A Post Mortem and Look Ahead

It’s now five days since I arrived home from my shortened cost-to-coast bike trip, and I think it’s time to take a look back and a look ahead

First, I want to thank everybody for all their interest in my trip and their support during the four and half weeks of my adventure.  I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people who followed my blog, including many who I know have no abiding interest in cycling.  And the number of people who have reached out to me to ask me how I’m doing, to tell me that I should take great pride

in what I’ve done, and to actually congratulate me on my decision to stop when I felt like my struggles were taking the fun out of the trip really demonstrated to me that people do care about each other.

Am I disappointed that I didn’t make it all the way to New Hampshire?  Sure, I am.  I set out to finally achieve my goal of riding from one ocean to another and I didn’t make it.  Could have I continued?  As I’ve told many people, there would have been no question that if there were a few days left, rather than a few weeks, I would have pressed on.  I certainly enjoyed all of the challenges of the first month of the trip.  However, during the last week I struggled physically every day.  The tiredness, the headwinds, feeling every single pedal stroke, was taking a toll on me.  Because I was slowing down, my days were stretching out to be longer and longer.  Instead of anxiously looking forward each morning to the day’s ride, I was beginning to dread it.

I knew that if that continued, instead of remembering the trip for all the fun I had between Oregon and Minnesota, struggling for the last half of the trip would become the mental legacy that the trip would leave.  I decided that I wanted this trip to leave a string of good memories for me.  And it has.  And I have no regrets that I took this trip.  And I have no regrets at all that I decided to stop when I did.  It was the right decision then.  And a week later I still realize that it was the right decision for me.  And taking the trip in the first place, and discovering what I could do and what I couldn’t do, was the right decision as well.

The Trip Back

After trying to figure out the logistics of getting from Mankato, MN to Minneapolis to return home, getting the bike packed to either be shipped or checked, and getting a flight or Amtrak, it became apparent that it would be easiest, and not necessarily any more expensive to rent a car, put the bike in the trunk, and drive the 1,200 miles.  So last Wednesday I left and headed south toward Iowa.  I absolutely did not want to pass through the Chicago Area which is why I made an end run by going south.  Google maps said that my trip through Iowa, Illinois and Indiana to Dayton, Ohio would take about 10 ½ hours.  I figured adding “comfort stops” would make it 12 hours.  It turned out to be more like 14 hours (which meant a midnight arrival with the hour’s time change after an 8:30 a.m. departure.) 

During the drive I found that I looked at the shoulders a lot to see if they were good or bad for cycling (in general they were better than South Dakota, but still with a lot of miscellaneous debris like most of the shoulders I’d experienced on my bicycle over the prior month).  It also became apparent to me that while on the bike, I had gotten into the habit of frequent “comfort stops.”  But while in the car, a tree would not suffice!  As I headed east, I certainly observed the passing scene from the perspective of a cyclist more than as a driver.  After all, the bicycle had been my sole transportation mode for the prior month.

On Thursday I made a stop east of Columbus, Ohio to have lunch with Diane, a former classmate when I was at Ohio University over 40 years ago.  Diane had become a friend of both my wife Dot and I when the two of them met in 2003 at an Ohio University orientation for transfer students—a category that our daughter Julie and Diane’s daughter Lisa fell into.  They were also both “legacy” students, and Dot and Diane soon discovered that Diane and I had attended Ohio’s College of Communications at the same time.  Our family friendship with Diane and her husband Jim has continued to this day.

After lunch with Diane I continued east.  Soon I found myself heading across I-68 in West Virginia, a route taken many times between Maryland and Ohio University on trips to see Julie when she went to school there and on subsequent visits to OU for Homecoming, etc.  Being back on a familiar route was a several hour adjustment back to “normal” life.  By evening I was on the familiar (congested) Beltway and rolled up to the house for the first time in just about five weeks.

The Weekend

When I got home, Marci had left that morning for Lake Placid, NY to attempt to complete the Ironman competition there this past Sunday.  Julie arrived home Thursday night from the Bowie Baysox game where she was working in the ticket office and then headed up Friday morning to Lake Placid to support her sister.  Friday was a day for unpacking.  Although I was still thinking about how much of a struggle riding had been, when I got an email Friday afternoon about a Saturday morning bicycle club ride, I decided that I needed to go—like the proverbial getting back on the horse when it throws you.  The 42 mile ride felt short after weeks of averaging 80 miles per day.  But after three days off the bike, it was just right.  It was a “baby bear” ride—not too long; not too short; just right!

Saturday night I took care of something else I had missed since mid-June—baseball.  I went to Nationals Park to see the Nats play the San Diego Padres.  Sunday was spent tracking Marci online as she completed the Ironman.  It was tough for her—she finished in 16 hours 20 minutes, only 40 minutes from the cutoff.  But after having failed to complete Ironman Lake Placid six years ago, it marked the completion of unfinished business for her!

Completing Unfinished Business?

So am I going to take inspiration from Marci and someday attempt to complete my unfinished coast-to-coast business?  I think I can safely say “no.”  I know that the physical demands and the mental demands of riding almost every day, long miles, for two months does not work for me.  Giving up almost everything you normally do day-to-day, and pushing so hard physically for so long, I’ve discovered is not something I can enjoy for the time it takes to go coast-to-coast.  I just cringed a bit to think that if I had continued the tour and not come home, and had been riding for the last week, I’d still have 13 more days until I’d be finished.   That would have been too much. I am pretty sure that I’ll take more bicycle tours before I hang up my helmet.  But I am also pretty sure that probably none will be longer than about two weeks.

When we arrived at the South Dakota border on the bike trip, I completed setting foot in all 50 states (thanks in a great part to my years at Amtrak, traveling all over the country).  I think a better cycling goal for me than taking a coast-to-coast trip—one that is both physically and mentally more appropriate for me, is to go ahead and try to make sure I have not only set foot in all 50 states, but bicycled in each one as well.  

24 down (plus DC).  26 to go!

(if you must know, here are the 24—MA, NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, VA, WV,NC, SC, FL, OH, KY, LA, TX, MN, WI, AZ, CA, SD, WY, ID, OR, HI)

Thanks for following my blog.  Thanks for all your support.  Anybody want to go for a ride?