May 20th, 2006

day two of the Cascades

Hello all,

Ray P: Ain’t no ski lifts on this mountain, sucka! (Well, actually, there probably are, but they’re not helping me any.)

Brian K: Good to hear all is well in the USAF.

Brian D: Oh, I’ll hang in there all right. Not too much writing though, spending all my time getting from point A to point B and setting up camp, breaking it down and all that. But I have written some, and I have to say I’m really pleased with the miles I’m putting in. I think once I’m out of the mountains (Tomorrow’s the last day. Yeah!! Until Montana . Boo!!) I’m really going to get some done with those extra few hours each day. I’m think the writing I’ve done so far is pretty good.

Mark: Obviously, I wasn’t pedaling 95-110 rpm like I do on my road bike. But today when I was traveling across the valley floor that separates the second and third ranges of the Cascades I have been crossing, I was surprised that with all that weight and after already having put in 45 miles of mountains, I could still pedal at about 85-95 rpm and hold about 15 mph. I think after I finish this first third, the last two thirds are going to be a cakewalk.

Dad: Thanks. I’m a bit worried about Kona. Please spend as much time with him as you can.

            So I just got email confirmation that I was accepted a Franklin Pierce Law School (#6 IP school in the nation! Right behind NYU.). Too bad I’m nearly positive I’m going to turn them down. I’ll be positive in another day or two. Still feels good that they want me, though.

            Now for a bicycle touring story. Today I crossed Loup Loup Pass , and, yeah, it does rain all the time in Washington . The rain came in last night at about midnight, and I had to get up and put ear plugs in so I could sleep with the rain beating on my tent all night (thanks for that tip Jason! Worked like a charm). The next morning I packed up camp in the rain, climbed the pass in the rain, and descended to the valley below in the rain. And then I found out my water tight gear bag for my trailer isn’t water tight. So, I am in this incredible hick town in Eastern Washington trying to solve the problem this creates for my computer. While I was pedaling along today I saw a Rodeo, countless horse ranches, grain silos and more people wearing cowboy hats then I have seen in my entire life. I’m pretty sure every single vehicle that passed me today was a raised Ford F-250. I think I am beginning to understand how it is that Ford is the number one selling automaker in the world and just how Bush became president.

Anyway, check out the attached photos. You’ll see the tire dip, the first camp, the view from the first camp, the approach to Rainy Pass , Rainy Pass itself, Washington Pass , the decent from Washington Pass and Loup Loup Pass.

jb

May 25th, 2006

out of WA, through ID and into MT

Hello All,

So much has happened since I last wrote. I think last time I had just finished three of the five major passes in the northern Cascades. My goal was to hit Wauconda and Sherman the next day and be done with those rainy mountains in one final push. I didn’t make it. After climbing (27 mile climb) and descending Wauconda I got about half way up my the biggest and final pass, Sherman, when I spotted a refuge I couldn’t pass up, an empty salt storage building at a road service facility. I took the opportunity to just through my bivy sack on the ground in this wonderful, dry place and save all the trouble of pitching and then packing camp in the rain. I also hoped the rain would be gone in the morning. It wasn’t, but I did have a dry night. The next day I just couldn’t take any more rain and mountains, so I vowed I would be out that day—no matter what. I crossed Sherman and the foothills on its eastern side. I put in 92 miles that day, I was right at the Washington/Idaho boarder and the Cascades were behind me. I put in another 95 the next day and hit the midpoint of my short ride through Idaho just to make sure Washington was really behind me. I crossed into Montana the next day and I just now finished my second day of riding in MT. I am now about 4-5 days away from Glacier National Park . But for the most part, without the mountains to lift them to their dew points, the rain clouds have been good to me since. Just a few showers here and there.

