Fall is here

It has been very odd to come home and realize that fall is truly here. When I left it was summer ... now it's not. I'm ready for summer to be over, but I'm not ready for winter! I spent so little time on my bike since the Sugoi Dirt Series Clinic, getting ready for Peru. Now all I want to do is ride! Got to get as much in as possible before the snow starts to fall. That and swimming, have to get back into a regular schedule for that too.

My last several days have been filled with laundry and organizing things at work. Sheesh, this is why I don't go away! You have to work twice as hard both before you go and after you return! :) No worries, I'm still so happy I went. And obviously I need to learn to take more time off. I took an entire month and I still have 320 hours of time management! Oops. I'll get better at it though. Today is my first story time since....August 11. Yikes. Hope the kids remember me. As for my laundry, I decided that I have to wash everything. And I mean everything! my backpacks, the covers for my sleeping bag and sleeping pad, my hiking boots, the bags for my camp towels ... everything! I have no idea where some nasty Peruvian bugs may be hiding. So everything gets washed.

It's a good thing I took my crappy big suitcase to Peru! I got a good replacement suitcase for one that was wrecked last year, but I didn't take that one. I took the one that I bought in Belize last january. See, 'cause I spent so much more time there than anticipated...I accumulated more crap than my small carry-on could handle. So I went to the local department store and bought a cheap suitcase and just put my whole carry-on inside. That's the one I took. Good thing! It was fine on the way there and the whole time there, but on the way back ... what on earth did they do to the poor thing?!!?! I'm lucky that the glass liquor bottles inside didn't break. So let's see, what's wrong with it? Well, 1/2 of the lock was sheared off, the top of two zippers were also sheared off, the belt that wraps wround the middle is gone, one metal logos was ripped off ... and it's just really dirty! I think it's probably best to just not know what happens behind the scenes at airports.

I cannot wait until Loki can go outside again! She's driving me nuts. She really wants to go out ... but she doesn't really. She's wandering around screaming to go out, but when the door is open she doesn't come anywhere near it. I let her out on the back porch and she really likes that. But then she tries to jump over the fence to the neighbour's porch. Silly kitty. Every time I leave the house though, both cats glare at me like I'm not coming back! :)

Over the next week or so I'm going to try and lay out our trip in more detail with some pics. But if you just want to see pics, not text look at my Peru Flickr gallery.