God wants me to ride the Northern Tier

That's the cycling route across the US that goes through the northern states, starting in Anacortes, Washington and ending in Bar Harbor, Maine and going through notable sites like Glacier National Park, Ticonderoga, NY, and Muscatine, Iowa. The risk of getting eaten by bears is only marginally higher than that risk on the "traditional" trans-America route, but the risk of getting chased by dogs in Kentucky is decidedly lower. Oddly, I'd rather take my chances with the bears.

I've been reading Northern Tier stories on crazyguyonabike.com. This guy is a really good writer (worked for the BBC for many years and is a professional writer--he's a great story teller and most of his journal is about the people he meets and not about the riding or what they ate for dinner like so many other journals are). These girls make up for their so-so writing skills with their enthusiasm. They make me want to be young again.

Anyway, so I've been reading these stories and yesterday I got home from work (on my bike--first commute since May. I've been either too busy or it's been too hot to commute by bike recently) and found that the Adventure Cycling Association sent me, by mistake, a full set of the Northern Tier route maps. I had ordered a downloadable book from them last week, and I think what happened was their system automatically generated a shipping label for me, which got slapped on the next order. So I have the maps that Shari, from Juneau, Alaska ordered (why would someone from Alaska want to do the Northern Tier? You'd think she'd want to do the southern route!) and am just waiting for it to be business hours in Montana (where ACA is headquartered) so I can call them and let them know their mistake. I won't pretend that I'm not hoping that they say "oh, sorry, you just keep those and we'll send another set out to Shari." It probably won't happen, though--these are expensive maps (Shari was charged $102 for them) and ACA is a small business.