            Today I had a serious mechanical in the middle of nowhere; the tire on my trailer split right along the tread pattern and left a gash about an inch and a half. I had no replacement 16’’ tire. I figured I’d just bring tire gussets made from old sidewalls. I brought a replacement tire for my bike, but I figured what are the odds of getting a blow out on my trailer a good tire gusset couldn’t fix. I fucking hate Murphy, whoever he was. But luckily a few towns ago I had bought a thread and needle to fix a whole I have worn into my shorts, so there I am carefully sewing this whole shut in my tire along side this mountain highway in MT. I just finish sewing and I am putting in a gusset to reinforce my needle work when a guy in a Jeep Grand Cherokee comes by with full bike racks and all. He pulls over and, get this, it’s a group of recent retirees doing the same trip I am. They’re all in there mid-fifties and there are four of them. They have this system set up where three ride and the other drives all there gear for 25 miles at a time and then they rotate. These guys are doing it express style. No food, all meals out. No camping gear, all hotels. And they’re doing it on their race bikes. But get this: one was a anesthesiologist, two were toxicologists for Exxon and the other was married to one of the toxicologists. I guess they don’t need to worry about cutting costs.

            Anyway, the three riders push on while the guy on sag duty runs me to the nearest bike shop about 20/25 miles away. It gets better. This bike shop is listed on my map set but when we get there it this guy who sells Specialized and Redline out of his garage as a second income thing. I have to wait in his front yard until about 3:30 when he gets home from his day job which is teaching the 4^th grade at the local school. Eventually he comes tearing around the corner, on two of the three wheels of his adult trike, and he’s wearing some 1950s pro-tec helmet and old style split-lenses, coke bottle glasses. He’s turns out to be 62 and quite the guy about town because as soon as we get in his garage/shop the phone starts ringing and people start showing up. To wrap this up, he sells me a tire and I finish my mandatory mileage and pitch camp just before dark.

Talk to you all next time,

jb          

June 2nd, 2006

out of the Rockies and into...well, nothing. This is a long one.

Hey all,

Well I made it into Glacier National Park , barely. I got here about 8:30 after a 86 mile ride from Eureka , MT. I camped out in the city park at Eureka and those intermittent showers and t-storms I talked about last time turned into a steady down pour at about 3AM. It was tough to get out of the tent and get ready to ride, but I want to be this part of the country so bad I threw my wet tent in my bag without even packing it up and just started pedaling. I got rained on in varying degrees the whole ride and that has to be my tenth straight day of at least some rain.

            I also got a bad glass cut on my rear tire and had to use my spare tire. But the real bummer came was when I was about twelve miles outside of Glacier and I got my second flat of the day. It was again on the rear and I was a bit scared that I had somehow ruined the brand new tire I had just put on. But while I was inspecting the tire I noticed that my rim was splitting on three of the nipple eyelets where the spokes come through. I had heard a sharp ping a few moments before and checked out the roadway because I thought I had dropped something, but when I saw nothing on the road, I just kept riding. Now I know that noise was my rim cracking. Anyway, a few miles after that fateful sound, my tire started going flat and my rim was rubbing on the rear brake. And that’s when I noticed it. Needless to say that really shot me down because there is just no way to fix such a thing. I sat on the side of the road for a good long time wondering what I was going to do. My maps said there were no bike shops in front of me for a long, long way and the one that was behind me was too far to go on my broken wheel. I really thought I was sunk, sitting there on the side of the road in the rain with a busted bike. Then I started making phone calls. First to Ray’s Cycle. They were closed. Then to Phil at home. I got in touch with Phil, but he didn’t think he had anything he could mail me from the FF shop and we also decided that Ray could do it faster from VV since they were actually open on Memorial Day, so he looked up Ray’s number for me and I got a hold of him at his home. I gave Ray all the details and he agreed to overnight a new rear wheel to the GNP post office general delivery on Tues morning. So I took all the tension of my wheel. Disconnected my rear brake so the wheel could actually roll and set off to ride the last twelve miles to the park as carefully as I could.

