drewish.com

(Day 24) Stage 2 Complete

[Hey sorry I sat on this a while we've been hanging out in Boise having too much fun to write emails.

On another note http://www.drewish.com is down temporarily, hopefully it'll be straight sometime next week.

We slept in since we were a full day early for Boise and hadn't gotten a hold of my friends to know we were coming. It was nice to get a shower, a clean change of clothes and a bit of time to read. I called my friends in Boise but no one was home so we decided to ride into town and find some place to hang out while we waited.

Bike riding in Idaho is a bit scary, we'd gotten used to wide shoulders and bike lanes on major streets in Oregon. Drivers don't seem to give you as much space, I compensate by going faster. It feels safer when you're moving at a speed closer to that of the traffic around you. We rode on the sidewalks when we needed to go slow or the wrong way on a one-way street and just tried to get into town.

We found a Mexican restaurant and had some overpriced food of reasonable quality. There were two guys playing live music, Spanish songs and English covers in Spanish. Brad got his tape recorder out and got most of Yesterdays and Under the Boardwalk, he probably got some other ones that I can't remember.

As we were trying to find a way downtown that didn't involve a freeway, an evil windstorm came up. It was like the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, with all the stuff blowing by. I swear I saw a refrigerator box go flying by. We started singing the "Why'd you ever wanna go to Idaho" song, it was so cool.

We found their Greenbelt, it's a bike path/park that runs along the river through town. The owner of a fruit stand we'd stopped at had told us about it and that they were having some kind of River Festival along it. Having nothing better to do Brad and I rode around in the crowds and watched a couple bands. The whole thing reminded us both of the kind of thing Reno would love to do (on a smaller scale of course). People were stoked on the bikes, we got the standard questions and gave the stock answers, I need to print out a handout.

Airielle called me back on my cell phone and we made plans to meet her and her friend Sierra. With a half-hour to kill I got to watch this badass country band do a 15 minute cover of Folsom Prison Blues, it was good. We were late meeting them, Brad stopped to watch this guy playing cello and I started staring at this gorgeous girl who was also watching the guy, Airielle actually ended up finding us.

We rode through Boise at high speed zigzagging toward Airielle's house. Once there we dropped off our gear and hopped into her trusty Subaru wagon and went over to Sierra's house for dinner. We talked about going to some hot
springs and the other person I knew in Boise, Little Bob, called me back.

I met Bob and Airielle when I visited my friend Dan in Spain. He was studying Spanish in San Sebastian and was friends with both of them. We all hung out a bunch during the two weeks I was in Spain.

Hot springs sounded good to Little Bob so he came over and we loaded into his Suburban and headed north. The hike in was pretty crazy but the springs were worth it. With no city lights near by you could look up and see millions of stars as you sat soaking. Hike out and back to Airielle's house to sleep.

andrew

Statistics
Days: 24
Bags of Sunflower Seeds: 5
Loafs of Bread consumed:16

Motel nights 1
Paid camping nights 3
Nights staying with friends 4

Showers: 6
Flat tires: 7

Payphones used to check PocketMail: 42

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