Monday ,leaving Houston, the 4th largest city in America behind, we drove up north today to Fort Worth , Texas. We saw a few of the small oil wells, well I think they were. The ones that look like giant hammers going up and down very slowly. They are scattered around the place , but we seem to come across about 20 of them and then no more for awhile. Got set up and then went and got some groceries after our bbq tea. Awesome evenings except for the bloody mozzies, they are shocking at the moment, so had to move [View Full Entry]

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It's Monday night and the stress of getting ready to leave for South America is growing. My list of things to do is pretty lengthy, but at least I'm making progress. Still, I only have tomorrow to do a ton of stuff -- some of it is pretty important. My itinerary is pretty well locked in now. About a 7-10 days in Iquitos (including four down river in the jungle) and 5-7 days in Cusco with a couple of days visiting Machu Picchu tucked in there followed by a day or two in Lima before flying back to the US. The [View Full Entry]

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About 5 days to go until I head off to South America. My travel plans are starting to come together -- at least for the first half of the trip. I'll leave Wednesday morning and fly to Miami where I have a four hour layover and before catching a flight to Lima. After arriving at 9:45 pm, going through immigration, baggage, and customs should be done in about an hour. From there I'll head over to the LAN airline counter and check-in for my 4:20 am flight to Iquitos and the rainforest. That means about 4-5 hours waiting in the airport [View Full Entry]

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Wow Friday was a FUN day!!! I was up before the chickens and on the road early. No traffic problems getting to the track in Cresson, TX. I spent the day with 50 or so Miata buddies turning laps on a 1.7 mile road course. They broke us down into novice, intermediate, and advanced so only people with similar skill levels were on the track at the same time. Since I’ve never driven at speed on a road course I obviously signed up as a novice. We had classroom time interspersed with track time. I had an instructor riding with me [View Full Entry]

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May 7, Thursday My first inclination was to return to Veracruz and register my displeasure, but I decided about all they could do would be to say sorry, and maybe clean up the bike which was still an oily mess. So instead of backtracking 2 hours, I pulled over at the first auto lavenderia, and the guys completely cleaned the oil off the bike, by hand, in an hour and 15 minutes for 150 pesos ( $10.50) On the way again, and I was soon riding through the northern "desert" in 105 degrees. What fun. I stopped a few times for [View Full Entry]

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We went to Texas to meet Kim’s family. Kim has two brothers, Frank and Tony. Frank is married to Dominica and they have two kids, Julia and Griffin. Tony is married to Leslie and they also have two kid’s Megan and Katie. Kim’s father Jim and step-mother Laura along with Tony and his family, visited us at Frank’s house in Fort Worth, Texas. We next visited Kim’s mother Margaret and her step-father Robert in Denton, Texas. While we were at Margaret’s house, Kim’s aunt Connie, Uncle Dave and her grandmother stopped by to visit with us. We a [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to Fort Worth y'all. And what a town! Our Texas experience so far has been amazing. We have loved every moment and that’s thanks to the people and landscapes we have meet and seen. Our Fort Worth experience was around the Historic Stockyards area. The day started with a longhorn cattle drive, with 13 longhorn cows and a couple of cowboys. They drove them from the market, down the main street and back to the market again. It was very cool and made us miss home a little. From there we explored the stockyards; lucky for us it was market [View Full Entry]

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I am not sure where to start about Luiz.At the beginning,I guess.He grew up in Manaus,Brazil, on the banks of the Amazon.As a teenager,he worked for the only float plane charter service in that part of Brazil.It was run by some Americans in support of a group of anthropologists.They took a liking to him and offered to sponsor him to come to the U.S.He took them up on it and immigated to Southern California,got a job bagging groceries and enrolled in a junior college .After a year of working on his English and taking science and math courses,he transferred to [View Full Entry]

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What I've Been Up To I can't believe I have been in Texas for over 5 weeks! Unbelievable how fast time has flown! My days have been filled with various people and activites. Less than a week after my arrival I began working at Chipotle Mexican Grill. My last day was Sunday. Working there filled most of my evenings. I got to meet many people and brush up on my spanish while working there. I even made a couple of friends. One was Becky, who doesn't work there, but was a regular who temps as an RN at one of the [View Full Entry]

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Albuquerque Never Ends I still have not decided whether my timing was good or bad in this city of balloons. I suppose good, since, all in all, no harm done. After finishing my blog on Wednesday, I hopped in the car to cruise the Querqe. It didn't take long to realize that, having been on the road and in multiple cities over the past month and a half, I'd seen nearly every kind of sight. I asked locals what there is to see in town: Botanical gardens (Remember L.A.?), Old Town (drove thru...same o' same o') Mass ascension of Hot [View Full Entry]

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