            By now I am actually in a pretty good mood. I figured I broke down at a place I wanted to lay over at anyway, I had three days in the bank to spare, I was really impressed by my friends’ ability and willingness to help me out of the jam, I new I only had one more ride in the mountains to go and even the weather forecast was saying the rain would be gone in about two more days. Moreover, right before I pulled into the park a bunch of locals were hanging out at this bar that’s just before the entrance and they directed me to a good place to camp that was both legal and free. It was turning out to be a pretty good day after all. So I went just up the road to the recommended camp spot and looked around for a place to put my tent, but in the end I figured it would be easiest to just through my bivy sack under this little foot bridge and called it good. The rain was only a drizzle at this time. Then I headed back to the bar to put back a couple with the locals. It was a bit before ten o’clock. I drank a beer, someone bought me a second and I bought myself a third. It was a crazy night. I met a man who had been attacked by a mountain lion and he had several sets of four evenly spaced scars all down both his arms to prove it. He said he managed to get a hold of a rock in the battle and was able to hit the cat in the head about five times and this won him the fight. He said the mountain lion was having a real hard time walking when it retreated. And the same guy also had a scar on his forehead, just behind his hairline that was about the size of quarter and shaped very much like a comet with its tail pointing to the back of his head. This was from a gas station robbery gone bad in which he was the clerk and was shot point blank with a 22. The angle must have been just right because it didn’t penetrate the skull. Then the strangest part of my whole trip happened. I am sitting at the bar, and I look like a traveler, so this guy asks me, “Where’re you from?” I answered, “ Illinois . About straight across from Chicago, right on the Mississippi .” (I’ve learned not to tell people from MT that I am from CA). And I shit you not, this guy just goes, “You from Moline ?” This guy was from Catalina Island in So.CA. What a guesser this guy was. Turned out he was a chiropractor and had some knowledge of the area because of the big chiropractic college in Davenport , IA , but damn! Why not Rock Island or East Moline , or even Galesburg for that matter. I headed back to camp after that one. It was about 12:30 and the rain had started coming down heavily again by this time. When I got to camp I discovered that I placed my bivy right under the seam where the bridge met the land and water was just pouring into my bivy. Now, my bivy sack is just a fair weather thing designed to keep the dew of your sleeping bag, provide a little rip protection and keep the bugs away. It has a mesh face panel and this is where all the water was getting in. Because its water proof, save for the mesh face panel, the thing was swollen like a water balloon. By then I was just too tired to get mad. I just dumped the water out of my bivy, bunched the sleeping bag that was inside it into a ball of goose down mush, strapped the whole mess onto my trailer and headed for the nearest hotel. When I got there I saw a open sign, a vacancy sign and a buzzer to ring for night service. I rang the buzzer. No one came. I did this about a dozen angry times. Finally I checked the door to the rooms and it was open. I though about just curling up on the hallway floor and calling it good, but I thought that was a little flagrant. So I started exploring the place. I eventually found the whirlpool room, one of those nice pine paneled jobs, and I ended up sleeping on the floor in there.

     Then Memorial Day had the heaviest and steadiest day of rain yet. It came down in sheets non-stop. I dried my sleeping bag at the local laundry mat and I was, at about seven in the morning, able to check into the hotel, so I retreated back there and didn’t come out for the rest of the day. But Tuesday was great. I got of bed Tues morn, went outside, fell to my knees and worshipped the sun like a heathen. I spent all that day writing at various spots around Lake McDonald , and the next day I carefully rode my broken bike as far as I could up Going To The Sun Road (about 14 miles) before the avalanche crew turned me around. Check out the pics.

     Ray got me my wheel by 8:30 AM Thursday, and I put in 98.3 that day and spent the night in Cut Bank, MT,—the high plains. I cannot tell you how dramatic the nothingness is, and the poverty of the Blackfoot Indian Reservation is staggering. Today I’m only doing about 50 miles because the lay over in GNP screwed up my schedule and it means if I ride too much I’ll hit my next supply pick up on a Sunday and that means the post office will be closed. I guess I won’t be able to try and recover any time until next week.   

jb    

Bye, bye Rockies...

June 7th, 2006

North Dakota

The High Plains

June 20th, 2006

the mighty Mississippi

Itasca Lake - The source of the Mississippi

Hello everybody,

            I guess it’s been a while since I’ve sent out an email, but eastern MT and all of ND were terrible for wireless connections. Most of the po-dunk hotels I came across had no service, so I couldn’t sit in their parking lots and pirate their service. Anyway, I am well into Minnesota and loving it. Today I rode a few miles down a bike path threw Itasca State Park to the headwaters of the Mississippi River . I had forgotten how dense Midwestern forests are. They don’t have that open floor thing going on like mountain forests do. They’re so thick that you can hardly walk through them. And the lake country of MN is more beautiful than I expected it to be.

