Ahhhhh. What a week. What a week? What am I doing? Biking in the winter? West? On a racing road bike? Sounds Polish. Yeah, well that's the plan, headed south for the fall and should make it to Florida by winter, after which we'll be headed west to California.

The farm season ended a few weeks ago, and for those of you who don't know, I've decided to bike with my friend Shira to California this fall, winter and spring. We've been on the road for a week and haven't made it too far. We have sorted out a lot of gear that we don't need and have purchased a lot of gear we should have gotten months ago. It was a practice week.

I now sit in Chevy Chase, MD, next to Washington, DC. Along the way we have stayed with our good friend Claire and family in ChesCo, Ed in Street, MD and the Hirsches in Chevy Chase. At each stop we've been pampered. That all ends tomorrow as we cross the frontier into Virginia because we no longer have any contacts until Florida.