It has been to long since the last time I wrote.  We have been busy.

We have been interviewed and featured in numerous big city newspaper lately but the big one finally came along.  A freelance photographer for the New York Times, Bridget O'Brien, flew out to meet us in Forester, north of Sydney, spent a couple days with us, and took hundreds of pictures of our life on the road.  We were featured in the "Why they Travel" section of the New York Times.  Obviously with the Times' circulation in the millions  our traffic, email, and book sales from the our web site went into overdrive  The Times reporter said that we deserve a much bigger feature story in the future.  We will let you know when this happens.

The perfect opportunity to work on completing our second book came in email.  As we have traveled through Australia we have been invited to stay with many people who follow our web site and subscribe to this newsletter.  This is a new experience for us.  Most of our Australian hosts had followed our web site for years and knew us well when we landed on their door step.  These invitations are the best way to learn about the various flavors of Australian life.  If you keep up with Cindie's daily journal you have read good description of our visits.  Such an invitation came recently from the Unser family living on the Gold Coast (near Brisbane) who operate a summer camp.  It was not the busy season and the camp was empty.  The owners knew we were working on our second book and encouraged us to stay until it was done.  We stayed for three weeks in the quiet and solitude of the camp's rain forest, sleeping in bunk beds with nothing to do except hike and work on he manuscript.  It is now completely written and 50% edited.  Based on how long it took to finish the first book from this point I knew it could be finished in a few more weeks of staying in one place and working until it was done.  Instead we have plans of riding so it will no doubt be delayed.  More on our future plans explained below.

After our three weeks of isolation and book work our families came out to visit, Cindie's sister Cherie and nephew James.   My sister Terri, and husband Jerry and their three kids Tori, Ali and Jake. We enjoyed the beach at Maroochydore, Lamington National Park, Lady Elliot Island, (Great Barrier Reef) and various attractions in the area like the Australia Zoo and Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  Half of those sights we would have skipped if the family wasn't here, so it was a nice change of pace. We were tourists for a few weeks rather than travelers.  Before we knew it everyone was leaving, I can say the hardest part is saying good bye to family. Tim and I will miss them.

After everyone went home it was just the two of us again and that change took some time to get use to.  We busied ourselves for the next week changing almost every moving part on the bikes.  Our families brought us new bike parts from the states.  We changed the entire drive train including new cassette, chain rings, derailleur pulleys and chain.  We also changed our  brake and derailleur cables, brake pads, replaced a broken bottle cage, and added new bar ends and seat post for Cindie.  Tim got new water bottles and we both received new bike shoes.  The old ones were over two and half years old and wore out.  We also got new jackets, actually our old ones we used in Mexico and South America. Our jackets from China were completely worn out.