            All I can say about ND is that it is the most xenophobic, bigoted place I have ever been to. I’m only a hundred miles or so into MN, but it is already getting better. Fargo was just plain ugly. I saw two African-Americans today, so that brings the afro count up to four, one woman in Tonasket , WA and one young man in Williston , ND and then two today. I even heard two languages besides English while I was at the park.

Another thing I noticed while at a fair in Fargo was the obesity rate. I kid you not; maybe 1 in 50 people (at best) were of a normal/average/healthy-ish weight. Someone told me today that MN has the highest diabetes rate in the nation. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure is believable.

I am having real wheel trouble again. I noticed hair line cracks around several of my spoke eyelets again, and I keep breaking spokes. Front wheel is straight as an arrow though and not one broken spoke yet. I can’t believe how I go through tires. 400 or 500 on the rear and I rotate them to the front, but I got a flat yesterday because I had worn my front rotated tire down to the cords. I am limping into Bemidji tomorrow with several gussets in my tires hoping to find a new set. I have been looking for a new chain since eastern MT and none of these small towns have nine speed chains. There were a couple real shops in Fargo , but I went through there on a Sunday. I think I’ll be able to get one in Bemidji tomorrow, but at this point, I’m afraid my drive system is too worn to work with a new chain. I guess I’ll find out. My right shifter is barely working too because I fell on a dirt road back in Brockton , MT and filled it full of dirt and tiny pebbles. The wear on the bike is more than I thought it would be in some cases and this really puts the magnitude of trip in perspective. It also amazes me how durable the human body is in comparison to anything we ourselves can create. But my body is wearing a bit too. My ass is finally started to ache like hell. But lots of Vaseline in the shorts everyday and a few days of reduced miles and I’m as good as new. Wish the bike was that easy (and inexpensive). I seem like I’m needing more calories lately too, hungry all the time. My knees and hips are a bit stiff, but nothing worse than what I’ve felt before.

Anyway, I am right at the halfway mark and things are going really well. The weather is getting better all the time, but I have been rained on quite a bit still, including last night. But it’s just periodic thunderstorms, nothing too inconvenient. Here in MN and then in IL I have some opportunities to rework my bike and get ready for the second half.

I think I’ll have some better pictures from here on out, since I’m out of the grasslands. I am sending pictures of myself standing in the headwaters of the Mississippi , a shot of the Mississippi a ways up from its source, Lake Itasca and some shots of some Native American burial mounds in Itasca State Park, MN .

Minnesota is great. I’ll be in this state for about another 8-10 days. I make a big “L” pattern which means I do more miles in MN than any other state. Brian and Phil: you overestimate my abilities. I’m not in Chicago area yet (though I never really go into Chicago ). I am at the halfway mark though. I’m trying to ride less and write more too, so I’m slowing a bit plus the ass problems already mentioned. See ya!

jb 

July 4th, 2006

the homelands

Happy 4^th!

            I made into the homelands. This is my forth morning in Illinois and though it is nice to be in the vacationing from my vacation and reassuming something close to normal living, it is strange to be off the bike for so long and I am itching to get riding again. Last night was fireworks on Lake Matherville and today my nieces and I will be going to the a cardboard boat race on the river. My last few days in Minnesota were good, but I spent most of them in Wisconsin . I went off course and put in some extra miles on the MN side of the Mississippi , since WN is so beautiful. Steinbeck describes WN as a shock of beauty in Travels with Charley and he is right. I was shocked to find so many hills and forests in the Midwest and I spent 23 years there. I know the road cycling is good there and I bet the Mt biking is too. The north-eastern corner of Iowa is surprisingly hilly too. I bet I climbed half a dozen “cardiac” sized hills when I went through there. I also went to the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa . I guess lower Wisconsin and several areas along the river in Iowa and Illinois are known for the presence of these ancient burial mounds. They’re pretty cool. Many are shaped like animals. One group was arranged like migrating birds.

