So long bike trip, hello Portland!

Well, we're not on the road anymore. Actually, we stopped about two weeks ago. When we were in LA, we took a hard look at our finances and realized we would have to end the trip early if we wanted to arrive in Portland with any money leftover. We decided we'd take two more weeks, bike up to San Francisco, and rent a car to go up the rest of the way.

But, about 50 miles south of Santa Barbara, I realized that I was done. I think it was the Californian desert that did me in. Well, and also I realized that I was thinking more about all the things I'd need to do to get resettled in Portland than I was thinking about the bike trip. At any rate, I wasn't enjoying myself any more. Thankfully, Dave was very understanding and agreed to stop whenever I wanted.

That's when something amazing happened. When we were in LA, we started sending emails to people about housing in Portland. I told Dave that I wanted to quit over lunch a couple days after leaving LA. We decided to stop at a library on the way to the next town to look up car rental info. When we checked our email, we had a reply from one of the people we'd written to about an apartment. It was my old college roommate, who happened to be living in Portland and looking for people to rent the basement apartment in the house she's living in. Out of all the listings that we'd read, hers was one of the few we actually responded to. So that's where we're living now. It turned out to be a huge space with lots of windows and pretty views. It was so nice to have a place to come to when we drove into town. So now we're looking for jobs. I've applied to six laboratory jobs, as well as countless retail and food service positions. Portland is beautiful. I'm so excited about living here. It's very bike friendly. Anyway, I'm going to do one more post of pictures, then I guess it's goodbye Milkweed.

Thank you to everyone who helped us out along the way. Whether inviting us into your home for a night or for nine long months (Nate and Erika, I'm looking at you), we couldn't have done it without you. This was an amazing adventure. I'm so grateful that I was able to do it. Thanks for reading the blog and giving us support and encouragement. I enjoyed reading everyone's comments. Maybe we'll get this thing up and running again in the future when we head out for Bike Trip Round Two: Return to the West Coast.