The Itinerary

April 24, 2016

This weekend was dedicated to two Passover seders and a nice weekend with family. However late in the day on Friday I received the “Tour Kit” from ABB which included, among other information, the day-by-day itinerary for their Across America North itinerary.  As you can see from the details below, this is a trip that crosses the country, and Southern Ontario, Canada, avoiding, for the most part and of the major metropolitan areas where the majority of us now live.   

The 51 days of the tour start with a short day of riding from the hotel to the Pacific Ocean to do the ceremonial wheel dip in the water.  Then over the next seven weeks there will be 45 days of riding, four rest days off the bike and one day spent on a steam powered ferry crossing Lake Michigan from Manitowoc, Wisconsin to Ludington, Michigan.  There are a total of seven “centuries” (100 miles or more in a day) and six rides of over 90 miles, meaning that more than a quarter of all riding days are long miles.  Day 18 (actually the 19th day on the bike counting the short ride on “Day 0”) is the longest day of the tour—119 miles!  Here’s the itinerary that I received over the weekend:

                  Across America North 2016

                                                              
             DATE              CITY                  DAILY MI.      TOTAL MI.

0     Sun   June 19     Astoria, OR                   29                        29

1     Mon   June 20     St. Helens, OR             69                        98

2     Tues June 21     Welches, OR                 75                       173

3     Wed   June 22     Kah-Nee-Ta, OR         66                       239

4     Thur June 23     Prineville, OR               60                       299

5     Fri   June 24     John Day, OR              117                       416

6     Sat   June 25     Baker City, OR              81                      497

7     Sun   June 26     Ontario, OR                  83                      580

8     Mon   June 27     Boise, ID                     64                      644

9     Tues June 28     Boise, ID (Rest Day)                                     

10    Wed   June 29     Mountain Home,ID    53                      697

11    Thur June 30     Twin Falls, ID              97                      794

12    Fri   July 1      Burley, ID                       39                      833

13    Sat   July 2      Pocatello, ID                  85                       918

14    Sun   July 3      Idaho Falls, ID              66                       984

15    Mon   July 4      Jackson, WY                91                    1,075

16    Tues July 5      Dubois, WY                   86                    1,161

17    Wed   July 6      Riverton, WY               79                    1,240

18    Thur July 7      Casper, WY                  119                    1,359

19    Fri   July 8      Casper, WY  (Rest Day)                                                                       

20    Sat   July 9      Lusk, WY                      106                    1,465

21    Sun   July 10     Hot Springs, SD             93                   1,558

22    Mon   July 11     Rapid City, SD             74                   1,632

23    Tues July 12     Wall, SD                         58                   1,690

24    Wed   July 13     Kadoka, SD                   58                   1,748

25    Thur July 14     Chamberlain, SD          114                   1,862

26    Fri   July 15     Mitchell, SD                    71                    1,933

27    Sat   July 16     Sioux Falls, SD               73                    2,006

28    Sun   July 17     Sioux Falls, SD (Rest Day)                            

29    Mon   July 18     Worthington, MN         71                    2,077

30    Tues July 19     Mankato, MN               110                    2,187

31    Wed   July 20     Rochester, MN              98                    2,285

32    Thur July 21     La Crosse, WI                 88                    2,373

33    Fri   July 22     Mauston, WI                    75                    2,448

34    Sat   July 23     Fond du Lac, WI              92                    2,540

35    Sun   July 24     Manitowoc, WI               58                    2,598

36    Mon   July 25     Ludington MI (Ferry )     6                    2,604

37    Tues July 26     Mount Pleasant, MI       112                    2,716

38    Wed   July 27     Birch Run, MI                74                    2,790

39    Thur July 28     Port Huron, MI                87                    2,877

40    Fri   July 29     London, Ontario               83                    2,960

41    Sat   July 30     Brantford, Ontario           69                     3,029

42    Sun   July 31     Niagara Falls, NY           74                     3,103

43    Mon   Aug 1             Niagara Falls, NY (Rest Day)                  

44    Tues Aug 2             Rochester, NY           87                     3,190

45    Wed   Aug 3             Liverpool, NY          91                     3,281

46    Thur Aug 4             Little Falls, NY          79                     3,360

47    Fri   Aug 5             Latham, NY                74                     3,434

48    Sat   Aug 6             Brattleboro, VT          79                     3,513

