Published!!

Some time ago Chris sent an article about his bike trip to Santa Fe to Bike Magazine in the UK. The trip happened last October and the article was soon forgotten and nothing was heard from the mag. Imagine our surprise when we bought a copy of the May edition of Bike yesterday in San Diego and while flicking through the articles Chris thought that a certain photo looked rather like a picture he had of his trip. On closer inspection the bike in the the picture even had a Union Jack sticker on the front just like Donkey has.....wait a goddam cotton-picking minute here.... Yes! He's famous. A whole page glossy full-page spread of his trip - with his edited down words and 4 fabulous photos. I'm so proud. This is so COOL! Bike is like the 'leading' bike mag in the UK and this is just so darn excellent!

And this comes just ONE day after Pat phoned us to say she'd be browsing through Chris's Mensa Magazine that arrives at her house each month back in the UK when a rather dashing photo of her son caught her eye. It accompanied an article he'd written about Life Coaching and again it was sent off quite a while ago and although the editor had expressed an interest in using the article he hadn't confirmed when it would be featured.

SO 2 BRILLIANT SURPRISES in 2 days!

(And incidentally this comes just 2 days after I finally got the 'Scrapbook magazine' from the UK in which I had a couple of scrapbook pages published. Although the mags were from Dec & Jan and I'd seen scanned copies of the pages I finally got the original mags brought out from the UK only this week!)

Back in the USA!!

Well they had to let us back in didn't they? - after all we're good for the economy!! Since being back we've been busy choring away and shopping and you probably don't need a day-by-day detail on all that!

We've been into San Diego a couple of times. Yesteday we toured the USS Midway down on the waterfront. It's a HUGE aircraft carrier (1001 feet long) that was the longest serving aircraft carrier in the US fleet. It served in the 1st Gulf War and was de-commisioned in '92. Had a great audio tour round the thing and it was even more interesting than I expected (we've done a few of these old military boat things and to be honest I had a bit of a 'seen-one-seen-em-all' opinion but this was good) - we were on board for 3 hours if that's any kind of testimony!

Also strolled around the historic Gaslamp district and had our first good Indian curry in quite a while. In a 1 block area we saw about 5 curry houses so we figured it might be a good bet - and it paid off! We actually had a buffet so all the old favourites, great naan bread, tikka masala etc. Only thing is the restaurant was WAY too stylish! Not like the curry houses in the UK. No moving pictures on the wall, no dodgey music, no stained table-cloths and no poppodoms! But really all that aside it was money well spent!

2 weeks have passed...

And after a rigorous regime of regular exfoliation and expensive body lotions the leathery-ness of my backside is beginning to soften!! I'm feeling like a new woman and Chris says he is too....!!

Haven't done all that much....We did get back to Baja in time to celebrate Chris's birthday with friends at the RV park and generally hung out there for a week. Chris get sick with migraine for a few days so I played Nurse Mills rather well actually even if I do say so myself!!

Baja isn't quite the same second time around. With one road extending the length of the peninsula there's no real options for alternative routes and we travelled slowly on the way down seeing everything there was to see so there's not really anything 'left' to do this time. The season here has quietened down dramatically - most campgrounds we've stayed in on the way north have been empty apart from us! So we stopped at Playa Santispac again (The place we hung out for Xmas) We had no trouble re-establishing ourselves at exactly the same palapa, only this time we had a daddy-O Guatemalan double hammock to hang up - OH YES!! And weren't we just the snooziest-in-the-sun!!

Now we're just 150 miles from the border 'waiting' till Monday to cross over. Fingers crossed...