Dog Days of ...winter?

"...what makes the experience thrilling is the juxtaposition of the present and the past, Medford dreamed in Mandalay."-- Paul Theroux

I think that sentence is awesome. Mr. Theroux is a travel writer from Medford, MA who has been an expat most of his life. I love his work because he strikes so many common threads of my travel logic. Like he says in this passage, one of the things I find so interesting in my travels is how much more appealing home gets with every passing kilometer. I'll be lounging around on a tropical island in Thailand yet all I can dream about is a frosty night mountain bike ride followed up with some delicious IP3s pizza and a pitcher of Yuengling. The comforting thing is knowing that in all likelyhood IP3s, yuengling and Chapel Hill High trails will all still be there when I return but I may never get the opportunity to waste a day away swimming and lounging on Ko Chang again.

To bring you up to speed, Anders parted ways from Dan and I last Sunday. He headed on to Ko Tao to do his diving certification while we headed to Ko Chang for some island solitude. After a restful day out there Dan and I returned to the mainland and covered some ground to arrive up here in Hua Hin. Dan broke a spoke yesterday (after 1 week...I'm a bit skeptical his bike will make it through 3 more countries) so he was forced to take the bus here to Hua Hin, the closest city with a REAL bike shop. I would have preferred to skip Hua Hin, especially since their claims of having a microbrewery were all lies, but fate dictated otherwise. We will probably be moving on tomorrow at a slow enough pace to allow Anders to catch up. Dan has been a real trooper on the distances and surprised me last Wednesday with a 120km ride. Now we just have to get him to the level of doing 100km day in and day out. All in good time.
Next up on the agenda is Kanchanaburi (the Bridge over the River Kwai) and then on to Ayuttahaya for some temple viewing. We hope to be up in Chang Mai around the 8th or 9th of March so Dan can do a visa run to Burma and get 15 more days. Then its on to Laos!
Or so I hope. I think I can stretch the budget and stay in Asia until mid-April or beginning of May but then getting across the US should be a real interesting episode!
I feel like I am supposed to keep more vivid descriptions on the blog, mainly for my own sake and future reference. Something tells me that you guys don't really care about how excruciating riding on the brink of heat stroke is for 6 hours a day. Something also tells me that I won't forget that, whether I write it down or not. This is the problem I encounter with my writing...both here and in my personal journal. I have no mechanism for sorting the material. I can't tell the rubbish from the interesting tidbits (mainly because most of it seems to become rather mundane if I do it enough!). Perhaps you, my faithful readers, can tell me what you'd like to hear about. What questions do you have? What kind of stories would you like me to make up...err....recount? Please give me some direction here. Once again I find myself drifting aimlessly...
Yours in befuddlement, Bobo