Today, San Francisco...Tomorrow, South America

Our gear is boxed up and ready to go. In less than twelve hours we'll leave for the airport. Our time in San Francisco has been everything we needed, far more than what we wanted. Sometimes it's overwhelming generosity that challenges us and our priorities. It's difficult, at times, to accept that one is in such a place of need...
I'm not going to ramble any more here and now :)

So, what have I done? I've uploaded almost 150 photos for your enjoyment, and tried to tell a bit of our story through the captions. Please enjoy them!

Argentina Pictures

San Francisco!

We Made It!

That's right, folks, on Friday, October 26th, around 5pm we rolled onto the Golden Gate bridge and into San Francisco, ending the first leg of our adventure. There are many tales to be told, including how we were offered and accepted being driven for approximately 200 miles of the journey, and hopefully that will follow soon. As for now, we're looking forward to spending a couple of days off our bicycles, and exploring this city!

Fortuna, CA, an Appropriate Name

We've camped in Fortuna for the night, on Ken's lawn. We enjoyed many stories and a few beers with this seasoned bicycle tourer. Good weather has us making great progress, and our hopes of being able to ride all the way to SF are alive again. I took my stitches out this evening (a mostly painless process, besides the one stitch that went through a nerve), and we made a most ghetto phad-thai out of angle-hair pasta, ginger root, and peanut butter (with whatever spices we could scrounge from the mostly bare cupboards). Again, we are ridiculously well cared for.

We've gotten to delve into a lot more relational difficulty the last few days, and at this moment, I can look back on it and say that it's been good. Pretty fast turn-around, and I'm grateful for it.

Note from Fer-
Sleep is glorious, food is magnificient, and it's time for bed.

Here are a few pics:

Riding along glorious coast




Time to frolick at the beach


Making our way into California, better late than never.

Thank you so much, to you who are praying for us, and have encouraged us to do this. We are very much running on reserves of encouragement at times.

Love!
-Team Bike

Lions and Spaghetti

We never expected to encounter so many lions in Oregon. The most ferocious of them, Jean, has whisked us away to her lair and is holding and slowly roasting us around her wood-burning stove. Her friend, Loretta, made some biker soup. We managed to convince her that it would still taste wonderfully if she left the biker out, and it did.
All this has happened because we followed our stomachs past a sign advertising a spaghetti feed. Well...I suppose a causal link would actually be quite difficult to draw. Ridiculous trust and generosity are probably closer to the core of things, and an astoundingly generous God even closer yet.

We do well. We are wonderfully cared for. While many of you probably wouldn't imagine that two Emergency Room visits for two different members of our team would be on the schedule for a team that's being wonderfully cared for, they have been. I was told it's horribly immature to mention ER visits with no explanation. Be that as it may, rest assured that mothers have been fully informed in both occurrences.

Sometime soon we shall update with photos and explanations galore. Soon being before the New Year.
Please continue to pray for us. We do not want to take this time for granted.

Thank you for reading!



P.S. If you want more significant updates, pray that the Oregon coast is hit with a wave of broadband.

Newport, OR: The Unexpected

We have encountered the unexpected many times during our first week of travel. An extra day to re-pack, a visit to the ER, closed yet welcoming campgrounds, and, quite simply, the incredible difficulty of biking with 50lbs-70lbs of extra gear.
I must say, though, that by the grace and provision of God, we've handled these unexpecteds exceptionally well. Never, however, did it cross any of our minds that we'd have to cope with a hot-tub. The warmth, the jets, the relaxation.
As I'm sure you can imagine, it's quite an ordeal.
Pity that I am without the transfer cable for my camera, for it would be great fun to share some pictures with you all, alas, it is not to be.
Goodnight, I doubt many of you will sleep as well as I shall this night, and I doubt any of you were as wet as I was this morning.
-William

Seaside, OR in Cindy's Mother's House

We're safely in Seaside, moving along at a much slower pace than expected, but with only one hospital visit so far!
We have been amazingly provided for thus far, much support of friends and loved ones is helping us ease into this whole bicycle traveling.
We are, right now, warm, well fed, and CLEAN! It's really amazing, friends and family have been generous beyond imagining. Thank you all!

P.S. When I get some time and a good internet connection, I plan on putting up a "Thank You" section of the website for thanking the amazing and generous people that we know, and those we encounter along the way.

Bye, Moms

During our fantastic, amazing, and divinely orchestrated going-away party (in which our dear friend Kelsey rolled out 19 pizza crusts, and all but two pieces were consumed), we took a moment to get the traveling men and their mothers together for a heart wrenching, tear jerking, group photo of wailing.
Ok, so they look happy. Happy to see their strange looking sons and, perhaps, ready for us to go? Well, if nothing else, I do believe they're ready for a release of all the anticipation and ready for us to actually hit the road.
And so are we!
Thank you to all you who made the going away party a smashing success, particularly Chris, Susannah, and Kelsey. Thank you for throwing such a wonderful send-off party for us!

Resolution!

Yes, we have a plan. We shall depart as scheduled, biking to SF, fly to Santiago, and bike over the Andes. We will go to either Mendoza, or San Juan, and from one of those places, Fernando will fly back in mid-November. Trevor and I, now burdened with an extra bicycle and more gear, will probably bus to Tucuman (where Fernando's family lives). What will we do in Tucuman besides intensive Spanish study? That's a good question. Fernando Ulyses Isley will take the LSAT on Dec. 1, and return to Tucuman around the 15th of December. From there, we will resume our scheduled travels, busing to Ushuaia after New Years, and begin five months of northerly riding.
Praise the Lord!

Edit- Fernando may decide not to take the LSAT Dec. 1. He may decide to wait until after we return. That decision remains to be finalized.

But...we leave! We leave!
Give us a kiss, love.

10-1-07

Our scheduled departure date, 10-10-07 has made it on to the 10-day forecast. They say it will be cloudy with a 20% chance of rain. The record, yes, record high for that day is 73 degrees.
Whether or not we will actually leave on that date, is still not certain.
It seems slightly more likely that we shall leave as planned than push the trip back, but we shall not know until tomorrow. Fernando has decided to go with the recommendation of his mentors, and they, after speaking with his parents, are going to discuss it and give a recommendation tomorrow.
As for us, this is not an easy time. It's probably most difficult for Fernando right now, but we're still smiling.