Well snowboard season came and went and I am quite proud to say no broken hip this year. Steamboat is definately all it is hyped up to be even with a below average snowfall year. I think it was a good idea to leave town before all the bar owners collectively asked me to leave town.  Individually most of them had asked me to leave, well leave their establishments at least. So like that my profesional snowboard career comes to a halt and now time to get on being a world traveler. Most of my preparations are complete, the list that was once long with things to do is now down to just two or three items. I know it is amazing with my busy schedule and all, I dont know how I fit so much in between 10 am when I wake up and nap time at 2:30. I think I may have to evaluate the effectiveness of naps on this trip, it may take allot longer if I incorporate the daily nap into this trip. I spent a couple days getting all my gear (panniers,crashbars, lights etc..) and boy does the bike look good. Even if I didnt do this trip boy do I look the part driving around. So the little lady(the BMW) decided she we wanted to spend some time at the dealership so she blew her starter motor. I think she is testing me, little does she know I promptly ordered a Haynes troubleshooting manual. You gotta get up pretty early in the moring to get the drop on me, well ok just before 10 am. So I dropped her off to Abbot (service manager at SF BMW) and he promised this was a rare occurance and would have her good as new in a couple days. So in the meantime I decided I would tackle the task of getting my Honda back in working order after sitting in a mud floor garage all winter. Well some fouled plugs and a couple gallons of bad gas and some swearing and dumping gas on myself and Scotty having a good laugh at my expense with some choice comments about being stranded in Africa working on a BMW I finally got her running. Dont tell the BMW this but I think I am really going to miss that bike when I am gone. Well with 9 days till departure I am starting to get that twinge of excitement in my stomach. It is that same yearning for adventure I have come to love in life, I have had this feeling a couple times before. The first time was when I was getting ready to move to California to go to college the second was when I took the job in Indonesia and the third is when I packed up my stuff a year ago to move to Austin and then to Colorado. So now I am feeling it once again.