The journey is the destina--blah blah blah

Wednesday June 1st we started our trip. We disagreed about how to get to the car rental agency, we got stuck on one-way streets and I zoomed past the first Rt 66 land-marks before Ivo could photograph them. It was noon and Chicagoans seemed serious about getting to lunch.
Today, June 16th, we ended our trip. we disagreed about how to get to the Santa Monica Pier, I zoomed along the harbor before Ivo could enjoy any sense of ceremony and we crawled along LA noon-day traffic, not basking in the glow of the trip but herrumphing about how it ended. The glow came later when traffic thinned and we approached LAX and before-hand as we had crawled through traffic from San Bernadino to LA all morning long.
Beginning and ending aside, our first road-trip has been a bit of a success, I think. Over the next few weeks we'll organize notes, do some more research and get to remember the good bits. Some parts will benefit the cyclists who might read a guide book: the big blue whale in Catoosa, the cute little unexpected sandwich shop in that town in North West Oklahoma, the crazy old guys who talk for an age about old stuff. Some parts will benefit our future selves and our future child: the emotional roller-coaster of our first screening call, the amount of compromise and communication required in getting across the country, the readiness for adventure together.
So now I'm back in San Francisco and practising some of the things I learned from the trip: the importance of relxation, the importance of hydration, the importance of not taking non-fried non-carnivorous food for granted and the importance of not taking Ivo's presence for granted.