So much to say and so little time.....

We ended up spending an extra night in Pittsburg and I was feeling so crappy and we were all in such a bad mood that no one could stand the thought of having to listen to Solomon's inane cartoons for another night, so we didn't let him turn the tv on at all. As he was going to bed he muttered "It just seems like a waste of a perfectly good t.v. to not turn it on for even a fraction of a second".
But, in addition to tv I think what Solomon will remember most about this trip is how much of Matt's undivided attention he got, sitting on the back of that tandem for 6-9 hrs. everyday. And Matt will recall that it was having Solomon behind him for hours and hours everyday that enabled him to achieve his Zen Master state of total enlightenment. I rode up on them yesterday and they were deep into a discussion of literary devices and narration, and Matt was comparing Harry Potter to Moby Dick. Solomon was so into it. They talk about every thing from the Civil War to Nakita Kruschev pounding his shoe on the table in the UN...and of course sports, sports, sports, and Sponge Bob. At one point Solomon and Yonah were having a sing down with that Passover song "who knows one?" seeing who could sing the 12 verses the fastest. You just never know what the topic is going to be from one moment to the next! One of the funniest scenes, and I so wish I could have gotten this on tape, was when Solomon first got his whistle. There was Matt, patiently pushing them up the hill; veins popping, muscles bulging, sweat dripping...and there was Solomon in the back; whistle in his mouth, just blowing away incessantly in this staccato rhythm like the little person trainer Grandmother in that movie The Triplets of Bellville. It was hysterical!
It has been such a pleasure to ride with Yonah too. I'm getting glimpses of how nice it is to hang out with him as a person and not just as someone I love because he is my son. He really makes me laugh more and more. Not in a childlike, goofy, or unintentional way, but in a mature and knowing way.
Usually the mornings are just glorious. It is still sort of cool and I think "I can't imagine not getting to wake up each morning and go on a great bike ride with my family, to a place I've never been before". And then by the afternoon I'm thinking "man, I am so done with this riding my bike every day, all day...eating crappy food, sleeping in skanky hotels, or confederate campgrounds (more on that in a min.). Sometimes it feels like putting on my bikeshorts, slathering sunscreen on and going into a steambath!
I had my first decent cup of coffee since leaving California today! The coffee gets weaker and weaker the further east you go. By the time you get to Kansas it is like iced tea. The iced tea, as a matter of fact, does the same thing so by the time you are in Kansas you are putting drops of it on a white plate just to make sure it has any color at all. The water is ok though, tastes sort of like weak tea.
I wonder what people from the midwest think when they come to California and order a cup of coffee? They probably think it is runny gravy. "It's the derndest thing out here Loretty, you order a cup o' coffee and they surve ya some watered down Noon gravy...and not a biscuit swimmin' in it anywheres!"
hmmm, what else? Oh the Morbidity & Mortality report from Missouri:
Armadillos: alive-0 dead-18
Things I am totally sick of: traffic, grease, humidity, the smell of dead things festering in the hot sun
Things I am beginning to like: biscuits!
I haven't gone so far as to order the gravy but I think I'm getting close. Actually, we were camped out in this city park and had breakfast the next morning at this gas station/convenience store/pizza and biscuits place that all the cowboys get early breakfast at on their way to rustling cattle, and I ordered some biscuits but said "no gravy please" and the whole place just went silent for like a full min. They all looked over sort of surreptitiously, like I was grotesquely deformed and they didn't want to be impolite but they just had to see. I just shrugged and sort of whispered that is clogs up my colostomy bag. They ended up being super sweet and funny guys..but not one had seen Brokeback Mountain...which I thought was kind of a shame.
More later...getting the hairy eyeball from Matt, who wants to get going.