Baja sucks!

Not!  How have I gone my whole life so far and just now getting here?

A week into the trip and stunned by the beauty and kindness of this little peninsula.

A bigger post will come later, but for now I just leave you with a few photos while I sip this tequila. 

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The time has come ...

It is with mixed emotions that I start my year long journey to the bottom of the Americas.

EXCITED to experience new people, cultures, nature, and whatever comes my way.

SAD to be leaving family and friends.  I will see some of you on the road and already looking forward to that.  A year will go quickly.  See you when I get back!

RELIEVED that the planning, packing, organizing, and overall process of pulling out of the driveway is done.  I can just get going now!  I suspect I packed many things I won't need and likely forgot 1 or 2 that I may wish I had.

So, time to get this show on the road and see what I see!

To gun or not to gun?

I'm amazed the number of times I've been asked if I'm bringing a gun on the trip.  I can't think of a quicker way to land my butt in jail somewhere than to bring a gun.  I will be crossing borders into and out of ~18 countries and I expect to have the van searched on some percentage of those.

The the answer is NO.  These will stay locked up at home.

Packing and organizing continues.  I think I'm going to make the 8th!

A week from departure.

I'm not one to get overwhelmed with packing, but this is proving to be a different animal.  After months of planning and gathering stuff actual organizing and packing into the van has proven challenging.  In short, I have too much crap!

First up - tools, recovery, and maintenance items.  Assess what I have, very inefficiently pack it in the van "basement" and one of the back boxes, sleep on it, unpack it all, thin the herd, and repack.  Will probably go through one more iteration of that until I get it acceptable.

Finished up the side mount for the SUP.  This will only be for when I'm hopping from beach to beach.  Otherwise it will be on the roof.

Sort of finished the screen to keep the bugs (well, most of them) out on those hot nights.  I'll fine tune once I actually use it.  Thanks to my sister-in-law for modifying the length of this otherwise house screen to fit the van.

Physically, my arm / shoulder are in pretty good shape.  Range of motion is nearly 100% and strength is building up.  I've resigned myself to leaving before the thumb wound closes.  It's making good progress and will probably be closed a week or two into the trip.  That will put me in the presence of warmer waters anyway!

Started figuring out clothes this afternoon.  That doesn't seem as difficult as the tools and maintenance items.

Tomorrow I get Mexican FFM (basically a Visa), arrange Mexican auto insurance, subscribe to Ripcord (search / rescue / extraction)(just in case), increase subscription plan for Garmin InReach, try to find more malaria pills (I'm way short on those for South America), and continue to organize and pack.

My initial travel partner Gordon just put in his last day at the office FOR EVER!  Welcome to retirement Gordon!

Getting closer ...

With about 8 weeks until departure, how am I doing on preparation?

Physically for me has been a challenge.  End of July I tore my bicep tendon off the bone at the elbow and did other shoulder damage.  Rehab has been a long road post-surgery, but I’m optimistic I’ll be at least 90% by departure date (shooting for 100%).  Just as I was starting to make good progress on my arm / shoulder rehab, I “re-shaped” my thumb on the table saw.  That is more painful that the tendon rupture.  I don’t recommend either though.  I’m looking at ~6-8 weeks on healing the thumb up unless I can get a skin graft soon which I’m told will cut the healing time by about half.

Putting my condition aside, I’ve been busy prepping the van as best I can, arranging vaccine shots, figuring out what cell service to use (Google Fi I think is winning out), buying lots of stuff (keeping the Amazon Prime delivery people busy), learning Spanish, and a million other little things.

I’m remaining optimistic that I’ll hit my planned departure date of January 7.  Stay tuned on that ….

Dipping my toe in the blog waters ....

Trying to figure out which blog platform to use for my trip south.  This is easy and free.  Since I'm not sure how much I'll be actually updating, perhaps this is easiest.

The van in Puerto Penasco a few years back.  It longs to be in Baja and much further south.