New Orleans! ...to be continued

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Hey, so sorry it's been so long since we've updated anything. We've hit some bumps in the road since we last wrote, but things have been pretty great since we got to New Orleans. When we first got here and didn't know where we were gonna stay we went to the library, paid $3 to use the computer...stewy wrote paragraph after paragraph and then when he went to publish the server crashed.

So we got to Austin just before my birthday, and it was a really great time. After we left we kept asking ourselves why we even did so. Stewy's friend Ben put us up in his guest trailer in possibly the coolest house I've ever seen. I guess it was an artist who got a grant to buy two lots and make all these crazy houses with mosaics and fountains. From the street it just looks like a dirt driveway, and once you get in you feel like you're in some crazy art clubhouse. Ben and all his friends from the yellow bike project were so awesome. On Sunday we made a huge brunch with all his friends and then went swimming in a river a 15 minute ride away. It didn't really take much persuading for me to stay another day for my birthday.

Then we left to go onto New Orleans on June 5th. While we were in Austin we noticed that the rim on my back wheel was cracking around the spokes. We kind of tossed back and forth the idea of me just trying to ride it to New Orleans, or rebuilding the wheel with a new rim. Eventually we realized that it would just be safer and smarter and faster to just buy a new wheel. We went to a shop that someone recommended to us, and bought a new wheel. Everything was fine for the first two days of riding. Then as we're leaving this little tiny town northeast of Austin, we hit a hard bump and I can hear my wheel rubbing against my breaks. At first we thought the wheel was just out of true, and then when we stopped to look at it we realized I broke a spoke, and it was on the drive side so there was no way we could fix it ourselves. Bummer. So the one thing that we had bought the new wheel to avoid was what happened.

We ride on some more and look at our maps to see that there's a mechanic 20 miles out of our way, and decide we should try and get there the next day. It stinks because it means we lose a day of riding, but we didn't really have much of a choice...

Well, this is kind of a long story, so I'm going to have to continue it tomorrow. But I will finish with the fact that we got to New Orleans in one piece, and a friend of Andrea's--Misha--has been so amazing in putting us up in his super awesome house with a bed all to our own. Annie also flew down from Minneapolis, and has been staying with us at Misha's. Since I'm at a shared computer in a book co-op I don't want to hog it any more. It's a cliffhanger!!

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Comments

[ashira]

can't wait to hear what happened next!!
Hope everything is great!! The Bicycle Film Fest is here this weekend in LA! We are throwing a huge block party over by the Bicycle Kitchen/O20/Scoops! bikes bikes bikes! yayayayayayayayay!