albuquerque, nm

the bike ride to damascus from maury's ended up being 108 miles, which was awesome, especially considering i didn't have any weight (well, nearly) on the bike. maury carted all my stuff to trail days in the jeep. i thought initially that west virginia won, what with the rail trails and pretty scenery, but i've since determined that my favorite days are based on weather and not really anything else. virginia was my favorite biking. it is such beautiful country, and so nostalgic. and the 70 degree, sunny days don't hurt, either.

trail days came and went, and sunday morning at 8am maury and i left damascus in her jeep to make the long trek out to phoenix. we pulled into albuquerque this afternoon around 5ish (mountain time) after two LOOOOONG days on the road (yesterday we drove for a combined total of 16 hrs! to oklahoma city). with few exceptions (california at the age of 3, san francisco for a day with the parents back in highschool, and hawaii for 5 days) this is by far the farthest west i've ever been in this country, and most certainly the first time i've really felt like i got to experience it at all.

i went for a walk with aaron and the dogs in the mesa, surrounded, of course, by enormous death clouds of doom. aaron didn't know about my acquired lightning phobia, so we had a conversation that went like this:

"are we going to be murdered by lightning?" asks jess
"hopefully" replies aaron