The last one of these.
Our bikes are in boxes.
No one has stolen the ringer.
Hope is waning.
We leave at four in the morning.
We won´t leave without having seen condors, though they were at the zoo. We won´t leave without plenty of cheek kisses from the people who have made our last days here so good, and we won´t be leaving for good.
Over our time, riding, limping, finegaling, scheming, and persevering, over this South American landscape, from jungle to desert, we have learned a lot of things, about each other, and ourselves, that we haven´t yet had time to realize we learned. Let alone spanish, and bicycle navigation, there is something to be said about who we are now verses who we couldn´t have been before we left, or in Texas.
There is too much to be felt out about that, and too much abstract interperception to be dragging it out in one of the last things to be written here, so, here is a list of FIFTY things. Fifty things, because we are always just half way there. Some things that went right and some things that went wrong and some things inbetween, some old and some new. You will have to discern what is what, which is which. To revert back, and say that there is maybe one thing we already know we have learned (or that has atleast been re-emphasized) that could be said here; it is that. It is that it is up to you, people, each person, to sort out the good and the bad, what was good, and what was bad, because at any time, and all at once, those things, each thing, can be both, can be either, good or bad, and you have to make a choice about that. And you have to make a choice about humor.
1. Road in a thuderstorm.
2. Had a pair of very scratched sun glasses stolen, amateurs.
3. Held rhinocerous beetles, they filled our whole hand.
4. Slept on a stranger´s floor.
5. Sold the Santosa, Cat´s replacement bike, for sixty five US dollars to a women in high heels at a motorcylce shop.
6. Chewed coca leaves.
7. Got a ride in the back of a truck.
8. Road uphill for 100kms. after being told that the ride was downhill for 50kms.
9. ran into a road cone.
10. tried to help a man having a seizure on a bus.
11. witnessed a man having a seizure in the middle of the sidewalk.
12. got sunburned.
13. Went in natural hot springs with Germans.
14. Threw up.
15. Played cards for money without knowing the rules.
16. Stood with one leg on each side of the Ecuator at the center of the world.
17. Went to an active volcano.
18. Laughed out loud.
19. Wrote to our families using these: ñ, and a few of these: ¿
20. Road in a boat with giant jellyfish beneath us.
21. Didn´t meet any other woman traveling on a bicycle without a man.
22. Danced at a disco.
23. Made things out of, and decorated things with, roadkill.
24. Sang a song by the backstreet boys.
25. Road the bicycle using only one leg.
26. Attempted explanations of very complicated things like norwals and jokes in spanish.
27. Wore the same socks for three months.
28. Cut our hair.
29. Apologized
30. Broke something that didn´t belong to us, including shatteringa jar, and disjointing parts of each others bicycles when rotating them due to the integeration of the Santosa.
31.Changed our minds.
32. Left a money belt (or FUP, if you recall) laying on the floor of an establishment for a good hour before realizing it was gone and going back to retreave it.
33. held hands.
34. road the bicycle in both a dress and mini skirt.
35. went to a church service.
36. went to a punk show in the basement of a huge building squatted by two men who rent rooms to hookers for a dollar.
37. took a cold shower.
38. took a risk.
39. Saw the Nazca Lines, sort of.
40. Forgave.
41. Stuck our head of the window of a moving vehicle, despite knowing better,
sorry Rachel´s dad.42. found insects in our shoes.
43. Found our way, to somewhere we´d never been, soaking wet in the middle of the night.
44. repeated something we´d already said, forgetting we had.
45. repeated something we´d already said, forgetting we had.
46. wore all the way threw our shorts.
47. made it just in time.
48. had ¡Hey Gringa, Mango! yelled at us, among other things.
49. Ate too much sugar.
50. told people stories of what we had done, and reminded each other.
(and most of these things happened repeatedley.)
