Today my uncle and I started our journey early in the morning. After having packed until around 2AM, we woke up at 5:30AM to go to the airport. Needless to say we were tired, but excited nonetheless.
We said our goodbyes and my mom and Isabella were a bit said but supportive, and wished us good luck.
At the Houston airport, to my surprise the bikes flew for free as "sporting equipment", so we only paid for the two boxes containing the panniers. Our flight had a layover in Charlotte, NC, where we spent about 4 hours. We had lunch and coffee, then found a spot to sit down and catch up with phone calls as well as do a bit of research as to where we would be spending the night.
Being a touristic site, Buffalo has very expensive hotels and the cheaper ones were already completely booked. We searched for campgrounds, but no luck... the only ones available were an hour or two south of Buffalo, which would mean riding all that back north tomorrow in order to visit the Niagara Falls (which we plan on doing tomorrow), not to mention they were either primitive or of difficult access.
That's when I remembered we could use Warm Showers to find fellow cyclists willing to either host us or let us camp in the front / back yard. After a few messages, we found Joey and Emmalee who agreed to let us spend the night.
When we arrived at the house, to my amazement I realized that I had met Emmalee and Joey back in 2012, in the Washington State, at another warm shower (where Don and Pat were hosting all of us). My uncle and I took a shower and went to sleep. I was so tired from having slept about 2 hours the previous night and then flying, assembling both bikes and finally riding an hour from the airport to their home, I passed out right away when my head hit the pillow.
The next day, before departing to the Niagara Falls, I showed Emmalee the video from back in 2012 where they appear. It was such a cool moment!
