Maine to North Dakota
(Originally Maine to Washington)
Pre Trip
|
This
page chronicles pre-trip activities and preparations. So I said goodbye to all my friends
And packed my hopes inside a matchbox 'Cause I know it's time to fly from the Led Zeppelin song
- Night Flight
May 17th, 2005 The final gear shakedown test went off
without a hitch! I loaded
the bike with everything I’ll be taking on my trip (except for the
spare tire)
and pedaled 32 miles to the Thomson Causeway campground (a Corps Of
Engineers
CG on the I was surprised at how smooth the ride was and how well the bike handled the weight, I was just a little surprised at how I handled the extra weight as well, the effort required to maintain a decent speed was much less than I expected. I averaged the same speed loaded as I normally do unloaded for the same route. Of course when you hit the hills or turn into a head wind everything changes but that was just a matter of slowing down a little more than usual. I did experience a few minor shimmies when I first started out but a minor rearrangement of weight solved that problem quickly. I was also able to stand up on the pedals while going up hill, that usually isn’t possible or safe on a fully loaded touring bike but it felt just fine once I mastered the technique. (Instead of rocking the bike as you usually would you have to rock your body and keep the bike as vertical as possible.)
The sleeping bag, Thermarest mattress
and camp pillow worked
well as expected and the Arkel panniers were wonderful.
May 15th, 2005 As usual I’ve been riding and getting in seat time, I’m getting anxious to get started. The weather has been unpredictable and the wind has been relentless, yesterdays ride saw 26mph averages with 39mph gusts! Wind like that slows you down in a hurry! Our good buddy Jim rode over from the
May 12th, 2005 - Happy Birthday Uncle Denny! Riding, riding and more riding, that
has been the order of the day as the start of my trip approaches. The
weather as usual has been changing wildly... Mother nature treated us
to a light show early yesterday morning, I got up from bed to try my
hand at snapping a few lightning shots with a digital camera and the
result wasn't bad. I submitted the picture below to Weatherbug and it
was the first picture up on Weatherbug's lightning page this morning!
(I trust you'll forgive me for removing the advertisements from the
picture.) I'll be submitting a nice Mississippi River sunset shot in
the next couple of days as well.  Item #2, in the next few days I’ll be going on a final shakedown test, I’ll be fully loaded and will run my gear through its paces. While riding the other day (during the metric century ride) I found a wonderful State park with a lot of pine trees and decided that it was the perfect place to pitch a tent and work out the kinks. I’ll load everything onto the bike, ride out a few dozen miles and make camp, if I have any major equipment kinks or bike shimmies they should show up along the way. And lastly, we are making considerable progress on the web page, there are just two more pages to complete and a little touch-up work to do and it's ready for my trip. don't forget to click your refresh button (or even clear your cache on some browsers) since a lot of content has been added. May 7th, 2005 I’ve noticed that I seem to be spending a great deal of time talking about the weather on this page and today’s update is no exception… The temperature was perfect for riding with the temperature sitting at a comfortable 80 degrees and a steady 8mph breeze from the North. I departed heading into the wind with the intention of riding as far as was comfortably possible and returning on a gentle breeze home… The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and today was no exception! The 32 mile ride out was wonderful and I explored a lot of new territory, typically I will set a goal of some sort, a distant town water tower for example. About ½ hour into the ride it became obvious that I was up for considerable mileage today and set my sites on riding a metric century (100 Kilometers, about 62.5 miles.)After passing through several
river-front
neighborhoods and traversing my fair share of rolling country roads I
reached the
