Day 56. Rest Day in Orchard Park

Wild Waves Camp





Huntington



Cleveland



We are happily resting today. We stocked up on food for the day in the evening yesterday and have been holed up all day. Everything is now dry from the big wet yesterday, though it did take putting Alicia's riding shoes in the sun a few hours to get them dry. They were still sopping wet this morning, er, at 1 pm when we got up.

We first got up at 8am and ate breakfast, then went back to bed. What bliss. No riding today. Funny though I do feel antsy after a while.

We have ridden 3324.5 miles. Wow! That's a few, huh? This week was a new high with 544 miles covered. We have two maps to go: one 421 mile through New York state; the other, the wrap up, traversing 402 miles of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. From this we will cut off about 60 miles with a shortcut tomorrow and we plan to end in Yarmouth a bit north of Portland saving another hundred or so miles. I did a loose mapping of days and estimate we could be done in as few as 7 more days of riding. There will be another rest day - so 8. And the mountains may tax us in New Hampshire so maybe another. Still we are getting very near. It is starting to be exciting that we will soon finish.

After 56 days on the road, this is not one of those cases where it feels this is ending too soon. We are ready. It has not been too much and it certainly will not be too little.

What!? No Corn!?




Going Wild

You know how we say that dogs (and other animals) can go wild after being turned loose on their own. Well, in a sense I feel the same is true for me. Not wild but perspectives really do change. There have been several relaxations of attitude that I think is for the better. Things that I would once have watched for I am not so concerned about, other things I didn't think of I pay attention too. The "safety things" are not quite the concern they were. What happens happens. The facts are bad things do not happen often, people do care and are interested in you and your well being, and causing you harm is incredibly inconvenient for the one causing harm.

We take pains to be visible. Particularly in day light. We have these bright Yellow/Lime colored wind jackets that we put on the back of the bike when not being worn because frankly, you can see us from like half a mile. They are great. Better than yellow, or flashers. In rainy weather, the flashers are great. Especially Alicias 3 X 7 inch giant flasher. We also use our headlights in flasher mode so that cars from the opposite direction know we are here. This has been important in a few car passing situations. I also wave to people to be friendly but to make sure we are seen.

These are the precautions. After this, I know we have done what we can to be visible. If we need to be on the road because the shoulder does not exist or the shoulder is too rough, we are. People do give us accommodation most of the time. We find that we can count on the good will of others to a great extent. There are though some who are decidedly nasty. It always evokes the question: "Why do you want to risk killing someone just because we are a bit of an inconvenience? What is so bad about slowing down a bit?".

In the end though, our lives are entrusted to God's care. I am glad not to have a rear view mirror. That would be scary and we would probably have gone off the road several times by now avoiding what we "thought" might happen. I have cars go by with maybe 6 inches to spare. I may look bullet proof, but, of course, I'm not. One little brush would probably really screw me up.

The two biggest challenges have been the high speed highways that have no shoulder and the really rough city streets where you only have time to react, react, react and you must take a lane.

Still, I have lost the fear and replaced it with precautions, considered action, and trust in my fellow man that they do not want to cause an accident.

Camping in strange places; securing gear; riding with traffic; meeting people; agreeing to stay in peoples places; all of these have concerns with them. Concerns I have left behind. Loss is not to be feared and all of these are related to loss. Loss of property, life, freedom; it can be so paralyzing and at the least occupies too much attention. Let it all go. Focus instead on relaxing, meeting people, accepting generosity, and, satisfying the interest of others. The other stuff may happen but probably will not.

In a larger sense, we are facing this with my job situation. It will all settle out and all will be well. It is well now. Life is happening and we are happening with it. Life is good. Life is living.

Astabula




My Latest Fashion Statement



~Pete

Day 55. Orchard Park, New York

Here we are in New York state. An easy 73 mile day complicated by
afternoon rain. We had a bit of rain in the morning that really
picked up at our lunch break. We were also tired. It's been a big
mileage week. Over 500.

But really, our overall time was still good. It rained hard this
afternoon. We were drenched. It is warm enough that rain gear does
little good. You either get wet from rain or under the rain gear from
exertion. You really can't tell which.

We plan to stay in Orchard Park tomorrow for a much needed rest day.
Butch and Chuck may catch up and ride with us Sunday. We'll see.

Day 54. PA/NY Border - Joe Barber place

The adventure continues. Strong tailwinds today provide much but
delivered little. The map also promised
lots of riding with lake views. Sadly these things did not pan out.
Still a good solid ride.

We took a 2.5 hour break for library and lunch in Conneaut Ohio. We
were interviewed for the local paper. A reporter saw us and hailed us
over. We talked far a good 30 minutes.

