Cycling The Road Less Travelled

As most of you know, we started our shopping a wee bit late…okay, very late. As we predicted many months ago, we are now only a few days away from departure and are still scrambling to get everything done. Our trip officially starts on Friday; we take a bus to Seattle, stay overnight and then fly to Cairo the very next day. As of this morning (Monday), despite having scoured all the bike shops in the city, we still had not found all of the spare bike parts that we need for the tour. Some of the spare parts on our list are precautionary, some we know we’ll need. Of course, these fall into the latter category. We had no choice but to order them online. Keep in mind its Monday, Tuesday is a holiday, we leave on Friday and we are ordering from the States which means potential delays at customs. The shops pretty much guaranteed that we wouldn’t get them on time.

I began resigning myself to the idea that we were just going to have to kiss a lot of butt and hope the other riders brought more parts then they need. Maybe even…gulp…share our precious tube of bum butter. Spiros on the other hand, true to his “never give-up” attitude, did some quick thinking and arranged to have everything delivered to the hotel in Seattle. So, to summarize, not only are we furiously working down to the last minute to get everything done, we are now having vital equipment delivered to us as we travel to our destination. And hey, if you’re having one package delivered to the hotel, why not have three packages delivered, all from different suppliers!

Now, I’m sure a lot of you out there are shaking your heads, thinking that we are unorganized and completely irresponsible for leaving everything this late without a back-up plan. Well…that’s where you’re wrong. We still have a 12 hour layover in Amsterdam in which to track down the remaining parts. Oh and a solar panel…we still need a solar panel.

In all honesty, part of me is kicking myself for not having gotten everything done sooner, another part of me is getting a real kick out of this. After all, some of our best travel stories involve some level of discomfort or misery; like the day we have affectionately named “The day Maria almost killed us” (a tale for another time and best told by Spiros anyway), or freezing our butts off in Sapa with Tony. I think I actually like a little chaos.