OK.  I see I have some 'splaining to do, and maybe about why we've got two blogs now, two meat-powered two wheelers racing off toward the horizon on parallel tracks, rather than following the monorail like most normal bike travelers?  What's your vision, what's your justification for Cortisone Dreams anyway, given that its relationship to bicycle travelers or tourism appears tangential at best to bike travel, or even bicycling at all?  What's have you been smoking anyway, Scooter?

Several points, and then of course you're free to make of it what you will and follow along or not.  Our webmaster has developed such a wonderful haven for folks like ourselves, and as much as it was great fun to have a nearly empty stage in the earlier years where folks started following us because we were the only show in town at times and they needed something other than the horrible news to down with their coffee in the morning, but it's much different now.  There are tons of great stories to follow out there, and you can't follow them all any more.  If this track doesn't interest you in the same way any more, just follow the other one on Track A and ignore this one, like you were blind in one eye and couldn't see it off there on your right, chugging along right beside you.

In any case though, here's how and why we've ended up here.

• First of course, there's the temporary (hopefully) insanity thing.  Alarming to you perhaps, definitely alarming to poor Rachael, and at times pretty disturbing to me too.  It couldn't be helped though.  It goes with the territory for such a powerful drug, and it was a no brainer for the team to get their priorities straight.  Hmm - drugs or blindness?  Give us some time folks, we'll need to ponder that for awhile.  As disturbing as it all was though, I give full credit to the drug for this idea.  I doubt it would ever have occurred to me otherwise.
• One thought here is that traditional travel journals are much easier to follow - at least to people like me old enough to remember when people still read physical books.  Journals that roll out sequentially - yesterday I was there, today I'm here, tomorrow I'll be yonder - are just easier to follow and keep your place in.  If you haven't checked in for a month because you've been off on your own excellent adventure, it's easy enough to pick up where you left off, just as if you were binge-watching the four episodes of Grandchester that came out while you were away.
• Another consideration is our attitude about our times when we're back home.  Even though we aren't touring in the traditional sense, I'd say we're still bike traveling.  We're just doing it at home, exploring the homeland.  This is particularly true now, when our homeland suddenly seems like such an alien place, maybe more so than any overseas country than any we've ever visited up until now.  Regardless of how much actual biking is occurring, we feel like we're still traveling, but just taking it easy for the time being.  A change of pace is good.

And before we go on to the other points I have in mind, I just want to acknowledge that this is turning into a real ramble and I imagine you're wondering if I've gone off the rails again.  Again, this is still primarily the drugs talking.  Just be glad I've slowed down to the point that I can mostly write in coherent sentences again.

So just three more points and then I'll shut up and go take a badly needed shower.  I just got in from a bike ride out to Kelley Point and it's pushing 90F again.

One thing is that I wanted to come up with a technical solution for managing a narrative that could spool out for the next decade if we're really lucky.  Even for 'just' our nine month tours the disadvantages of a narrative that long are pretty apparent.  I've come up with one new approach, and hopefully it will be an improvement.  Time will tell.

I also though wanted to come up with an effective way of dealing with the nonlinear material that comes along so I can record it at the time even though it's not in the current chronology.  Things like going back to fill in gaps in the timeline, or taking the time to write down a reminiscence that just got triggered by a flashback or whatever, or that happened on a past tour but never got recorded for some reason.  The right hand track is architected to manage some of that chaotic churn so I can write things down as I think of them.  We'll see, but hopefully finding a place for material like that in appendices will be effective.  Again, we'll see.  This part of it is really all just an experiment in looking for a more effective and readable presentation style.

And finally, the aspect that might cause the most raised eyebrows - where are the damn bikes?  The bikes are here, but just over there on Track A, racking up miles, recording itineraries, posting maps, that sort of thing.  I don't really expect this rail to ever have any actual biking, except referentially.  This track is all ABOUT the bike - as in, what do folks do if they have a passion for biking for some reason but aren't themselves biking at the moment, for any of an infinite number of reasons:

• Maybe they're biking in the French Pyrenees and get a terrible bout of food poisoning that lands them in hospital and it's such an intense experience that they want to remember everything about it;
• Or maybe they used to bike tour in the past but have aged out of it and still want to follow along or maybe share their stories about the role of bikes in their lives now and in the past;
• Or maybe they never actually biked themselves because maybe they had polio as a child or something but have some sort of personal connection with the biking world and want to share their piece of the story somehow; or, 

You get the idea.  No end of reasons someone might want to find a toehold in here somehow even if they don't have a Linear A to B to C story to tell at the moment.  And who knows if this is even a good idea?  it makes sense to me at the moment, but who knows?  It could just be the prednisone talking, and at some point maybe I'll slow down to my normally hyper self and let this rail curve off to a spur somewhere and call it a day.  Time will tell.