Timing and Yardwork and Weight

The last few days can be characterized by being really cold, working on the motorcycle timing and yardwork for "the legendary" Rex Bell (he is legendary, I put that in quotes more to make fun of the way Ben refers to him).

We met up again with Tim from Adventure Riders and he helped us out by getting us an inductive timing light from his friend, who also drove Ben to the hardware store while the motorcycle's timing stuff sat in pieces. I spent the whole day being really cold, sick and miserable because we'd planned to keep warm by running around and doing landscaping for Rex or being inside and cleaning his house. Instead I pouted through most of the day, drew a picture of the motorcycle:

and read the book Ben bought me for Christmas, The Diary of Frida Kahlo. I love Frida Kahlo and if I said that anything less than 5% of this trip is about going to Mexico to see her childhood home and her home with Diego Rivera, I would be lying. I am still in little knots of joy about having seen the Frida Kahlo exhibit in San Francisco while we were there and kicking myself for not going to the Georgia O'Keefe museum in Santa Fe.

The day before, we hacked through the trees behind Rex's fence and pulled out all the bamboo, weeds and weird miscellany that had built up and bent over the chain link fence. Some of the weird things we found included a stuffed fish toy, a Bible half-eaten by bugs, and a lawn chair. Even more curious was that a lot of the other things we found were almost targeted at us: heavy duty thread, maps of the area, a collapsible water bladder, a sponge that Ben wants to use on the hydrogen booster, amongst other things. Whomever this stuff belonged to, this person was definitely an avid adventurer, or at least a recreational fisher (Or maybe our DOPPLEGANGER!!).

Today is being spent "Coming to Jesus" about our overall weight. If you aren't familiar with the colloquialism, it loosely means a not-so-happy ultimatum, repentance for sins, or a life changing experience. Ben is on the war-path and I am debating as to whether I should hide the band-aids from Ben. He has been threatening to toss all of them out (except for the Hello Kitty band-aids, which are a prized possession) to lose weight on the motorcycle. Periodically, he says he'll send his violin home to lose a few pounds, but then the look in his eyes when he says this would soften even a Scrooge and I need to then vehemently defend carrying the violin on the motorcycle--otherwise he might cry himself to sleep or lose a small part of his soul.

So I've been doing a little packing today to save the band-aids and the like, trying in an anorexic-style to make all of my stuff appear as small as possible. Ben tends to be meticulous about our packing, which I think allows us to get away with having all this extra junk, because it is condensed so tight and heavy. This has also been a problem because to maintain this balance, he needs to strap everything down super-tight, wearing out straps and smushing bananas in the process. Most of the time I can't even pull the straps tight enough to fulfill Ben's goals and he has to come around a second time to make sure nothing is going to fall off. My methodology follows that if I pack it neatly, but not excessively so, the size and the weight will be at an optimum point where it isn't too heavy and it isn't too full. I also do not like to eat smushed bananas, and tend to go lighter when strapping stuff to the bike.

We'll see what happens. I have been sick a lot lately and have been hoarding medicine like a hypochondriac-in-training. I might hide some of this stuff in my purse until we get on the road again and I can slip it back into its appropriate bag.

-Jennifer