Gearing Up

I'm in the process of gathering all my things and making last minute plans. I've still got a few weeks to go, but I'd feel more settled if I had all my affairs and all my equipment prepared ahead of time. I met with a cyclist from Berkeley who, with his wife, just traveled through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam by bike and who was tremendously helpful in helping me know a little bit more of what to expect. Hearing his travel experience and seeing some of his trip photos really fired me up for the trip and I'm thankful that he shared some of his favorite stretches of road. He, like various other cyclists I've spoken with, directed me to Laos. He said, thanks to China, there are many new paved roads and yet the Lao people are too poor to have wide spread automobile ownership so the roads are mostly empty. Beautiful scenery to boot!

Anticipation is building a bit, but I still have some time to go and many things left to do here at home, so I'm not getting too overexcited. There's still quite a bit of planning to do.