At the library, I handled a few of the difficult things we have not
discussed much. I noted in the news recently some refernces to
"funemployment". This is a fun term to apply to the unemployed who
decide to do something fun with their time off. While many may have
resources to pursue these things and while what we are doing could be
seen as funemployment, I have to say that for us this is not easy or a
purely fun undertaking. It is actually very inexpensive to live as we
are right now while working through the job hunt and ceditor
difficulties. Today I spent time printing and faxing key documents to
the mortgage company. We will likely lose the house which is a
sadness. I really like our home and it was a very reasonable and
modest purchase when employed. Please understand these things are
difficult and are not far from our thoughts as we travel. The library
was very helpful with networking, printing, faxing, and shredding the
faxed documents.

We had passed through Erie, Pennsylvania today and had decided to
press on to make the journey to Orchard Park, NY easier tomorrow when
we came up to a fellow on the side of the rode. His name is Joe
Barber and he Is a pediatrician in Erie. He offered us a place to
sleep at his place very near where we were considering camping for the
night.

We are rested having showered, jacuzied, and washed clothes. His
place on Lake Erie is very nice.

The view below is of the Lake Erie shoreline from Joe's backyard. We
covered 93 miles even with the big break. The wind helped
occasionally, though we were often sheltered by trees.

Day 53. Perry, Ohio

Chillin to the band at the city park in Perry. Nice community event
next to Lake Erie. Free too. The people are really enjoying
themselves. It is nice to just sit back and enjoy the people and music.

We traveled 91 miles passing through Cleveland today. Lots of rad
urban riding. It is almost like mountain biking picking your way
through the minefield of potholes, car whizing by, asserting your
space on the road and whipping along at high speed. Dangerous but
also fun.

Tomorrow we are looking to Erie, PA or beyond.

Day 52. Wild Waves

Here we see Lake Erie. We rode 95 miles to get here. The weather was
decent; cool this morning, 88 this afternoon. We will be following
Erie for the next 250 miles.

It is nice in camp. Very much a resort. Too bad there us little
time to enjoy. We are bushed.

Severe weather is in the forecast. We'll see. Hopefuly it wil miss
us.

Today a tent pole broke. It's fixed, but will need repair soon. I'll
give REI a call tomorrow and see about shipping replacement parts to a
post office down the road, general delivery.

After that a tent stake snapped in half. Oh well, just another set of
things to deal with. No big deal.

We expect to skate through the Cleveland metro area tomorrow. About
85 miles.

Night All - from Ohio

Day 51. Grand Rapids, Ohio

We made it into Ohio. A 77 mile day ( which feels moderate not
stressful). Nice weather, lower humidity, no wind early, tailwind
late - a good day of riding.

This picture is of a civic building ( court house, I think) in
Napolean. Very interesting architectue.

Last night in Monroeville when we rolled into camp we saw a couple of
guys I thought we would not see again: Chuck and Butch. They had met
somewhere on the road and were traveling together. We last saw Chuck
more than a month ago. I figured he was at least a week ahead. I had
also heard Butch decided to shoot on down the road, so I was surprised
to see him. Good meet!! Truely the fellowship of the road...

This morning we found that Jean-Marc had arrived. Another huge
surprise. He last dropped into Minneapolis to rest. So I thought we
would not be seeing him again. But here he is. He rode 175 miles in
one day just to get across Indiana. I am impressed. I would not have
thought anyone could ride so far in a day. I'm pretty sure I
couldn't. It did take him around 18 hours though.

Day 50. Monroeville - 115 miles - Alicia is 50!!

What a day. We rode 115 miles to the edge of Indiana here in
Monroeville. We enter Ohio tomorrow. If we do 400 miles a week, we
have 3 weeks left.

On this 50th day, Alicia turned 50. We indulged in copious amounts of
ice cream at the Whippy Dip. I had so much, I was cold for 30 minutes
after I went back into the 80 degree heat. The orange ice cream
slushes were fabulous ( I had 2.). Alicia had a huge banana split.

So we continued off route at 7:10 am. It was cool in the 60's and the
humidity was way down. I had actual drops of water on my forearms
instead of the unbroken sheet of water I had previous days.

It was pretty windless and we had a plan to take highway 24 up through
Huntington. When we got to the divided highway at Logansport we were
very disapppinted to find it had no shoulder. We aborted that plan
and took business 24 into town. I found that business 24 continued as
other roads along the desired route so that is how we continued. The
roads were ok, sometimes no shoulder, but very little traffic. We
rejoined the route past Huntington.

Later in the day we had some nice tailwinds which made the last 25
miles easier than we felt.

The picture below is an ice cream truck as we entered Monroeville.
What is awesome is it says it is a song truck on the side. For years
we told our beloved children the ice cream truck was a music truck and
failed to mention it sold ice cream so this is like perfect!!