My First Blog!

This, as the title suggests, is my first attempt at a Blog. I am one of the 8 traveling across country with Ramblin' Rose who has a blog on here at http://sheilaclendaniel.blogspot.com/ . Kathy, my wife of over 38 years, will be on back with me. She has been riding with me as long as I have been riding. I hope to use this blog as a journal of our trip. We won't be pulling our trailer on this trip so I am not sure if I will have room on the bike for my laptop. If not this will be a short blog. I have named this blog "The Last Big Ride?" as I don't know if I will ever be able to do another cross country trip or not. Hopefully this one won't be the last thus the question mark but who knows what the future holds. This is my 2nd cross country trip with my first being in June of 2000 with 14 people on 7 bikes and a pickup. We took a more northern route than we are taking on this trip. So far the reality of this trip hasn't hit me yet. I was laid off my job of more than 33 years in February of this year. I don't have a job yet so I never expected to be doing this. Two things motivated me to make this trip though. First is that given the current situation I may never get another chance to do this again. Second is something Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain said “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Well that is what I intend to do. I may have some short term regrets but as the quotation says 20 years from now (probably a whole lot less) those regrets will be forgotton but I will remember until the day I die this trip. That's it for my first blog. I'll write more as we get closer to the departure date. If I calculate right that should be in 29 days.