wanderinglaura

Happy autumn! We are a bit soggy in Darjeeling. It is still the tail end of the monsoon and so pours a few times a day and we are lost in the fog much of the rest of the time. The 24 hour journey to India was hard on the body! Arriving in Kolkata at 2 am was okay. In fact, relatively quiet and not as hot as it could have been. The hotel room was vile, however, and unfortunately for Matt, once the city woke up around 6 or 7 am, I was done with sleep. We booked an overnight train ticket for that night and spent the day getting oriented and taking in the "sites" of Kolkata. Not much to see - a crowded, dirty, steamy Indian city. We made our way to the ... read more

Lisa and I spent a few days last week checking out Yosemite National Park in northeastern California. What an amazing place! Granite monoliths, beautiful streams, great hiking, crazy rock climbing, cinnamon bears and giant redwoods. We were quite amused as few snowflakes began to fall on the afternoon we arrived. Fortunately, it warmed up considerably after the first unseasonably chilly night. We spent the next couple of days hiking and biking around in the sunshine. Both of us were blown away by the seemingly-endless stunning scenery in Yosemite.... read more

The days have definitely begun to run together. The routine of waking up, making a huge breakfast, breaking camp, packing the car, hitting the road, riding for hours, stopping for picnic, riding for more hours, finding camp, cooking an epic dinner while setting up tents and crashing into a deep, exercise-induced sleep is getting, well, a bit monotonous. Nightly alcohol consumption is on the rise. Physically, we are holding up pretty well. Stiff necks, sore backs, tight legs and tender backsides are common enough, but not slowing us down significantly. Derek has climbed back on his bike today for his first ride with the group in 9 days since his spill on Day 4. I finally took a day off on Day 9 and wound up buying a new roadbike. I was innocently inquiring about ... read more

Who knew that one could ride out of one's driveway in Vancouver, BC in the morning and be in Bellingham, Washington in time for 3 o'clock tea? Well, that was DAY 1 of the great cycling journey to San Francisco. I arrived back in Vancouver on Wednesday (from Thailand) and we started riding on Sunday morning. So basically I had time to unpack, do laundry, eat and sleep a lot, get bike road-ready, re-pack and go. As anyone who has been following my blogs already knows, I have not been doing much (okay, any) training over the last few months. Rather, I was jetting about Southeast Asia on a motorbike for the past several weeks. As such, I am feeling a wee bit beat after a 70 mile + day yesterday. I am currently travelling ... read more

Luang Prabang is a charming little French colonial town surrounded by rivers. Not much else to say except that I was jumped by an amourous novice monk (who was, fortunately, half my size) after sunset on Phu Si and spent a lovely afternoon at the refreshing Tat Kuang Si waterfall a little ways south of town. The tiny, quirky town of Nong Khiaw was my next stop after Luang Prabang. The ride from Nong Khiaw to Luang Namtha was a bit ambitious. The road was windy, steep and slow but good from Nong Khiaw to Udom Xai. The ride after lunch in Udom Xai was another story. Similarly windy and steep but now with sections of pavement simply broken off into hard, rough patches of rocks and old pavement or dirt the rest of the ... read more

I couldn't get the bike to start when I returned from Don Det. This would have been relatively simple if it hadn't been parked in the sand down at beach level. Fortunately, like much of southeast Asia, there are always curious people hanging around doing what appears to be nothing, so two guys helped me push the bike up the short but steep hill to a level street in town. They gave me a good shove, I popped the clutch (something I did not know I knew how to do) and I went flying off down the road. Riding in Lao is a real treat after most of Thailand and Cambodia. There is so little traffic and what traffic there is is quite mellow. With the habits I've picked up, I am now the crazy ... read more