Jodi and I haven’t been on a bike tour since 2012, for a variety of reasons. But we’re going to remedy that this summer. Come June 25 we will be in the car, bikes on the roof, headed to Port Huron, Michigan. We will be leaving our car parked in the yard of a kind […]
Browsing Posts in Bicycle Touring
From the time I first started bicycle touring back in the mid-90s, my modus operandi has always been to eat a small breakfast in camp when I wake up, then ride 10 or 15 miles until I come to a town and stop at the local diner for a big breakfast. Breakfast is about the cheapest meal you can […]
With the triple-H weather and headwinds all the way, our goal for the day was to make the ~40 miles to Concord NH today. Leaving Meredith we were immediately confronted with a mile and a quarter long uphill, and even that goal seemed like it might be a bit ambitious. But the hills moderated, the […]
I woke up this morning, after a sound and solid 10 1/2 hours of sleep, and realized I was just too tired to crank my biycle down the road today. Jodi must have been tired as well because she readily agreed to a day off, so after breakfast at a local diner we checked with […]
We slept really well last night in Dave & Pam’s guestroom, then enjoyed a huge breakfast. All this gave us a slightly late start to the day. Dave joined us for the first ten miles of the ride, which included the step climb up to Franconia Notch and the start of the bike path through […]
After yesterday’s ride of only 20 miles that turned out to be so grueling, I think both Jodi and I were feeling all of our years and not really looking forward to today’s ride. And as it turned out, it was a rather pleasant day! Reed cooked up giant buckwheat pancakes with fresh apple slices […]
Last night I sent an email off to a Warmshowers (www.warmshowers.org) host knowing that we had to deal with Jodi’s rear wheel today and likely would not be able to ride very many miles today. This morning I got a phone call from Reed confirming that we would be welcome to stay with him and […]
It is amazing how the terrain can change within a single day’s ride. Apparently Granby sits at the edge of the big plain that stretches from the Vermont line north to Montreal. We left Granby on La Route Verte 1 heading mostly east towards Waterloo. The bike path was paved in this section and even […]
We had a fun day in Montreal yesterday. We even took a Grayline bus tour, which is not something we would usually do. The bus tour got us out of downtown without having to cycle anywhere so we could see the Olympic Village and get to the top of Mont Royal, among other places. But […]
It is actually Tuesday the 10th as I write this. We got into Montreal just a bit after noon yesterday but the hostel we are staying at does not offer WiFi so I couldn’t update the blog. This morning we are sitting in a diner in the downtown business district having a very leisurely breakfast, […]
We made it into Canada today, but it wasn’t easy. The wind was against us the whole way. First, we had to ride the miles we didn’t ride yesterday since we cut our ride short at the Motel 6. That added 19 miles to today’s ride, for a total of about 75 miles. We rode […]
It was wickedly humid and hot last night while we were camped at Button Bay. We cooled off in the afternoon swimming in the pool, but it was difficult sleeping due to the heat and humidity. This morning when we got up the air was heavy and still, and soon after we set out it […]
Finally, a day without head winds! It was so nice pedaling without having to slog into the wind all day. We left the campground and rode 10 miles or so to Middlebury, where we stopped for a very substantial breakfast at the Park Diner. Jodi had a stack of 3 blueberry pancakes with real Vermont […]
Yesterday we did nothing. Somehow it filled the day, in a very relaxing way. In the morning we got a ride into town from Jeff and went to Up For Breakfast for, well, breakfast. Then we walked down the street to the Northshire Bookstore, which is a wonderful independent book store with an eclectic selection […]
We tried to get an early start this morning, so we left the motel around 7am and rode back into downtown to the only breakfast place we knew of, the Backside Cafe. Unfortunately, the cafe doesn’t open until 8am. We did a bit of reconnoitering to see if there was anyplace else to eat, but […]
It was a beautiful morning when we left the campground this morning, cool and calm. We followed minor roads with good surface and no traffic. It was a nice way to start the day. Then we turned the corner and suddenly found ourselves confronted with a wall. Within moments we were dismounted and pushing our […]
We cheated a bit on the start of our trip. Instead of riding through the traffic mess of Boston we rode down to the Quincy Center ‘T’ station and got on the Red Line train all the way to it’s terminus at Alewife station. The Alewife station is right next to the beginning of the […]
Sunday Partly cloudy with a chance of a thunderstorm and a chance of rain in the afternoon. High of 91F. Winds from the WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 20%. We will be heading pretty much WNW from Quincy today, which means we’ll have the wind working against us off our port […]
So, our Friday departure definitely is not going to happen. My bike is in the shop and I should hear from them today about what needs to be done. When I looked the bike over myself I saw only minor damage. The biggest thing was some paint scraped off the frame in a few places, […]
Here is the full route we cycled in Israel. If you zoom any particular spot in too far it may not be as precise as it should be, as I filtered the data set to reduce the number of data points. If I hadn’t the server would have to work too hard to process the […]
Date Km Miles 10/4/2011 Kiryat Shmona to Tel Hai Guest House 7.9 4.9 10/5/2011 Tel Hai Guest House to Neve Ativ 40.0 24.8 10/6/2011 Neve Ativ to Karei Desche Guest House 73.1 45.3 10/7/2011 Karei Desche Guest House to Tiberias 53.5 33.2 10/8/2011 Tiberias to Shlomi Guest House 92.6 57.4 10/9/2011 Shlomi to Nahariya […]
I have added the last of the Israel photos to: https://picasaweb.google.com/117957848509101633801/Israel2011
Our journey home started inauspiciously when we packed up at the hotel and rode to the location shown on the Shlomo (car rental) website for their Eilat branch, only to discover a vacant lot. Jodi was smart enough to figure they had to be somewhere by the airport, so we rode over that way and […]
Last night we got to sleep in a real king-sized bed. Every hotel we’ve had so far has advertised double beds, but what you actually get are two twin beds pushed together. Ilan, the Warmshowers host we stayed with on Sunday night, is the controller at the Underwater Observatory here in Eilat (http://www.coralworld.com/eilat/eng/). I emailed […]
Ilan cooked up a wonderful dinner last night, which we ate outside on the patio accompanied by wine and good conversation. Ilan says it will be too cool to sit outside in the evening soon, but it is hard for me to believe that. Jodi and I slept a bit late this morning so when […]
