99 bottles of beer on the wall...

It's time to start singing roadtrip songs. I leave for Pacasmayo tomorrow night, on a Cruz del Sur overnight bus. That's right kiddos, I signed on for another 10-hour plus bus ride, without a bus-cama - ME. Who suffers from motion sickness. Who normally sleeps in her princess-specific Tempurpedic bed. Who proclaimed (very loudly, I might add) that, after that whirlwind of a trip to Arequipa in January, in which she spent over 13 hours each way on a bus (and completely freakin' hungover on the first 13+ hour trip), she would never ride on a %$#@ing bus again.

Well, I'm going. And this time I'm not going to drink red wine out of my Nalgene bottle the night before. Instead, I'm making a much more tame ravioli and pasta sauce, with a little bit of garlic bread action. And I might squeeze in a bottle of water flavored with a splash of maracuya. I am one CRAZY MAMA.

Since I talk about nothing else, you should know by now that I am going to participate in one of the running events for the Pacasmayo International Marathon. It makes me sound more awesome than I really am, what with that "marathon" word stuck in the title, but I am really only running a 10k. After all the problems I've had with my back in the past few years, plus the many years beyond that in which I've developed the particularly annoying habit of whining, I just didn't feel up to punishing myself for all 26.2 miles of a full marathon. In fact, I didn't even feel up to the masochism of a simple 13.1 mile half-marathon (which my friend Michelle just did this past weekend in under 2 hours, and for which my friend Tyler is now training; you people are making me look bad!!). So I'm down to a half of a half-marathon, or a cuarto maraton. I kind of suck, actually, but I'm doing it for the love of abusing my body, supporting some small town NGOs, and hanging with the entire Peace Corps Peru crew.

I am traveling north with my friend Ali, who is the Peace Corps Lima volunteer, and we are supposedly staying at a house with a number of other Peace Corps volunteers. This should be a crash-course in surviving a weekend as a Peace Corps volunteer for me. I will let you know how it all goes, when I return broken and beaten on Tuesday.

But for now, suffice to say that I really don't know what the hell I'm getting myself into, but I am pretty confident that I can run for 6 miles. Here's a 4th of July weekend for the books!

Happy Independence Day, peoples!