Why

 My next adventure starts this week: biking the Southern Tier/Adventure Cycling route, San Diego to St Augustine, over the next 2 months. I'll be doing it in an Adventure Cycling group, "van-supported", meaning they truck the stuff and you just ride, mostly camping and cooking as a group (10 riders, 2 leaders). I had decided that I needed to do a southwest trip and that this fall was the time to do it. I signed up for the wait list last February, optimistic about vaccines, but as time wore on I started to have doubts about doing it in a group. So I bought the maps, thinking I might just do it on my own, maybe San Diego to New Orleans (for my birthday). After looking at the maps I had even more doubts, long stretches through Covid land, who knows what stores might be open in the desert. Then in August I got the call to join in with 3 days to decide. After already talking myself out of doing it twice, I passed. But then they exhausted the wait list and put out an open call. By then I was starting to think why not, feeling I needed to do something after the 2020 experience. So I'm in, low expectations, hope at least a few of the other old geezers are fun (average age before I joined was 66), and just ready for some different scenery. Think of it as joining a wagon train, sharing the cooking and bonding over staying together for safety (suitably vaxed and masked), traveling through potentially hostile territory. This will be my fifth cross country, and my first ever in a group (twice I rode with one other person). But a big influence was that this year is the fiftieth anniversary of my first bike tour, fall 1971 after college, riding a borrowed three speed from Hartford to Syracuse, through the Catskills. Learning as I went, no tent just a poncho, having a remarkably fun time doing it, and obviously still trying to do more of the same over the years. That's my story...