I'm back. The trip was so amazing...the ride was mostly great (god I hate riding in the rain!); and Newfoundland is the most wild, desolate, fierce and stunningly beautiful place I'd ever been. Talk about unspoiled. There are great swaths of highway with nothing on it. I think there's maybe 3 McDonald's on the whole island, but plenty of family owned diners and restaurants where the cinnamon buns are home made and the seafood chowder has more seafood than potatoes in it. Yumm!

The villages for the most part are small and far between, and have names like Blow Me Down, Dildo, Little Seldom, Come By Chance, and (my favourite) Tilting. The people are just as lovely and friendly as the tourism ads say they are - this is not the place to go if you don't want to talk to new people.

Trip Highlights:

• Distance covered: 9,000+ kms
• Number of ferries taken: 9. Shortest was 7 minutes, longest was 5+ hours
• Number of days on the road: 21
• Number of days it rained at some point: 9
• Number of Newfie Speedbumps seen: 1
• Number of wrecked cars and tractor trailers seen after meeting with Newfie Speedbump: 7. Some scary wreckage there.
• Number of times I ran out of gas because we miscalculated the distance between villages: 2.
• Most amount spent on gas: $1.39 per litre in Labrador. That's $5.26 per gallon for the Americans. Now please stop whining about how much you have to pay.
• Life-Is-Good moment: eating a suberb 4 course dinner at the end of the road, while watching the sun set over the ocean
• Best road: Route 470 from Porte-aux-Basques to Rose Blanche. Some of the sweetest pavement in North America, complete with ocean views and no traffic. Bliss.
• Scariest moment: getting run off the road by a double long logging truck. Bastard.
• Angriest moment: about 7 seconds after the Scariest moment.
• Words-fail-me moment: Standing in the sunshine at the Viking Settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows. A thousand years ago, Vikings settled here for a while, then disappeared. All that's left are earth mounds that are the last remnants of their sod houses after 8 centuries of wind and rain. For the half hour until the busload of annoying fat tourists caught up with us, it was eerie and breathtaking.
• Saddest moment: realizing that the Penguin has fallen by the roadside. Every couple has their mythology, their icons of the relationship. For us it's a cat that Keith gave me on my 35th birthday and a penguin that I brought to make hime smile when he was ill and in ICU. They have travelled everywhere with us, stuck through loops on my bag. On the last day of our trip, I was accelerating and passing someone when the Penguin slipped out of the loop. Keith saw it, but there was no where to pull over safely to go back for him. I didn't find out until we stopped an hour later for coffee. I cried like I'd lost a member of my family.

I've uploaded some pictures here, if you're so inclined.

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Now on to why I'm a liar:

In the last post I said as how I didn't miss poker as much as I thought I would. Pffft....pure denial.

I love riding; the longer you ride, the more layers of stuff peel away. You need to be in the moment on a bike; other things become far more important than how to play a poker hand right. There's the road to navigate, the scenery to take in, the man with you to connect with.

However, as you get closer to home some of those layers slide back on. And the desire to play a hand or two hit me HARD about a day away from home. More so than the need to sleep in my own bed with my own pillow or to have a full range of wardrobe to choose from other than that which can fit in the equivalent of 4 large ziplock bags.

I was fairly good though - I managed to exercise a modicum of self-discipline when we got home. I didn't rush in the door and immediately turn on the computer. It took us about an hour to put all the shit away. THEN I turned on the computer.

So far I've played four $13 6-handed SnG's (2 firsts, one second), 3 peep attempts (lost them all) and a $11 Rebuy Madness on Stars where I came in 80th of 1300-ish. I'm up $150 from yesterday, which is good, coz i spent far too much on my vacation and need way more dosh so I can get to the Bash in style. Or even just get there period.

And now life is back to normal. On with the poker.