Some major mile markers for trip preparation are happening here, people!  Yesterday, after much painful research & deliberation in an effort to get the best possible tickets (read: cheapest possible), we bought our plane tickets to New Zealand.  We’ll be leaving on Dec 28th from Wilmington NC, making connections in Charlotte NC and Sydney Australia, and arrive in Auckland at 2:45pm on Dec 30th.  That’s right – two days later!!  I bet you’re jealous of that nice little agenda.

I also got my front & rear racks on Saturday from my very favorite bike person – Bill Davidson at Elliot Bay Bicycles.  I haven’t gone for a ride with the new racks though, because it has been awful awful weather here in Seattle.  And I really do not need to hear things from you people about how I will definitely be stuck in weather like this when we’re on the road, etc, etc!

Last weekend, James & I went on another test ride.  We went a little over 25 miles.  The bikes were perfect, the ride was beautiful, and the only thing that really hurt the next day was my butt.  Which is perfectly fine – that’ll go away as I start riding regularly.

In an earlier post I mentioned how non-sexy we are going to be on this trip.  Well here are some more pictures to prove it!  And please keep in mind, this is really nothing compared to what you’ll be seeing in a few months. 

James got hot on a ride up a big hill.  This is the resulting fashion statement:

Sarah’s helmet fits crookedly on her head.  Which annoys her very much:

We took a break for a snack at the halfway point on Lake Washington. Some ducks were very interested in our granola bars:

Close-up of the very cute duck:

Pretty scenery on the shores of Lake Washington:

We’re getting closer & closer to being ready for the trip! Last night we went to REI to pick up the final important items. A few odds & ends are all we need now. Here’s a picture of our dining room. Looks like something exploded. We don’t really try to walk through here anymore, we take the long way around to reach the kitchen.

We also went on our first bad(ish) weather bike ride yesterday. 40 degrees and really high winds. I guess it doesn’t sound that bad, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant. Jamie almost got blown off his bike in an especially windy corridor downtown – it was his first ride with the rear panniers and they seem to catch the wind quite nicely! The best part is that the panniers were really lightly loaded. This is going to be hilarious once we’re truly fully loaded.

Total time: 1 hour.
Mileage: I dont even want to post it.

Here’s a picture of us with our bikes in Myrtle Edwards Park – we are not going to be sexy at all on this trip – this is merely a tame preview

This is completely unrelated to our upcoming travels, but it is too exciting to not write about!

This weekend, October 1st, James, John, and I will run our first marathon – together! We will run the Twin Cities marathon, also known as The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon. 26.2 miles through the city and around Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Lake Nokomis, along the Mississippi River, finishing right in front of the State Capitol.

I started training a few months ago and have been semi-diligent with my training plan – I have faithfully completed (almost) all of my weekend long runs, but I’ve been lazy about doing mid-week runs.  My longest long run was 19 miles, completed 3 weeks ago. And it was rough. During the last few miles my muscles & joints were so sore that it took an embarrassing amount of effort to pick them up and move them for the next step. I am hoping for lots of adrenaline during the marathon to keep me going. Alison or Dad, maybe I need one of you to hide somewhere around mile 21 so you can jump out and scare the crap out of me. That will help with the adrenaline, right?

James & John went with a totally different training plan. They did almost nothing. They do claim they ran 10 miles together, 3 months ago, but “it was so easy that we got bored and stopped running.” hmmmm… They are counting on their youth and Viking heritage (John’s exact words) to carry them through.

I’m not saying I want to see my brothers go through a lot of pain and suffering…but if they skip across the finish line I might have to kill them. Actually, if they carry me, while skipping along through the finish line, I will be OK with that.

Yesterday Sarah and I went out for our first real ride together. We parked the car in Carnation and then road 10 miles to Sammamish to watch some football at Sarah’s manager’s house. You can see the route here. The weather was perfect and the ride was beautiful. It was sunny but the air was crisp and the leaves were changing. There are some very nice roads to ride on East of Seattle. It is a very rural area and you are often surprised with views of the Cascades and Mount Rainier. Sarah was pretty tired after doing ten miles and her derriere was sore, so I rode back to get the car alone. Sarah’s coworkers caught on to this and spent the next hour inundating her with comments about me pulling her in a trailer or on a tandem bike. I hope the jokes don’t come true! It was good to get out and put some miles on Sarah’s bike and ride together. Next stop – 20 miles.