... almost done...

Well my grand adventure is nearly over. I shipped off Shane back to San Francisco yesterday morning, and my flight leaves tonight. By the time I get home, I will have been gone for one day more than 4 weeks, and one day less than a month. I will have been in, or within spitting distance of 8 countries and nations and ordered Starbucks in 4 different languages. So much has happened that I'm sure that not all of it can find its way into the blog. When I get home I'll be sure to post pictures and write more detailed accounts of everything that we've done. But in the meantime, here's the short version of what I've been up to over the past 29 days:

April 29 - Leave Boston

April 30 - Arrive in London. See a kid I grew up with on TV.

May 1 - Shane arrives in London.

May 2 - Fly to Paris. Paris begins a long 2 weeks of learning that in 3 years of French classes, I learned diddly squat. Begin the perfect the art of smiling like a fool whenever someone speaks to me.

May 5 - Drive across France... which is NOT as big as Texas. It might be more like the size of Wisconsin.

May 6 - Do a ride around Lake Geneva. Have a screaming match with Shane. Have the sinking sensation that this trip might have been a huge mistake.

May 7 - Ride up Alpe d'Huez. Have to stop on the third switchback and almost yack all over myself. Slow my pace down and make it to the top. Shane gets 3 flats, and our first of many rides is truncated.

May 8 - Shane needs a rest day, so we ride up Alpe d'Huez again and call it a day.

May 9 - Try to do a 150-mile ride, but after it takes us about 4 hours to go the 30 miles up Croix de Fer, we turn around and come home.

May 10 - Try to ride up the Col d' Izoard. After exactly 1 hour we hit a barrier saying the road is closed. Hike our bikes over the barrier, and a quarter mile away find that the road is covered in snow. I am convinced I am going to die on the Col d'Allos on the way to Nice.

May 11 - Spend the day in Nice and Cannes. After so many aborted rides in the Alps, I'm dying for a ride around the sunny hills of Nice, but Shane insists on a rest day. I secretly stew.

May 12 - Ride up Mt. Ventoux. Almost get blown off the side of the mountain, but climbed like I was doping. All is right with the world again.

May 13 - Drive to the foot of the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees. We wound up in a tiny little town that was grey and yucky and all the camp sites we closed. We both got the heebie jeebies.

May 14 - Decide that the weather report is too bad to even try the Tourmalet. Turns out it was closed anyway, since Contador had tried not 2 days earlier to ride up it. We hightail it out of the spooky little inbred town and head off to Spain.

May 15 - Go for a short ride over the French/Spanish border. After a few miles of climbing, though, I get grouchy and tell Shane I have to poop, so we should go back to the hotel. It was a lie. I've been constipated the whole trip.

May 16 - My birthday. We ride 80 miles through Spain, Andorra, and France on a rout I did 2 years ago. Last time it nearly killed me. This time it feels easy, and it's a great birthday present.

May 17 - Back in Barcelona, I go for a ride with the Dirty Old Men. It's a "Mountain Challenge" day, and after everyone stops at the bottom of a 4-kilometer, 6% hill, we all race to the top. I come in second, losing in a sprint in the last 100 meters. The third place guy was minutes behind. It is an even better birthday present than the ride the day before to have all those dirty old men be beat soundly by a girl.

May 19 - Ride around the hills behind Barcelona. Get stung on the tongue by a bee.

The rest of the time in Barcelona - Sit around getting fat, reminiscing about how miserable I was in the old days, and secretly being sullen about coming back. Vow never to return to Barcelona.

May 22 - Fly back to London. Have never been so glad to be back in civilization in my whole life. Begin falling in love with London.

May 23 - Meet Warrior Woman. Have a lovely day with a nice cup of tea. Learn that I do not have an English accent when WW tells me that I sound "foreign." She is surprised.

May 24 - My friend Emily gets married. I learn about fascinators, ceilidhs, kilts, and that white people in Europe all dance like me. I feel proud of my race and their inability to dance. I also spent the night getting hit on by a 14-year-old that thought I was a professional cyclist. (I also found out later that he'd been told some rather crude generalizations about how American girls feel about fellatio).

May 27 - Leave London

May 28 - Suffer through an 18-hour layover in Reykjavik.

Other things that have happened on this trip:

I've fallen in love with Nutella.

I've also fallen in love with English tea.

I've learned that before May 15, France is très fermé above 2000m.

Something about Spain makes you need a cigarette.

We have spotted 3 celebrities: 2 definite, and one a possibility.