3 months on the road from Boston MA to Seaside OR. Two sisters tackle 3,400+ miles.
Wake up to buzzing in my ears. A few claps and swats yield some dead bloody mosquitoes. YUCK.
The forecast today is rain starting midday, so between that and the gradually waking mosquito population, we have plenty of incentive to get out of camp as early as possible.
Read MoreAgain, no coffee this morning in camp. This time, we Have Coffee, but now No Fuel. At least we had enough last night to cooks one of the trader joes bounty, but only just.
First priority: Find. Coffee.
Read MoreBest. Day. Ever.
Ok, maybe not ever, but it was a Very Good Day.
Read MoreLock 15 was not so quiet in the night. We had warning: our lazy afternoon had been full of action with the traffic noise from I-90 and trains going by across the river. Somehow it's less enticing at 3 am.
Read MoreA storm is coming.
We were warned two days in advance by my dad and then the day before by my husband and we could also see the forecast for severe weather coming our way.
This meant either we needed to hole up here in Amsterdam or we needed to get an early start to make it to shelter before the worst of the storm came in the afternoon.
Holing up? Staying put? Not an option.
Read MoreIt was hot.
We were continually distracted by the canal lock operations - who knew that opening, closing, filling, opening, emptying, opening... over and over would be so fascinating.
Read MoreIt rained ALL night, first all outside, but then by morning on the inside of the tent as well. Luckily it stopped around 11am, so we could pack up everything without getting more wet, and get on the road.
Read MoreToday was epic. Multiple 5-6mph hills then 30+mph downhills, lots of dirt and gravel roads, and at least 3 miles of hiking trails. Plus ome small crashes when we couldn't get out of clips in time.
It was so epic that we had to capture it all with a voice recording.
Read MoreGood:
Ice cream stands
Farmers markets, especially those with ice cream (see above)
Rail trails
Read MoreGreat breakfast at my cousins before setting off for 2nd breakfast at my aunt and uncles, and then really hitting the road.
Sunny. Hot.
Belchertown was first town.
Read MoreThis was a hilly day. It started with the ascent out of Wells State Park, which we tried to avoid by taking a bike trail cutover to an adjacent road which completely did not work out, but added 2.2 miles of walking with bikes on up and down rocky trails, and 40 minutes of time. PLUS THE MOSQUITOES rivalled anything I've seen in Alaska. ARGH.
Read MoreOK, I confess that up until now, we have managed to do our daily riding segments and still sleep at my home outside Boston. We never really had a chance to do any dry runs in advance, so we've been using these first days to make gear and bike modifications which have needed more tools than we're carrying.
Read MoreFirst fully loaded outing, and it wasn't flawless, but it worked just well enough to gets us as far as we did. Up until now, we've been putting in short unloaded miles with some help from family, while we were finalizing our bikes and waiting for some gear to arrive and some our of 'luggage' to be finished (by us). So this is the first TRUE test - of our bikes, our gear, ourselves.
Read MoreWe chose to set off on this beautiful Sunday morning from downtown Boston - no traffic, great weather, easy-going drivers (for MA that is). South Boston locals out playing tag football and sunning on the beach, and Heather and I carrying bikes through the sand to do a ceremonial Atlantic Ocean dip. Our send off was quiet...
Read MoreRevelate Terrapin bags arrived yesterday (Friday), they are terrific, as good or better than expected, and easily hold a 13L drybag as needed.
Front holsters almost done as well, they will roll up around a 13L drybag held between the dropbars on our bikes.
Decided we needed/wanted frame bags yesterday, so we made good progress on those, photos to come, with descriptions of how we made them as well as the front holsters.
Jodee's husband Geoff has been composing a quick video introducing the trip, we previewed that at our sending off party, that video will get posted soon.
Tomorrow we will actually start our ride a day early (!) with a dip in the Atlantic side at Castle Island Beach in South Boston, then heading northwest through Cambridge to Lincoln MA. Then we must finish everything up for our first fully loaded ride on Monday!
Finally the blog is up and running... We've got 5 days before departure from Boston, and still masses to get ready. There seems to always be one more major thing to do... and I'm pretty surprised at how much more there is to think about when you're bicycle touring vs backpacking.
We could have kept it simpler (maybe).
Gear list is long, so we'll have to post that separately, but I'm pleased that so far our carrying weight (sans bike and us) is still in at under 20 pounds each! All of this fits into two 13-Liter dry bags, plus some small overflow into other smaller bags. This includes all our camping gear and off-the-bike clothes and bike equipment. Right now the count is about 18 pounds before food and water, which we'll assume we can resupply very regularly, so we can go light there as well.
Hitting this target has taken some doing, and there will be some sacrifices on this trip, but I think we will be grateful not to be hauling more than this on our bikes, so we can take pleasure in the actual cycling part as well as the sights and stops along the way.
It's cold. Really too cold to be hanging out at our streamside campsite for any longer than we must.
The overnight low was in the 40s, so not terrible, but its not much warmer when we crawl out of the tent at 6am in the morning...
I wake up partially, with cold feet. Hmmm, they're wet.
I put a hand down on the tent floor to hold up my weight so that I can shift on my narrow sleeping pad. Splash. Water.
Target for today: see the headwaters of the Mississippi (in Itasca State Park where we are currently camped), then head to the town of Callaway, where the city offers free camping in their local park.
The 'official' Adventure Cycling Association "Northern Tier" route goes through Osceola, Wisconsin before crossing the border to Minnesota. However, we need to reach a bike shop to deal with Heather's broken spoke and rear derailleur adjustment...
We didn't get much sleep. In addition to being a little cold, my bike lock alarm starts malfunctioning, which means that there's a 110dB alarm going off intermittently next to our tent. ...
Wake up to a pitter patter on the tent. Rain!!
Now I'm fully awake. I sit up. 5.45 am.
"Get up, gotta pack." I'm thinking: get the tent down before it starts really raining. ...
Our target today: get to the bike shop in Hayward to get Heather's front wheel trued. There's a very popular (and expensive!) KOA near Hayward which we'll stay at if we can't find anything else.
After the long hard day yesterday we needed something shorter today. This was reinforced also by not getting out of camp until noon.
Overall, we got kudos from just about everyone on our setup. We were lighter than anyone that we met, and bike shop staff told us that we were lighter than anyone that they had seen as well. There are definitely lighter setups out there, but these had sacrifices that we were not prepared to make.