(Here's the message we just sent out to the mailing list...)

Hi All! We hadn't send out a message for *forever* so wanted to let you know where we are. The last time we sent you a note, we were having a wonderful time as volunteers for Friendship Bridge and Kiva.org, taking pictures of the clients of Friendship Bridge, interviewing them, and posting their stories on Kiva.org where people all over the world funded their loans. We posted over 100 profiles, from more than 100 interviews with these marvelous women, and each loan was funded within a few hours by generous people in the first world.

I think we mentioned that we were coming home for a visit. Well, Nancy had a bit of a cough that last week in Guatemala, and by the time we got back (September 1) she was really sick. And then Randy started getting it, even worse. We holed up at the house of Randy's daughter Elisheba "for a few days" to get over it. But it got worse and worse. We finally got a diagnosis of Pertussis, of Whooping Cough, or "the 100-day cough". It's the most serious health threat we think we've ever fought.  Anyway, we're better now, but even though that all took place a month and a half ago, we're still working on recovering our health, and we're still at Elisheba's house. We ha planned to go back to Guatemala on November 1, but now we're waffling on that because we're not confident how long it's really going to take us to get fully healthy. So stay tuned.

We are so thankful that Elisheba provided shelter to us in this time; we couldn't have had a better place to hide out. And we're doubly thankful: she had already had the whooping cough vaccination (new a couple of years ago) so we didn't infect her. Wow, that would have been awful. We recommend the vaccination to all of you - the DPT shot you had as a kid wore off when you were a teenager.

Anyway, we're *much* better and before long we'll be back on the road. We just don't know when. But we'll keep you informed!

As always, there are lots of stories of our adventures on hobobiker.com, and a slideshow of recent pictures. We'd particularly love to have you read the little book we wrote about the wonderful women we've met in Guatemala. It's just a little picture book that you can read online in pdf format.

Thanks for riding with us!

-Randy and Nancy