The days are melting away like so much Argentine helado

Everything, my bookings, my finances, my mental state, is on target and on a steady course. I’m two weeks from resigning, and this will undoubtedly be a watershed moment. Yet another burden will be released and my self assurance will ratchet that much more skyward. I bought my third backpack for the occassion. I needed more space to stuff rain gear, cookware, a trowel, my sleeping bag. I strapped on my tent and I’m stuffing long underwear and fleece into any space I can find. I’m discovering new bits of information which are nudging my plans, such as they are, this way or that. Iguazu has been reduced to a trickle. I’m still going, of course, but my expectations are adjusted accordingly. Bariloche is a South American mountain bike paradise, so I’ll have to cram a jersey and some shorts into my pack. Single track, chocolate, and mountains will make it difficult to leave the Lake District after a week. But there is plenty to draw me out of my stupor such as calving glaciers, diving whale and waddling penguins, not to mention Chile, and the Torres del Paine circuit.

My books are boxed. My car battery is dead. I need to make a stop at the drug store for all those miscellaneous things that drug stores are good suppliers of. For all my life, I have used duct tape fewer times than I watched American Idol (twice out of morbid curiosity and mind numbing boredom), but its recommended universally, so how can I buck that? I’ll pick up a bottle of Dr Bronner’s soap to clean my body, my hair, my dishes, to lather into shaving cream…I don’t think it works as laundry detergent but I’ll read the sermon on the side of the bottle more thoroughly to make sure. Within a week I need to start tranferring what’s left of my stuff into storage. Very soon I’ll eat my very last piece of cake at work and ride my bike up the mesa without a second glance. The friends I made there, though, I’ll keep for as long as I can. Written 8/19/06