USA

Welcome Home USA! After our costly border crossing in Laredo, Texas (read about our last border crossing) we headed straight to a gas station for some high octane unleaded fuel that let us see 200 miles of Texas without stopping. At pump number 3, a computer screen greeted us: "Good morning, please enter your credit card here."

"Would you like a receipt for your transaction?" "Thank you and have a very nice day?"

We spoke with no one. There was a car at pump number 4, and a truck at number 2, and in fact every single pump was occupied, but nobody had to speak with anyone else. Hands slid cards into slots, slid pumps into tanks, and then re-entered vehicles and drove away. They had been treated well by the machines and even wished a "Good day". This was great customer service!

We were a little lonely our first couple of days driving in the USA. The red motorcycle no longer attracted stares at it had in Latin America. The roads are wider. People are further away from one another - perhaps they could not see us! Finally a girl in a convenience store in Texas asked me, "Where did you come from on that motorcycle?" "We came from the southern most tip of South America," I replied, "we crossed 18 countries as we head north, and now are on our way to California." "CALIFORNIA!" she squealed, "I can't believe you are going all the way to California!"

The small curvy lines that say "country road" on the U.S. highway map were equal or better in condition that the main interstate of any of the countries we crossed on our trip. And fortunately the speed limit was 75 mph (125 kmh), because riding slowly over extra wide well paved thoroughfares of Texas in 100° F (40°C) heat would have been a nightmare. We did not want to be pulled over by the inflexible highway patrol - they don't negotiate like the one's in Latin America, and the fines were a lot higher.

We had already pushed out our return date from June 4 to June 22 due to the delay in receiving the motorcycle in Chile and in trying to find transportation from Colombia to Panama. A 1000 mile stretch of Highway 10 separated us from our trip "entry point" - Gramma and Pa's house in Palm Desert, California. We braved the heat and deviated a couple of hundred miles off the boring Highway 10, and made a tour of Petrified National Forest, the Grand Canyon and Sedona! It is vacation time in the U.S., and with such well-paved roads it is definitely HARLEY season! Harley riders travel by the dozen, and since Arizona has a no-helmet law - they usually ride with their braids and ponytails flying in the breeze.

The Grand Canyon is immense. A person standing on the edge is a meaningless dot staring down at one colorful layer of rock after another that trace through over a billion years of the Earth's history. And 10 miles across, the same colors arranged in the same order plunge miles down the rippled edge that ends in the Colorado River below. We woke up at 5:30 am on the morning of the summer solstice (June 21) to watch the sunrise over the Grand Canyon, and managed to stay awake long enough to watch the sunset over the red rocks of Sedona!

WE MADE IT! Gramma and Pa's house is about 1 hour East of San Diego, and a day of relaxation and home cooked meals seem like an ideal way to conclude months of motorcycle travel. While we were waiting for the motorcycle to arrive in Santiago, Chile, over 4 months ago we could not have imagined any of these experiences and even less, the feeling of gratefulness to make it through 20000 miles of America.