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The question most frequently asked of me during and after the trip, "Did you go with anyone, or were you alone?"

With the exception of the times I rode with Mary and Ken from Seattle to Blaine and back and with Todd through the mountains west of the Hudson Valley, I didn't ride with anyone else on a motorcycle. I wasn't alone, though.

When I was getting ready to take my Alaska trip Jack Wiggers, one of my grandchildren, made a pet rock for me. We mounted the rock to the tachometer glass with hook and loop closure material (you and I call it Velcro, a trademarked brand). With the exception of the roughest sections of the Dalton Highway between Cold Foot and Prudhoe Bay, the pet rock rode on the tach. On those rough sections it rode in the tank bag.

On this trip the rock rode the entire distance on the tach. So, I wasn't alone because I always had my pet rock with me.

And even though my family and friends weren't along on the ride most of the time, I knew of their interest and attention. Todd and Mary worked harder on the blog than I did, and Ray monitored the AeroAstro tracking site closely when he wasn't on the golf course. Kim Irving of AeroAstro sent me a note yesterday to let me know that the tracking site had more than 2,000 hits from more than 200 discrete computers over the course of the ride. Ray could only account for two or three computers and no more than half the hits, so I had lots of eyes on my progress. Thank you. I knew you were with me.

The one person who was most involved with me on the trip was my wife Anne who is shown in our kitchen. Anne has ridden on a couple of cross country motorcycle trips, and met me for an Alaska Ferry cruise on the way back from Prudhoe Bay. We've talked about a trike conversion of a Gold Wing or a BMW cruiser to increase her comfort level on future rides. Anne says most of what she has seen on these trips has been the back of my helmet. I've suggested a sidecar to improve the view, but that idea doesn't have any traction.

My route didn't take me through Atlanta this trip so I don't have any new pictures of my stepdaughter Liz, her husband John Mark Wiggers and their two boys Jack (creator of the pet rock) and Elliott, who was born after the Alaska trip. All but Elliott are pictured in the Alaska blog.

I have included photos of the rest of the Columbia cast. My daughter Sumner is shown on the evening we celebrated a numerically significant birthday (divisible by five). Sumner is shown with her friend Adam Wamer, who, like Sumner, is in the final stages of his undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina.

My younger son, Edward, is shown with his wife Tracy. Edward is in his first year of law practice with Nexsen Pruet LLC in Columbia assigned to the firm's health care team. Tracy is public relations director for the innovative and successful charity Souper Bowl of Caring. Souper Bowl organizes churches around the country to get youth groups involved on the Sunday the National Football League plays its Super Bowl. The youth groups raise money for charities in their communities. One distinguishing characteristic of Souper Bowl is that none of the money raised in the communities goes to support the national organization, but is put to use in the communities where it is raised for purposes chosen by local participants.

Tracy's parents, Gary and Dottie Bonds, are in the construction equipment rental business north of Atlanta, but still find time to get out and about on Gary's Harley. Gary has completed some Iron Butt adventures and ridden to Alaska.

Friends, colleagues and clients have all said they're glad I'm home. I appreciate their thoughts and expressions. I'm also glad to be back home.

I'm glad you were along for the ride. I'll think of another adventure down the road, and invite you to come along. That way I won't have to travel alone.

High finance in the high desert

For generations natives living on reservations in New Mexico and Arizona have come to Richardson's Trading Post in Gallup, New Mexico to do business.

Much of the business is borrowing money. For collateral the natives pawn their jewelry, their saddles, their rugs, their baskets, their pottery and their rifles. When the pawn is not redeemed, it becomes "dead pawn," and the goods are sold.

I delayed posting a report on my visit to Richardson's because I purchased a necklace for Anne, and I wanted it to be a surprise. I asked for a Navajo hishi necklace only to learn that what I wanted was not hishi. What I was looking for was a necklace made from strands of thin silver. For years I have described such necklaces as hishi. But, it turns out I was wrong. Hishi refers to a beaded necklace. The necklace I was wanting is called liquid silver because the fine strands of silver appear to flow around the neck of the wearer.

Richardson's, on historic Route 66, has been in business since 1913. The few photos I have posted here cannot do justice to the thousands of magnificent rugs, baskets and pots on display. For a better feel of the place, go to www.richardsontrading.com. Most of what is for sale at Richardson's is not dead pawn. Mark King, a retired banker now working at Richardson's, who is shown explaining a "Storm" design rug told me that 95 percent of the jewelry pawn is redeemed and overall only two percent of the pawn becomes dead pawn.

For years I have collected Navajo rugs and pottery from the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. I was greatly tempted to detour from my westward journey to go to Crown Point on the Navajo Reservation for the monthly rug auction that was being held the evening of the day I was in Gallup.

The Navajo rug in my den at home came from a Crown Point auction several years ago. On the way to the auction Ray and I met one of our literary heroes, Tony Hillerman, in a Navajo co-op in Thoreau, New Mexico. Tony was waiting for us at Crown Point and gave us tips on how to deal with the prospect of bidding on hundreds of rugs from all parts of the vast Navajo nation.

Tony Hillerman's novels are set in the Navajo nation and have as their central characters two tribal police officers. Tony is not a native, in fact he is a transplanted Okie, but he captures the landscape and the people to give a rich texture to his suspense stories. If you haven't read a Tony Hillerman novel, you have missed a wonderful opportunity to be entertained and educated. I'd recommend "Thief of Time," but that is probably because I like its setting in Chaco Canyon and its connection to pottery.