            I broke my 128 mile record and did a 146 coming into home, still no double century yet, but maybe soon; I’m going to need to make some time up. I broke another rear wheel. Same thing again, spokes pulling through the rim. I got my shifter cleaned out too, but I had to disassemble it to do it and, of course, I couldn’t get the springs back in, so now I have to push the lever back in place after a shift and I have to hold the main level back when shifting the inner lever, but it works every time and I get every gear, so good enough. I bought new tires in Bemidji and I have picked up a spare in one of my supply packages since, so I think the bike is good. What’s going to brake has broken and if I brake another wheel, at least I’ll expect it.

Anyway, the land hasn’t changed too much over the past two weeks. I am still certainly in the Midwestern region, though the marshes of northern MN have abated and the mosquitoes have, therefore, abated too. Weather has been good too, only an occasional thunderstorm. A bit on the humid side. Tomorrow I am going up to Chicago to try and secure an apartment and to check out my law school in person. If all that goes well I will be back on the bike early 7/6.

I’ve attached a couple photos of the effigy mounds, but they don’t really photograph well. And for all you people making the skinny comments here are the facts: I started this journey at 193; I have weighed in as low as 179, but currently weigh in at 183. I just can’t get much lower than 183. But whatever weight I do have certainly has rearranged itself over the summer. You guys are right. When I look over all the state line photos, I do get leaner and leaner.

Hope all is well with everyone. Have a good holiday.

jb  

July 11th, 2006

Into Ohio

I am just getting up here in Monroeville , Indiana and I will cross into Ohio almost immediately. I am only about five miles off the boarder. This will be my tenth state and I consider it the beginning of the east. I was just looking at the map and camping is going to be fairly difficult the next few days because it is very urban and there just aren’t many campgrounds on the map. I am going to get ahead of schedule not because I want to, but because the campgrounds are so far apart. I will be in Cleveland in two days and I am looking forward to going to the rock and roll hall of fame. I have also heard on the road that there is a great science museum right next door and it is showing that Tour de France movie on a big, curved I-Max theatre. I don’t think I’m going to be able to avoid staying in a hotel in Cleveland . I shudder when I think of the money I am going to spend over the next week, and my resources are getting so low.

            I at first thought that Indiana was a carbon copy of Illinois , but then I stopped and talked to the people. It is very like Illinois , as far as the lay of the land, but the average level of education seems to drop while the average time spent watching NASCAR seems to skyrocket. But I think the area I was at (Cass county) was exceptionally redneckish. And there are no real urban centers, at least not where I was, like the QCA, Rockford or Chicago in Illinois . Last night I slept at this cyclist only lodging that the city of Monroeville , IN maintains. I had a full bathroom and kitchen, TV, DVD player—everything and it was all free and all cyclist only.

            I am sad to say my bicycle is still taking a beating. My shifter finally died. Around Kewanee , IL it just seized up. I haven’t tried to rebuild it for the second time and I don’t think I will unless I am near a good bike shop, so I can get parts if I need them. But really I don’t think I’ll bother. Shifters are just too expensive. I thought about getting cheap friction shifter and just using my STIs for brake levers, but that means I have to buy bar tape and cables and all that. I’ll stop in a bike shop and see what I can do, but I might just ride with three gears from here on out. Other than that though, I am having better luck with the bike than I did the first part of the journey.

            I set up my apartment in Chicago and it is incredibly small, I think less than 400sf. But it is right on Lake Michigan , just a block from the main train line through the city, and only 4/5 miles from school. I am also about 6 blocks from Wrigley Field. I can even have my dog there, though it will be tough coming home a few times a day to take him outside. But I guess that’s life. My school looks pretty nice and it is right in the heart of downtown.

            I don’t have any super interesting pics this time because I have been in farmland ever since I left the effigy mounds. But the pic of dawn on the Illinois river is pretty cool. Also you will find Illinois corn, the Indiana state line, and hay bailers in Indiana . Next time I’ll send pics from Cleveland .

Illinois River

jb

PS: After writing this email, I packed up and headed outside to leave and the rain was coming down in buckets. Guess I’ll be at the Monroeville cyclist shelter one more night.

