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screensavers around the globe. Jordan paused, and looking at one of the columns noted, “They sell hot dogs here. And there is a gift shop.”
    Katrina, always budget conscious, retorted, “We have food in our panniers, and we can only get one souvenir per continent.” Then, adjusting the headphones of her audio guide, she added without taking a breath, “These headphones hurt my ears.”
    Summer solstice was only a week or so away. If we waited, a large gathering of people who hadn’t found proper homes since Woodstock would be arriving to visit Stonehenge to feel its vibes. I could feel the vibes before summer solstice—it was the traffic thundering past only a few hundred yards away on the A303. It was so loud it was as though someone had turned up the volume all the way to eleven.
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    On a tandem you have a captain (the person in front) and a stoker. The stoker gets his name from the bygone era of steam trains when a person tended, or “stoked,” a fire. The hotter the fire burned the more steam was produced for the engine and the faster the train went. On a tandem the stoker’s job is similar—to provide power.
    Jordan and I had a lot of miles under our belts before we arrived in England. We had cycled across Austria before Jordan was in kindergarten, and it was while cycling the backside of Maui that we learned the hard way that you can’t eat or drink a computer.
    Even without a computer weighing us down, I knew that Jordan wasn’t much for pedaling. I had hopes of conditioning him because Katrina, at eight, had been a great asset as a stoker. As hard as it was for me to admit it, part of Jordan’s problem was me. I tried to ask for “pedal power” as nicely as I could but under the strain of huffing up a hill, my words could easily be interpreted as a bark to an eight-year-old. In those early days cycling in England, Jordan was starting to withdraw.
    I was also having a hard time finding “my groove.” In the days before we left California, some friends asked me if I thought we were in shape to cycle such a vast distance. I quipped, “Well, let me just state that I don’t think my physical condition is going to be our limiting factor!” I now realized that my mental condition was at risk of being a limitation.
    David and Carolyn had warned us that finding camping spots in Southern England that are a comfortable day’s ride apart might be difficult. I regretted pontificating on the virtues of camping, as many times I was shamed by Katrina’s tenacity to cycle farther than planned in search of a campground. The nights we actually found refuge in a campground were a treat, even in a drenching rain. The night we had to make do in a farmer’s field, I woke up the next morning with Jordan’s sore throat and fever.
    Then there was the matter of our load. Despite the time we spent economizing the “to take” pile, we still had to carry food and water, schoolbooks for the kids, clothes for everyone, a tent, four sleeping bags and mattress pads, rain gear, a first-aid kit, a camera, three PDAs, a cell phone, and enough bike tools to stock a small repair shop. And three pairs of shoes for September? What was with the hair dryer? Clothespins? Matching socks? And, since I was the strongest rider, Jordan and I had the “heavy stuff.”
    Team Estrogen, however, was thriving, and due to all those fashion choices, was quite stunning.
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    John’s Journal, June 18
    The British Postal Service was kind enough to sell me an international calling card that has free calls to the United States on every Saturday in June. So, as I have on every Saturday for the previous twenty-odd years, I called my mommy .
    I ended up talking to her about Jordan, who has been acting very surly. I’ve been wondering if this trip is doing him more harm than good, and told her I was thinking about bringing him home