Leaving Grand Junction- pastries and spark plugs

6/24

Back in Fredericksburg I was given the novel, The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy. I was warned that it might be a bit of a frightening book if I read it in the backcountry. I hadn't taken the time to crack it open until Denver and now I was having a difficult time putting it down. Because we would soon be out in the wilderness in a few days, I decided to set out to finish it before entering Utah.

The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a father and son walk through a burned and ravaged land supporting one another with love as they try to survive their trek down the road trying to reach the coast. McCarthy, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is an excellent author and his stark, gritty prose provides an intriguing story. I would highly recommend it!

The novel was especially interesting given my and Alex's own trek through America. While our surroundings don't seem as grim and no one has yet tried to kill us (that I am aware of) there are common feelings of survival that we share with the main characters in the story. In the novel the father and son carry all of their belongings in a cart that they must maintain and fill with the necessary items for survival as they find them.

Since leaving Breckenridge, Alex had noticed some trouble with his bike. It misfired a few times while riding and seemed to lose power several times throughout the trip to Grand Junction. After checking several options, our best guess was that the spark plugs were fouling up, and we decided to pull them. Fortunately, we had an extra set of plugs and in the coolness of the early morning we set out the tools and got to work. We have to take care of our carts as they are vital to our survival.



Last night, one of the visitors who had been on the Kenya trip brought Alex and I two full bags of pastries that were a day old from the Starbucks where she worked. This was a huge unexpected gift, and we carefully packed them into our "carts." They would (or should have... you'll see) provide us with free nourishment for the next few days.