Day 12: Albuquerque, NM + REFLECTION

It's sometimes strange how so much can happen in such little time, 13 days ago I sat at the long table of a Johnny Corino's with Justin, Kyle, Alyson (Nathan was home at the time) along with some of our best friends (call it our last supper if you will) it was the night before our kickoff and we sat there eating, joking, laughing. We tried being serious at first and asking questions about our impending trip but we had few answers as none of us knew what to expect the next day, and no one was there to tell us, so why not laugh, ignorance is bliss right? Without realizing it though we left that restaurant with many of the same unanswered questions that we would be asking each other everyday for the next two weeks (and most likely for the rest of our little trip.) Questions like: Where to go? Where to eat? Where to sleep? And how well we would get each one. Now 13 days later we sit on the answers to those day-by-day questions of yesterday and today, here at our biggest stop yet Albuquerque, New Mexico. A city of about 500,000, where we now are staying with some of Nathan's extended family, we were treated to a movie (Indiana Jones of course) and dinner by some of Justin's family tonight, and we hope to spend time with them tomorrow. It was a relaxing break for us on this relatively arduous 90 mile ride through what is beginning to be the start of the Rocky Mountains. It's been pretty comfortable so far but if rumors are true things are about to get a little harder. We have a rest day tomorrow but the day after that we are back on the road asking the days questions yet again and hopefully getting the answers just as we need them. Its seemingly just another of life's microcosm's, to live day by day, hour by hour, mile by mile not knowing what lies beyond the next bend until you start turning.

-Andi Isao Nakasone