There are several traditional designs for rugs. Some designs, such as "Two Grey Hills" and "Teec Nos Pos", are named for the trading posts in the areas where the rugs are made. The rugs are made from thread spun from the wool sheared from sheep on the reservation. In antique rugs the colors came from dyes made from plants, but some commercially prepared dyes may be in use now. The looms on which the rugs are woven by hand are made from logs and are most often outside the hogans in which the weavers live.

In the storm design rug being shown by Mark King each of the Dine's (the name the Navajo call themselves) four sacred mountains is depicted. Lightening is portrayed in the center of the rug to represent the storm. The border of almost all of the designs has a break where the spirit is able to leave the rug.

Mark King told me there were about 2500 saddles on pawn, and a small section of the storage room for saddles is shown in one of the photos above. And, in case you ever have a desire to purchase a buffalo hide, as the sign says, you can purchase one at Richardson's.

The temptation to stay at Richardson's or go to Crown Point was great. For the sake of my budget and my schedule, I shipped a small gift home, rode a short section of old 66, returned to I-40 and headed west.

Yes, it is rocket science

"It's not rocket science" is a common expression to indicate that some activity is not difficult. Well, at AeroAstro, it is rocket science. And space science.

If you haven't taken a look at the history of AeroAstro when clicking over to check out the tracking map, I urge you to do so. You might find it interesting, especially if you, like me, haven't given much thought to private space activity.

At one point in its evolution AeroAstro built its own rocket engines, and the top picture in this series is a rocket engine that decorates the hallway in the AeroAstro offices. Models of satellites launched by AeroAstro are suspended from the ceiling joists. Pictures of rocket tests are on the wall. Even if you didn't know you were dealing with rocket science there, you could tell pretty quickly you were dealing with rockets.

I got to the AeroAstro offices in Ashburn, Virginia about mid-afternoon Friday. Todd had led me out of Hyde Park on some very interesting and scenic back roads. The kind of back roads people on motorcycles live to ride. I know that I'm heading back to Hyde Park on the bike some day so Todd can show me some more of those roads. I can remember when Todd was very young, pre-teen even, I talked about how it would be fun to take a cross country motorcycle trip with him. The response of several of my friends then was that I'd be too old to ride that far when he was old enough to go. They were wrong. I'm not too old, but it does take me longer to recover than it used to.

At AeroAstro the communications team members were sporting their trip t-shirts, and took a break from their activities to give me a tour of the place. There are no offices. Even the CEO, Dr. Rick Fleeter, occupies a space defined by the same low partitions that identify the work areas for the different teams. Outside each area is a white board so that ideas, phone numbers, names and other important information can be communicated to anyone walking by the board.

Aside from the restrooms, the only rooms in the place that were closed were the clean rooms where electronic devices are assembled. Kim told me that each of the workers in the clean rooms wore grounding devices. I asked if that were to prevent the workers from being zapped, but it is the other way around. The grounding devices keep the workers from zapping electronic circuits by conducting static electricity.

The communications team came out to the bike for a team picture. From left to right they are Pia Miranda (savior of two trips), Kim Irving (public relations director), Santiago Ferrer (the most patient customer service rep who tried to talk me through the restart of the original tracker by phone while I was in a rest area off I-10) and David Goldstein (General Manager). They have their hands on the tracker that is mounted on the bike. I appreciate the effort of the AeroAstro folks, and hope that you have enjoyed the tracking link. And, if you have a need for tracking, make your first call to AeroAstro.

Kim arranged for a local newspaper reporter to come interview the communications team and me about the effort. And, demonstrating once more that we inhabit a very small world, the reporter, Megan Kuhn of Leesburg Today is from Columbia. Her journalism teacher at Spring Valley High School was Chris McDonald who recently earned both a journalism masters degree and law degree from USC. Megan's father, Chuck Kuhn, is an adjunct professor in the USC Social Work School.

The final photo is of Santiago trying the bike on for size. The red bag behind him is the dry bag used for storing my cold weather riding gear. Fortunately, by the time I got to the Washington area I was able to return some of the cold weather gear to the bag.

Leaving AeroAstro I managed to get caught in Washington area Friday afternoon escape traffic. It took me two hours to go about 11 miles. Once I was on I-95 I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic almost all the way to Richmond. I figured that at the pace I was moving, I wasn't much faster than the armies that had moved through the area several times between 1861 and 1865. Starting with the exit sign for Gettysburg in Pennsylvania and continuing through Petersburg in Virgina, almost every exit led to the site of a Civil War battle.

When I left Hyde Park it had been my plan to make it home Friday. Darkness, procrastination and old age caught up with me in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I called it quits for the night, lamenting that I had enhanced Todd and Sharon's liquor cabinet by leaving the gin and vermouth behind figuring I'd have my Friday night martini at home. The bar in the cheap motel where I stopped had karaoke which was enough to persuade me to skip the martini.

I rode home Saturday morning, arriving about noon. I had predicted that my arrival would cure the drought in the Southeast, and, thanks to a tropical depression that crossed Florida and moved up the coast, the rain and I arrived in South Carolina at the same time.

Even though I have made it home, I have a couple more posts if you will bear with me. The delay in getting this post up is due to inertia (a body at rest tends to remain at rest) and a malfunction in my wi-fi portal at home.