49    Sun   Aug 7             Manchester, NH        77                     3,590

50    Mon   Aug 8             Portsmouth, NH       60                     3,650

The only downside to doing this cross the continent trip is that on July 24, when I am riding only 58 miles from Fond du Lac to Manitowoc,Wisconsin, I will miss my daughter Marci doing Ironman Lake Placid in upstate New York.  She’ll ride twice as many miles as me, swim 2.1 miles and run a marathon.  Marci took up triathlon in college, and has completed two Ironman’s.  However, several years ago she was unable to finish Ironman Lake Placid—so her tackling it this year is “unfinished business” for her.  I regret that I won’t be there, but fortunately that day is a short riding day so I should be done in plenty of time to follow her on ironman.com and get updates from  her longtime friend Jane who is coming up from Texas to cheer her on.  She’ll also have the members of her triathlon team there to support her.

Tomorrow is supposed to be in the mid-80’s around the DC Area.  Looking at the number of long biking days I’m going to have this summer, tomorrow is going to be a day to take advantage of the warm weather and knock off at least 60 miles.  After all, there’s now less than two months to go!

Moving From "Gotta Do Someday" to "I'm Going to Do It"

Many of those who know me, know that for two decades now the top item on my “bucket list” has been to take a bicycle trip across the country.  Having become eligible for Medicare last year, I began to realize that I’m not getting any younger!  There was always one thing or another that got in the way, but I knew that at some point  spending two months on the bicycle and pedaling 3,500+ miles might just become a bit more than my body would tolerate.  So, I began to think seriously last Fall that if I ever was going to do this, I’d better plan to do it this coming summer.  And finally last Monday, I took the plunge, putting down a deposit on a June trip from Astoria, Oregon to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

There are a number of organizations and companies that do cross country bicycle tours.  But I was able to eliminate most right off the bat.  I’m up for 80-100 miles on the bike everyday (at least I think I am!), but I want a real bed under me each night.  No way I’ll take a cross-country adventure that includes two months of camping.  So it came down to five tours from four different companies.  Most of the tours begin in May.  Unfortunately I have a family wedding that I really ought to go to Memorial Day weekend.  That precludes the May starting tours. 

There's also another reason not to do a May tour.  If you’ve known me for a long time, you know that in addition to my love of cycling, two others things are near and dear to my heart…Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals baseball and Washington Capitals hockey.  When my late wife Dot and I moved to Maryland in 1974, Washington had just gotten a National Hockey League franchise.  We went to the first NHL exhibition game played at the then-new Capital Centre, and were hooked on the new team.  In the 42 intervening years, however, the Capitals have only made one trip to the Stanley Cup finals. And of course that was during the six years we lived in Dallas.  When we came back to Washington we said that we would do whatever it took to be there the next time they made it back to the finals.  She never got to see that, but with the Caps this year having the best record in the league during the regular season, there was no way I was going to take a May trip and possibly not be able to honor the vow that we made.  I know that she’d be throwing hockey pucks at me from above if they went to the Finals and I wasn’t there, along with my daughter who has taken over from her mom as the family hockey fanatic!  So the only real choice was the America  By Bicycle (ABB) trip that begins in Oregon on June 19 and ends August 8,  3,650 miles later at a beach in New Hampshire, a little bit north of Boston.  For details, click here.

I am not too worried about physically being able to complete the trip across the continent (I say “the continent” instead of “the country” because from Michigan to Update New York we’ll spent several days riding through Southern Ontario).  But those I’ve communicated with who have biked across, have mentioned the mental challenge as being more difficult than the physical one.  They’ve warned me that one morning a couple of weeks in, I’ll wake up and say “What am I doing? I don’t want to ride today!”.  So, while I hope to bring you a “seat of the bike shorts” travelog, I also hope to capture the emotions, the sights, the sounds, the smells (after all, we will pass farms, factories and the like), and the people from this 50-day exploration of the U.S (and a little bit of Canada).  I hope you enjoy the journey.

And I promise for those of you who are not “bicycle geeks”, that all of the heavy bicycle information (like the downloads from my Garmin each day) will be handled as links that you can elect to look at, or ignore.

As I write this, my daughters Julie and Marci, and I, are en route to Boston to spend the first two days of Passover with my cousins.  As we speed through the Northeast on Amtrak, I am envisioning rolling along on my bicycle.  But at about 105 MPH slower!