July 18th, 2006

riding along Erie Canal

Hello everybody,

            I am sitting in a café in Brockport , NY . I have been riding a trail along the Erie canal all day and probably will spend most of tomorrow along the canal as well. I am making great time without the cars and traffic to deal with. It is very cool. Whenever I need water I just go into one of the towns on the canal and fill up and it only took three tries to find an internet café right on the water. The towns have lots of brick buildings and old architecture.

            For the past three days I rode right on the shoreline of Lake Erie in three different states: OH, PA and NY. I am very impressed by the beauty of the Great Lakes . I think I will be spending a good deal of time out on the water while I live in Chicago . I have been to Lake Michigan several times, but somehow this trip makes all the things I have seen before different, perhaps because I am looking harder and more closely than I ever have before.

Sunrise on Lake Erie near Huron, OH

            I have also hit the first major metro areas of my trip: Cleveland , Buffalo and, just a bit later today, Rochester . I think Cleveland has a bad rap. For days leading up to everyone on the road told me how bad it sucked. I can see why a person intimidated by cars would have a hard time navigating the city, but the place really has personality. I went to the Rock and Roll hall of fame and that place was really cool, blue-collar American art at its finest. And Cleveland itself still has quite a music scene. I stopped into a bar/restaurant and both my bartenders were into it. One had actually gone to college in Boston and studied musicology. She wanted to work the soundboard at a studio. The other was a guy who was actually in a band, though I failed to find out what his role was. They gave me directions to several clubs, but the one I wanted to go to had no show that evening. So, I ended up just hanging around downtown where there was an art festival in full swing. They had booths set up where you could watch people paint, sculpt, etc. There was even an old tore-up building that the graphitti artists where “tagging.” I took some video of this, but its too big to send out. They drew a big crowd and the were some live rappers doing their thing on a PA system setup on the corner by this building. It was all very cool. There were also several stages setup around downtown were different bands played. Cleveland is just a music city I guess.

Downtown Cleveland

            Now Buffalo is a pretty beat up place. I went off course here to prevent going into Canada (I have none of things necessary to allow easy border crossings) and I saw more of the city than others who stick to the route. I snapped some photos of the projects and they show a total archetypal ghetto, clotheslines in the front yards, no grass, rubbish all about, condemned buildings. The whole place really reminded my of the areas around the Arsenal Courts in Rock Island , IL , only much larger. The housing styles were even the same. Still all very interesting after so much time in small, white country-culture America . In fact, I didn’t realize how much I appreciated black-American culture until it was gone and then returned. One thing I have noticed on this trip is that that 13% of our population deeply affects our culture. I have seen it in places like Omak , WA where it is likely the only African-Americans anyone sees is on TV and in places like the Blackfeet Nation where they embrace the gangster image and fantasize about power in their powerless, impoverished nation.

            I should be in NY about another four days. It is a huge state and I ride about the whole thing. First making my way up the south-west corner (which I have already done) and then aross its entire width. Then it should be only 2-3 days to my final destination: Portland , ME. Today’s pics are: sunrise on Lake Erie, panoramic of downtown Cleveland , rock and roll hall of fame (sorry, only the outside, no pics allowed inside!), OH, PA and NY state lines and some other stuff.  

Jb

Ps: I also found a cheap fix for my shifter just before I left OH. I used a cheap thumb shifter intended for department store mt. bikes. It works; it was $5.

Pps: I forgot to mention Niagara Falls ! So much these past few days. It was beautiful. I’ll attach a pic. And I went to this great Catholic church: Our Lady of Victory National Shrine. It was built in 1926 and has this captivating series of sculptures narrating Christ’s crucifixion. I couldn’t begin to describe the beauty.           

Niagra Panoramic

July 26th, 2006

the end

Hello again to everyone,

Well, here I am traveling 36,000 feet in the air at around 500 miles an hour. My 4,000 mile journey which started at one ocean and ended at another, crossed three mountain ranges, meandered along the banks of three great lakes and twisted through four major cities and countless small towns has been reduced to just under seven hours of flight time interrupted by a single 80 minute layover.

