Assembly

• We arrived last night at the Houston airport. It was a smooth flight, although preparing my bike for it, and packing everything up (especially flying with Spirit airlines, notorious for frugality and hidden fees) I was very nervous. Not to mention how nervous I am about the bike journey itself! There is a lot that can go wrong -- my family is quite terrified! --, and I definitely wish I knew more people along the way. Especially people who might host us for a night -- both Laurel and I are going to have to be ridiculously tight on money, and the route unfortunately has way fewer campsites than I had hoped. I was also nervous for my bike, flying in a cardboard box and in the care of the airline. After landing, I made my way to the baggae claim and shortly thereafter my bike in its big cardboard box clunked heavily down the carousel with a handful of bags on top of it! Oh goodness. I think it caused the carousel to jam, though, because no more luggage came after that!! Well, let's hope it was just a coincidence. I cringed to see it, sure that the tires would be bent or there would be other damage. The box had taken some squishing en route. Texted Laurel, and she had also just landed. We both got in about 11:15PM. Luckily to the same terminal! Before I knew it, there was Laurel! And then her bike showed up as well. I had made sure to find a motel for the night with an airport shuttle and after calling it, and dragging our bike boxes through the airport, we found it. Quite embarrassing to load up our big boxes! I felt bad for the driver, and tried to help load it myself. I can carry it all well enough, so it is not too heavy just bulky. We reached the motel, then learned we were on the second floor with only stairs so lugged the bikes upstairs. Then we apprehensively started assembling our bikes, sure that they would be destroyed. So far so good! And I'm impressed to have been able to put everything back together smoothly. I am taking advantage of the motel wifi to update you all. Today we will hopefully bike to Lake Livingston state park. Our tentative route through Texas is Lake Livingston, Lufkin, rusk, Tyler, Cooper Lake, and the Caddo National grasslands before crossing into Oklahoma. So keep an eye out for us!