- Day 1 -1 Week
- Day 1 -12 Hours
- Day 1
- Day 2
- Day 3
- Day 4
- Day 5
- Day 6
- Day 7
- Day 8
- Day 9
- Day 10
- Day 11
- Day 12
- Day 13
- Day 14
- Day 15
- Day 16
- Day 17
- Day 18
- Day 19
- Day 20
- Day 21
- Day 22
- Day 23
- Day 24
- Day 25
- Day 26
- Day 27
- Day 28
- Day 29
- Day 30
- Day 31
- Day 32
- Day 33
- Day 34
- Day 35
- Day 36
- Day 37
- Day 38
- Day 39
- Day 40
- Day 41
- Day 42
- Day 43
- Day 44
- Day 45
- Day 46
- Day 47
- Day 48
- Day 49
- Day 50
- Day 51
- Day 52
- Day 53
- Day 54
- Day 55
- The End
- Retrospective
I lay there waiting for the alarm to put me out of my spiraling misery.
I hear Jerry turn off his alarm the moment it starts… I wonder if he’s been up too. We each shower and finish packing our bikes and grab a coffee. Some toast with butter and jam, our coffees and we’re ready.
We make our way from Jerry’s trough Manhattan to Hoboken, New Jersey. This is the true beginning in my mind.
1) I don’t want to talk about Jerry’s block and now everyone knows where he lives.
2) Rinding in Manhattan doesn’t feel like touring.
3) In a 3K + tour, whats a few miles?
Hoboken was really just a few turns and already we’re in Jersey City. By this time last trip I had already fallen twice, bent the back rack and two spokes, leading us to our fist repair stop. I’m feeling pretty good about this suddenly. We’re miles in and zero falls, failures, or need repairs. We are killing it. We’re little slow, but the biggest lesson I learned in the last trip was ‘Let Jerry set the pace’. I made it from Manhattan to Miami but if I were alone I would have tried to run to Miami from the Georgia border. Florida is a little long to just run through. So if Jerry feels like we should take it easy through these first few cities I’m right behind. And I mean as I type it a lot of these first few miles is feeling things, how the weight is distributed, how the bikes handle with all the weight, etc.
The bridge from Jersey City into Newark has zero shoulder so we decide to ride the sidewalk instead of fight with spending trucks on the 1 & 9. The second bride, maybe Carney to Newark or it may stay be Jersey City, either way the side walk is FULL of sand. Now we get to see how the bikes feel when we walk them. Hopefully we don’t need to do this much, but it was nice to feel the bikes pushing through sand and gravel. By the time we hit Newark we know the weight is well distributed, saddles are comfortable, bikes and shifters are working well.
We make our way into Newark, more city riding, again not very touring feeling but we are making our way. The Oranges went by fairly quickly. I am starting to feel it a bit, I wonder if I am that much more out of shape, or last time with all of the stops add rest, or I had more adrenaline from the excitement of my first tour.
Last tour, we were heading south so we turned south at Summit New Jersey. As we are heading to Toronto we started to snake our way North. Well, what I didn’t not take into account was North New Jersey has a lot more hills then southern. As we head out of the Oranges the elevation raises, and raises. The neighborhoods are nicer but the hills are bigger, and bigger.
I am not prepared for this. I am sucking wind, hard. I’m trying to use the gears to find a sweet spot for me, while not being up Jerry’s ass or loose sight of him. I have a single gear and a trike at home. The single gear is pretty bare bones, steel, but not much else. The trike has two in the front so I can ride my lady to work… on the rare occasion I’m home. The bike I’m using for this tour has two rear bags and my back pack on the rear rack. I have over packed to the point I fear I might pop a wheelie on a big hill. Luckily / unluckily we hit quite a few big hills today. No wheelies yet. Although we will hit the rocks before this trip is done.
We switched places so Jerry could see how my packs looked while we going at speed down the hill. I was not point head space. We approached a light, as it turned yellow. Jerry yelled, “go for it”. I thought he was saying that to say that he would make the light. I continued down the hill. However at the bottom he re-took lead and told me he was saying “water, water”, meaning we should stop at the gas station we were passing. Now, we are at the bottom of the hill and in need of water. We continued a bit more, and found a better place for some drinks. After some refreshments and some nice chatting with the staff we got on our way. As soon as we leave the store there is traffic. We question what could possibly be happening here to create a traffic jam. As we pass the stopped cars we start to see a horrible accident. It looked as if a car crossed the yellow line right as someone else was approaching. Their impact was strong enough to cause a third car to be involved as well. Police had just arrived, EMT’s hadn’t arrived yet. We quickly realized just has short ago this happened. We say someone standing on one side of the road bleeding while a man stood on the other side crying.
We road ahead and spoke of the timing. If we went to the shitty spot to get water, we wouldn’t have taken as long as we did at the nicer one. Would we have been on the road when that accident happened? Would our presence stopped it, made it worse? Timing is a funny thing. Hopefully everyone involved in the accident is ok. And hopefully we make our journey safe as well.
There were more hills. Then there were more hills. I almost gave up, I know I am not prepared for this trip. But I did make it though the day. And Jerry said, if we’re riding 45 + days, they won’t all be good, get the bad ones out of the way.
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