hi friends,

here is the scoop.  7 big days of riding from Ulangom to Moron. Lots of desert, sandy roads, a couple really unpleasant climbs, tons of underwhelming ice-cream bars in backwoods towns. Water has been a little tricky to come by but so far a couple of super-nice Mongolian families have helped us out. One day we saw some purple wildflowers, which was cool.  Now we're hanging in town getting caught up on calories and internet memes. 

The really crazy thing was running into Miles.  Miles is this cool guy from Alaska who is on a 3 year around the world bike odyssey. Matt actually ran into him during his last trip to southern Africa when they rode together for a month, looked at lions and Victoria Falls, etc.  Anyway, so we're just riding along on this little Mongolian backroad and suddenly there is Miles, going the other direction.  So crazy.  Of course everyone was super excited and we sat to tell stories and marvel at his impressive beard. He had some pretty crazy stories to tell about biking Central Asia in winter...carried three sleeping bags, etc.

Besides that morale has really sunk to new lows, especially for Ben.  Even a healthy intake of ice cream bars and Coca Cola over the last 24 hours has done little to repair a seriously destabilized sense of purpose...he went and bought a bus ticket back to UB, leaving tomorrow. Unknown whether it will actually be utilized...  Matt is feeling chipper and is excited to see some absurd monasteries on the way back to the capital. Both of us dream of super burritos and milkshakes. Constantly. And vegetables. Sweet, nutritious vegetables. Maybe put the vegetables in the milkshake, except in a secret way were you would still only taste milkshake. How awesome would that be? 

ben and matt