quaint little town of Once there I reveled in my accomplishment by enjoying a well earned mid ride treat (an ice cream cone, great for reducing a bodies core temperature!) and being satisfied with my distance turned around to head for home. One nice advantage about cycling for 4+ hours straight is that you can enjoy such treats guilt free, a couple hundred calories are peanuts when compared to the 4000+ calories you'll burn on a ride like this! Anyhow, about 5 miles into my homebound leg the wind swung to the South and picked up in intensity, the forecasted 7 mph Northerly wind became an 18 mph Southerly headwind for the next 27 miles! May 6th, 2005 The weather has been improving these last few days (but the wind is a constant!) so I've been able to get in longer rides (in the 35 mile range.) You may have noticed if you've checked in lately that the web site is growing rapidly. I'll have the foundation complete before my departure in two weeks. Sometimes you can just tell when things are meant to be, throughout the process of planning this trip I sincerely expected to face struggle after struggle while dealing with the logistics, equipment set-up, travel arrangements and personal responsibilities that needed to be taken care of before I could depart on the trip, but to my amazement things have kept falling cleanly into place with very little effort. And the surprises never end! Surprise # 1 - A couple of days ago, purely on a whim, I wrote Joe Kurmaskie just to say hello and thank him for planting the seed for my trip. Joe and I had exchanged a series of emails several years ago and shared stories with each other (he obviously had MANY more than I) it was great fun and we talked about riding together someday but that never came to pass. Joe mailed me back within less than a day (I was lucky that he was at home) and told me about his summer trip across the country (he is doing the trip as a cover story for a major magazine) with his two young sons and his camera-man side kick. There is a slight chance we will cross paths but if not he expected to be back home in Portland by the time I'll be passing through, he offered to give me the “Kings Tour of Portland” and I sure hope it works out! What a kick that would be and what a fitting end to this particular journey! Joe and I also extended invitations to each other while on the road, cyclists are generally a good natured and friendly group of people and it's tradition to put fellow touring cyclists in contact with friends in different parts of the country that might be on or near their route. Good company, a warm shower and a friendly back yard to camp in are welcome treats to the touring cyclist! I'll provide more info on Joe's route once his press releases hit the wires and he gives me the ok to share that info... (I'll be contacting my cycling friends around the country to see if they'd like to ride with Joe or host his little expedition for an evening.) Surprise # 2 - I had yet another nice surprize on Thursday evening, I'll be stopping to visit another old friend that I haven't seen in over 20 years! With a stroke of luck I was able to remember enough about an old Army buddy to look him up, the Internet really is a great thing! As I sat thinking about my route through Toledo ( I try to avoid large cities for obvious reasons) I remembered that an old Army buddy lived just East of Toledo in a small farm town. Back in those days I would make the occasional 17 hour drive home by car from Ft. Belvoir, VA to Northern Illinois to visit my family. On several of those trips my good friend Dave R. would ride with me, it was always particulalry memorable when Dave rode along because we would usually hit his drop off point at around 2:00AM where I would have to pull off on the shoulder of Interstate 80 to drop him off, his grandpa would be there waiting for us on his farm tractor to drive Dave home via the family corn field, it was quite a site at 2:00 in the morning! Dave and I used to have many deep philosophical discussions about the world and human nature and we talked endlessly about taking adventures, traveling and sailing around the world, it's an ironic yet fitting twist of fortune that we'll be meeting up after all these years as I cycle across the country. It would seem that sometimes we make our own luck! May
2nd, 2005 I
ride 5-6 days per week with average rides of 25-35 miles and throw in a
bigger
ride of 45+ miles at least once a week, the long ride will kick up to
around 60 miles
in the next 2 weeks just before I leave. The wind has been making this
a real
challenge, I don't want to hurt my legs before the trip so I've
definitely
been focusing on "saddle time" over "distance" or "speed," but that
same wind has
insured that
I spend a lot of extra time in the saddle. I
also loaded up the bike for it's first short shakedown test, the gear
for the trip weighed 53 lbs, plus another 10lbs for water. The Trek 520
rode very
smooth and steady, standing on the pedals was shaky as expected but the
additional weight didn't affect the ride as mush as I expected it
would, the
Trek was a good choice! Within the next couple of weeks I am planning a
fully
loaded overnight trip to Mississippi Palisades SP (40+ miles each way)
for a
full shakedown to work out any last minute kinks in my equipment, I
only hope the
temperature
improves by then! The tickets have been booked for Nay, be a Columbus to whole new
continents and worlds within you, |
