[rod2625]

......HOW SWEET IT IS!!

We departed Dharmasala, India for Delhi Sunday afternoon. A 3 hr car ride to the train station and then an 9 hr overnight to Delhi. This was the 4th long train ride I was on. 3 of which were overnight. They SUCK! First class is either an isle bunk about 30 inches wide or a little wider bunk that is in an area that 4 people share. So they give you 2 sheets, a blanket and pillow and hope the persons over or next to you don't snore. On the trip up to there we had just flew in from Nepal and bought a bottle of duty free Johnny Walker....a couple of belts made for a better sleep that's for sure! They have two toilets for a car. One is a hole you squat over and the other is a toilet nobody would dream of sitting on.....One of the interesting sites to be observed during a daytime train ride is going through villages and seeing the folks squating next to the rail tracks taking a sh#t.

So we rolled into the Delhi train station about 6:30 AM. The Delhi train station is a MUST SEE! Tons of folks sleeping or lying on the platforms and others begging. After we got our porters to carry the luggage for our group we got into a mass of people trying to either go up the stairs of coming down from the main terminal. There was a log jam and if an opening happened some guy/gal would push there way in so we weren't moving. I think it took about 10 minutes to get up those stairs. One guy in our group got his pocket picked of some cash (it even had a zipper on it). But with the press of flesh going on I can understand why he never noticed it. I had locks on my backpack or I am sure somebody would had gotten into it.

Bus ride back to a 5 star hotel that we stayed at for a couple of days after first arriving there. We had a room for the day....got showered and rested since I probably only got about 3-4 hrs sleep on the train. We had dinner and then at 9PM bused to the International airport to catch a 12:50 AM flight to Amsterdam. After a 9 hr flight we got there about 6:30 AM (3 hr time difference). How great to be in Europe! Got some decent coffee and pastry and later a nice ham/cheese on a great roll. Got a 20 min chair massage and a 20 min foot massage during our 7 hr layover. The last leg from Amsterdam to Seattle was another 9.5 hr flight....arriving about 2PM yesterday and getting home about 5 PM last night. I was beat! We covered about 20,000 miles on this trip.

Worked from home today...but about 8PM this eveing I went out to the garage and took the battery tender off the bike, wiped it down and aired the tires. It is staying light here till about 9PM so I put on my gear and turned the key and it started right up (it has been sitting about 6 weeks or so). I rode over the the next town and got some BBQ (and beans for you SCAL folks). The 25 mile roundtrip was PRICELESS!!

The trip was great, saw some wonderful sights, ate some of the worse food and will have lots of memories.....but the one thing I can say for sure is that there is nothing like coming HOME!

See you all in Red Lodge! BTW, where are all the WA/OR folks this year?