The lead up

I'd better start this part and hope that I can catch up. If I don't start it now, things will get fuzzier and fuzzier, and I'm here to regurgitate the entire trip detail by detail.

The night before leaving (11/15), I had Evan and Henry over. You know, to let them know that I loved them and all that mushy stuff. They had to leave kind of early because it was a school night. After they left I had to get laundry going. It wasn't oppressive, but the weekend before was the Ft. Flagler trip weekend, so I didn't have time to do it then. The plan is to stay up all night anyway, hoping that it will help with the jetlag.

Part of the plan was to get a ride in while in Belgium. Rent bikes and then ride the 25 miles from Gent to Oudenaarde on a path and then back. The big question is how do you pack for that? I have enough stuff for a ride in Seattle and the weather isn't different at all, but lugging it all across the Atlantic for one ride? Well, I managed to get my regular clothes in a big bag, so I had a bag that I could fill with bike clothing. The shoes were the key item, since they are hard to fake. I decided that I could skip a helmet. I've managed thousands of rides with only one brain injury, so I don't feel like I'm risking death riding on a riverside trail without a helmet. Besides, it's europe, right? Does anyone wear helmets here? I'll find out.

During laundry, I threw songs together. Wes said that David A. is culturally starved in Belgium, so I wanted to bring him lots of stuff. A few weeks ago, I replaced a stolen iPod with a new 80GB one. I could fit my entire collection on it. Cool, yes? Well, it would be. But Apple is the Nazi party of the electronics world. iPods are wonderful. iTunes was designed in the dungeons of hell. I shouldn't go into a rant here, but my question is - why can't you just use an iPod like a nifty portable hard drive that also happens to play music? You could move files on, off, all over. But you can't. Yeah, there are ways to do it. I have foo_pod, but it should be fully featured and developed by now. It turns out that it was just a project that once it was finished, the creator dropped the ball, and no one else bothered to pick it up. Apple seems to have busted that little game up anyway. Their constant iTunes updates probably have turned it into an arms race that some college coder just won't win. I got my brick from work and moved everything I thought he might ever like onto it. It still took some time and I don't know how much is on there. I had to bring the power cord and all that other stuff with me too.

So I finish packing at around 4:30 am, shower up and head to the airport for my 6:45 flight to New York. The rest of Seattle and the flight was uneventful.