Seeing small town America from the bicycle seat ___________________________
For the first seven miles of the ride on Tuesday, I went a different way than the map suggested. I got back on route again, but in those seven miles there was lots of great scenery, with farmland and lakes and rivers. If I had been on route from the beginning I would have missed it so it was a reminder of how, even though I’m crossing the entire country, I’m still only seeing a small fraction of it. [Read more…]
As mentioned, I was in the higher altitudes for the past two nights, including biking over Hoosier Pass on Sunday, at 11,539 feet (3517 meters). I stayed in a motel Sunday night and woke up several times noticing that I was a little short of breath. It was nothing major, but I was ready for Monday’s ride which would bring me down to 5,000 feet. [Read more…]
Sunday was the day for the climb to the top of Hoosier Pass, at 11,539 feet. I was staying in a dorm room at the Fireside Inn in Breckenridge. My friend Donald, who was going to ride with me for a few days, was driven by a friend the night before up towards Breckenridege, but the unavailability of rooms in the town left him to spend the night on the side of the road two miles below the other side of the pass. [Read more…]
Saturday was supposed to be a 54 mile day into Breckenridge, with an elevation change of several thousand feet leading up to the final part of the climb to Hoosier Pass. I had looked at the weather report and since it called for no rain and light winds I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get started. [Read more…]
I knew I had to get up early and get on the road on Friday with the weather report calling for high winds. Generally, the winds don’t pick up until later in the day. I was camping in the city park in Walden and woke up just after 5:30.
The temperature had gone down to the freezing point that night and while I was comfortable in the sleeping bag, I knew that getting out of it it would be another story. But I started thinking that for each minute of lying around it was going to be another minute later in the afternoon of facing the winds. So I got up and began packing. [Read more…]
Yesterday in leaving Saratoga for the 68 mile ride to Walden, I was debating on stopping for breakfast at a restaurant or just quickly stopping by a convenience store. I decided on a restaurant. The first one I went to had a sign that said “Sorry, closed today due to illness.” The second one, Ma’s Kitchen, was closed too, but I think permanently as it looked like Ma had been away from the place for years. [Read more…]
Back in 1985 when I rode from Washington to Maine with a group of eleven, three of us took a side trip into Minneapolis for a few days. We took the most direct route, which meant riding into the city illegally on the interstate highway. I’m not sure how we weren’t pulled over. Probably because there were no cell phones back then where drivers could alert the authorities. [Read more…]
So far I’ve ridden 1,615 miles since leaving the Pacific on August 4th, with 29 riding days and five rest days. That’s an average of 55.6 miles a day for the days I’m on the bike and 47.5 miles a day for all days, including the rest days.
On Monday morning I woke up around 5:30 in the tent on the picnic table in Jeffrey City. The ride the day before was a strange one with trying to keep ahead of the storms, and two out of the three times I did. [Read more…]
I knew that Sunday the 4th (which began the second month of the trip) would offer a chance of rain, but I didn’t know at the time to what extent it would affect the day’s ride and also cause some excitement. [Read more…]
(Finally able to post this after no internet yesterday or this morning)
On some days it takes forever to get going, and it can get frustrating. Yesterday morning (Saturday) I was all set to check out of the Wind River Motel and reached for my cycling gloves which I had set on the bed just minutes earlier. But there was only one glove. [Read more…]