So This is Christmas
“Careful, the bike is pretty... Heavy.” The eighty pound bike dangling weigtless above his head, gripped by the nose and tail of Tuktuk’s frame. Gear and aluminium dangled above his head just long enough to cast his statue in my memory. “What?” “Oh, no worries.” I felt awkward and out of place, stumbling numb, snotty, and shivering on the soft shoulder of the highway. The temperature dropped with the sun an hour ago, about the same time I pulled off into the soft gravel shoulder of a long strait highway with a nasty crosswind; I’d been riding since first light, navigated downtown phoenix, and its' striat-a-way outskirts lined with junk car lots and barking dogs. Just outside Phoenix is a land of circa 1980 muscle cars and amatour NASCAR drivers; not cycling friendly roads. It was about one hundred and twenty miles or so until I’d had enough. Hitch hiking and touring go hand in hand—if you’re tired of riding or the riding gets tough, stop, put out your thumb—and th