            But since I last emailed, I made way through the Appellations: the Adirondack Mountains of Northern New York, the Blue Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. While these are not the immense rock behemoths of the west, they did turn out to be one of my favorite parts of the journey (along with the Mississippi headwaters and Cleveland ). The Appellations seem to be an amalgamation of all American terrain. While they are mountains, its seems as if they are mountains crossbred with the great plains of the upper Midwest, as their tallest peaks have been blunted to a mere 5,000 feet. And their slopes are heavily forested, the common hardwoods of the lower Midwest dominating the lower rises, giving way to the tall pines that adorn western mountains only in their highest regions. They are also an amazing watershed for mountain streams are very numerous and gush a curious red water, even this late in the season. I crossed the Hudson several times while it was yet very near its source and remained something of a creek. But my course did not take me to the actually headwaters as it did for the Mississippi.

The Adirondack Mountains

            I also went to Fort Ticonderoga and the edge of Lake Champlain in NY. That was cool piece of Americana , but I went through it too quickly, as I was anxious to get out of NY. After the rapidity of crossing the smaller Midwestern states 6 or 7 days in NY seemed like an eternity. Once I did get into VT, I met up with another rider, a police officer how was riding to raise money for his community’s DARE program. We rode together for two days and split a room in one of those little New England bed and breakfast places. Surpisingly, it was only $50 dollars for a 2 bed room and in this part of the country camping will cost you $20. But I must say I have been lucky on that front; I only paid to camp 3 times after I left my hometown in IL. The roadside camping is pretty easy to come by in the mountains as the woods are so thick and they have these snowmobile trails that are unused in the summer, so I just walked maybe 50 yards up these and made camp. But It was a bit creepy. Every night I could hear the wildlife walking all around me. I just had to keep telling myself it was only ‘coons and possums, which surely it was—mostly.

I am also sorry to say that I crossed New Hampshire way too fast. I pedaled through it in a single day. As for what I did see, it was very similar to VT, same type of landscapes, crowded with the same antique peddlers and shops selling maple syrup and all its candied derivatives and, of course, the roadside family produce stands. But on the bright side, I finally hit 3 states in a single day. I have had several opportunities to do this: WA, ID & MT or MN, WI & IA (and another combination I am forgetting) and these would have been simple. The VT, NH & ME combination required a 150+ mile day, my longest and second to last day. Also on the bright side, this set me up 45 miles from the ocean and allowed me to hit the coast at about noon the next day. And I have to say finishing was a strange thing. While I was doing that second to last day, the excitement was overpowering. My skin broke out into goose bumps intermittently as I rode and imagined how it was going to be, I kept humming The Doors’ song “The End” to myself and I absolutely could not stop smiling. Not to mention I didn’t even really feel the miles. I thought I would shout for joy when I hit the beach. But I didn’t. Instead, when I actually got there, it was more of a calm contentment. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited but not in the same way as the day before. I took my tire dip photo and then plunged into the water. I got out past the breakers and just rolled with the waves for a while. The water was not cold, but only cool and refreshing. It is going to take years to order my memories of this trip.

            Anyway, thanks to everyone who asked to be on this email list. I have enjoyed writing them and it has given me another way to chronicle my journey and thus burn it into my mind. I am sorry to say that across the whole trip, I only managed about 30 pages of final draft material for my thesis whereas I need about 80/90. But I guess I had to have the experiences if I am going to write about them, and the day-to-day operations of a bicycle tour do take up the bulk of a day. By the time you pack up camp, put in your miles, do a little sightseeing, pitch camp and tend to your poor, abused bicycle the day is done! This is of no great consequence though, as I am finished with all classes and no longer need to be an campus to finish my MA. It only means my first year of law school will be all the more hectic and it probably also means that I will be sitting around doing a lot of writing next summer.

I hope to see everyone while I enjoy my last few days as a CA resident (of course I promise to move back after law school, hopefully to Sausalito where I can take the ferry into San Fran and work for some high-powered  copyright/trademark firm). I plan on doing nothing but visiting with friends and family before I leave for Chicago , sometime around 8/8.

jb