Road Pickle Part 2 Begins Now

After being on the road for nearly six months, riding across the country and back, getting rained on, hailed on, cropdusted, sunburned, and nearly killed by ignorant cagers, we're now entering the 2nd phase of Road Pickle.

Even though we're back in San Diego, where it all started, we're still homeless. For the next 30 days, we're staying in a house we've rented out. Even though it's where we're sleeping, eating, and screwing, it doesn't feel like home. That is, it's filled with the furniture, clothes, pots and pans of the guy who lives here the rest of the year. It even still has his 15 foot Burmese Python which hisses at us when we walk by.

But Sash and I agreed that when we came back to San Diego, we'd take a more slow pace, staying in cities for up to a month instead of up to a week.  That's Part 2.

The shorter, week-long stays we did during Part 1 were long enough to get a good feel for the town, see some stuff, and then get going.  And we needed that because we ended up developing an itinerary, even though we initially said we didn't want one.  That is, we arranged to meet friends and family, visiting fellow bloggers, see particular sites and ride particular roads.  We also had to fit them all into a 6 month window, with 3 months out east, and 3 months back west.

Except, we still had work to do. That is, Road Pickle wasn't meant to be a vacation. It was meant to be a new way of living. We still have our respective Internet businesses to run. I still needed to time to sit down in a hotel room to write all my articles and administer all of my websites. She had articles to write also, but clients to build relations with.  It's difficult to keep up with all that, while still meeting people, seeing places, and riding roads.

And then there's my diet regimen.

Such a road trip puts extra inches of belly and ass on one's person, considering all the great eateries people advise us to visit. And watching the Travel Channel in our hotel room doesn't help when I see the lips of Guy Fieri and Adam Richman accommodate such sauce-dripping wonders of American-style road decadence.

It seemed like if we had more time to stay put in a particular town, I'd feel more at ease to spend a few nights each week gnawing on carrots and celery stalks. Then I'd feel better about sucking ribs and burgers, and slamming down pints of thick, heavy ale.

I'd also have to time to get work done, and Sash would have to time let her aches and pains heal. We'd also have time to do more local riding.

Staying a month at a time also gets us better rates on hotel rooms and vacation rentals.

So for Part 2 of Road Pickle, we haven't stopped Road Pickle at all.  We're still relying on our motorcycles full time, we're still living with what we can pack on them.  We're just in "living" mode instead of "road trip" mode.