what that says about his opinion of us!

I’ve completed the first round of updates to the Route page. We now have dynamic maps with selected journal entries marked on the map. These maps will be continuously updated as we travel and write new journal entries. The next round of updates to the Route page will be drawing our actual route on these maps and possibly incorporating our photos as well.

It doesn’t quite seem like we’re on our trip yet, but our first full day of travel is complete! It wasn’t that exciting, though. We had a very fun going away party at the Pike Pub & Brewery on Thursday night, then left Seattle at 7:30am on Friday morning. It took us 14 hours to drive to San Francisco. We did this same trip two years ago and it only took us 12.5 hours then…we think this trip’s extra time was due to the fact that our Civic was completely loaded down with everything we own & was too heavy to handle any of the hills on I-5. Our trunk was full of boxes of stuff we plan to store in my mom’s garage for the next year, the back seat was crammed with our camping/biking gear, and then our two bikes were hanging off the back of the car. The result of all this was that we were trucking along in the far right lane with all the 18 wheelers during any uphill parts of the highway. We were literally down to 45 miles an hour at some points – poor Civic!

We stayed with Jenny & Brandon last night in Mill Valley, CA – just outside of San Francisco in Marin County. They made a fire for us in the fireplace which was fun because it was a little bit cold, then I wrapped myself up in my down sleeping bag (which is ranked to keep me warm in temps as low as 15 degrees) & fell asleep. I woke up at 7am completely drenched with sweat – I literally haven’t sweat that much since the marathon. Ew. I had to get out of bed, take a shower, and then go back to sleep.

Today we’re hanging out with Brian in San Fran. We might cook dinner tonight at his house. Tomorrow we might go on a bike ride with Jenny and Brandon. So far we’re having lots of fun but it just seems like we’re here for a weekend trip.

Here’s a preview of our trip route. In the next few weeks we’re planning to create an actual Route page on erck.org with a detailed map of the countries and cities we’ll travel through. As we continue on our trip we’ll try to keep the route page updated with the actual cities we visited plus our current location. The first 1 1/2 months will be a roadtrip across the United States. After Christmas we’ll leave the US and start riding our bikes in New Zealand.

US Road Trip:

• Seattle
• Crater Lake National Park
• San Francisco, CA
• Ventura, CA
• Channel Islands National Park
• Joshua Tree National Park
• Yuma, AZ
• Saguro National Park
• Big Bend National Park
• Austin, TX
• Fargo, ND
• Minneapolis, MN
• Raleigh, NC
• Wilmington, NC

International:

• New Zealand
• Southeast Asia
• Singapore
• Malaysia
• Thailand
• Vietnam
• Laos
• China
• Yunnan Province
• Sichuan Province
• Guangxi Province
• Guangdong Province
• Hong Kong
• Russia
• St. Petersburg
• Eastern Europe
• Specifics TBD
• Argentina
• Only if we have time, money, and energy left!