We took yet another day off at Rosheen’s house in Annadale, where we didn’t even leave the house (aside from a 6.5 mile run I did in the afternoon).  After getting  more than enough rest, we took off around 11am on Friday morning.  It was so cold, we only stopped once every 20 miles.  After the first stop, I lost all feeling in my right foot and never regained it until sometime during dinner later that night.

There weren’t many places to stop and warm up along the way, and after the second stop, I was really worried that my foot would become frostbitten and need to be amputated.  Then, just 7 miles from the end, I saw a place called “Try My Nuts” and was instantly drawn to it, for both warmth and nourishment.  The man inside gave us several samples of nuts, all coated in different sugars, spices, and butter.  I probably would have had to stay for a few hours to warm up fully, but after sharing a hot chocolate with Phil and eating a pretzel coated in chocolate and mini Reese’s Pieces, we ventured back outside to finish the last few miles.

First time pitching the tent since we left

Fredericksburg is a lovely historical town, and we passed through a battlefield and a large park on our way into the town center.  Phil had charted out the day’s course to end at a church that looked like it had a large yard where we could camp.  When we arrived, he went inside to ask about pitching our tent, and the man inside generously obliged.

After setting up camp in the church yard and locking our bikes up, Phil and I walked into the town to eat dinner.  We ended up at a quaint restaurant called Jake & Mike’s, where we each started with a pint of beer.  I ordered seared escolar over spinach salad and Phil had blackened chicken over zucchini and mashed potatoes.  For dessert, we split a pumpkin bread pudding with dulce de leche ice-cream.  Everything was wonderful, and we were able to load the next day’s route into Garmin and charge up some of our electronics as well.  I am not looking forward to riding tomorrow, as it is going to be even colder and will be raining as well.

We won’t be stopping every other day, I promise!  But it’s not every day that we find ourselves in such a vibrant area, with so much to see and do, and with family and friends as well.  We are trying to take advantage of being so close to the city, while avoiding cycling in the rain.

Tuesday morning we both woke up late, around 11am.  A few days ago, we began entertaining the idea of cycling straight to New Orleans for the winter, where we can work as pedicab drivers and in a bike shop, instead of cycling down the coast to Fort Lauderdale first.  Since boats generally don’t cross the Atlantic until springtime, we will likely have to stay in the states for the winter.  Why not go directly to New Orleans, where we know we have work, before cycling to Florida in the spring (preferably after the Mardi Gras marathon) to find work on a boat?  It will mean we need to start thinking about adjusting our course in a more westerly direction.

We discussed travel plans and towns we’d stay in along the way for a bit, and then figured out how to take the bus and metro to head into the city for the day.  Upon arriving in DC, my first priority was getting food (as usual).  Phil wanted to see the museums, and since they were closing at 5:30, we decided to look into those first- but not before I bought some food from the first food truck (and only traveling culinary carnival) in the city.  I enjoyed a delicious pumpkin and chick pea curry with basmati rice and a mango lassipop, while Phil started touring the Air and Space Museum.

The next museum we visited was the Native American museum (actually called National Museum of the American Indian).  Once inside, I found my way straight to the cafe, which was filled with Native American cuisine from all regions of North and South America.  The food all looked so good, but was so expensive.  I sampled a few things and ended up spending way too much money on a cup of pumpkin soup, wild rice/watercress salad, and guava tapioca pudding.  I shared this with Phil, since I didn’t want to fill up before we actually made it to any of the places recommended by our friend, Christina.

Silver Tree Sculpture

On the way to the Museum of Natural History, we walked through a sculpture park, where I took a photo of a silver tree.  Sadly, this is the only time I remembered to use my camera that day.  I really have been trying to take more photos for the website!  The Natural History museum was my favorite, but we had the least time to spend before everything closed and the guards began shuffling everyone out.  From there, we walked around to Eastern Market, where Christina had suggested we go for food and books, but it all appeared to be closed for renovation.  We walked to another of her suggestions, Good Stuff Eatery, where Phil ordered a burger and I ordered a pumpkin milkshake.  Looking back on everything I ate during the day, I guess I was really in the mood for pumpkin.  After this, we walked to Co Co Sala, a restaurant/chocolate lounge & boutique.  Charles, the bartender, was  helpful in deciding what to get and very friendly, giving Phil a drink on the house.  I was particularly impressed with his ability to spin a menu on one finger whilst simultaneously engaging in conversation.  I started with a chocolate martini and an exquisite dessert that involved dark chocolate mousse, salted caramel and dark chocolate gelato.  If I didn’t consume enough calories from that, I topped it off with a small plate of wild mushroom and tomato risotto.  Feeling sated, we departed the restaurant.

Phil was going to meet his friend Lauren, who lives in DC and had just returned from an interview in St-Louis, so I needed to catch the metro and bus back to Annandale on my own.  I needed cash for the bus, so I ended up spending $3.00 to withdraw from an ATM, and then had to spend money at the nearest store to make change for $20.  In my haste to catch the metro, I got on the wrong one.  Or I got off at the wrong stop.  Either way, when I got out of the train, I had missed the last bus by almost an hour.  There were two other bus lines that went to Annandale, but they left from a different metro station, so I had to run about a mile to another road to catch an entirely different bus, so I could eventually get on the same bus that I had ridden on the way into the city.  Without my smartphone, I never would have figure it out.  Then again, if my phone hadn’t been threatening to shut down because of a low battery, I probably would have gone to the correct metro stop initially (I had turned my phone off before getting on the metro because I was afraid it would die).  I finally made it back to Rosheen’s house around 11:15pm.

Phil and I made blueberry banana pancakes for breakfast before packing up and leaving Baltimore, with enough leftover pancakes to make 2 almond butter sandwiches for the road.  It was almost 11 when we finally left.  It was another beautiful day, but it was still hilly.  I felt like I was on a roller coaster, slowly and steadily cresting each hill only to let gravity accelerate me to the bottom again before repeating.

We stopped for lunch at a Greek gyro restaurant, where Rhode Island Avenue meets Route 1.

We ran into trouble with Garmin again, where it kept leading me off the road, onto paths that don’t exist, or on loopy detours that just aren’t necessary.  Garmin sometimes makes me wonder if I maybe programmed it in a parallel universe where the roads are slightly different than they are here.  The worst part about misinterpreting Garmin’s instructions is that sometimes you have to climb several flights of stairs to get back on track – no easy feat when you’re hauling 80 pounds worth of bike.  We finally gave up following it when we ran into yet another detour on the bike path after passing through Washington, DC.  Two women who were running on the path stopped to ask us where we were going when another cyclist (who happened to be one of the women’s brother) stopped as well and sent us in the right direction.

I ended up using the GPS on my phone to get us to Rosheen’s house in Annandale, but that method sent us through a trail in a dark, wooded park, where we had to cross a small stream.  I was convinced that the park was haunted, as we could hear eerie sounds that sounded like distant screams, echoing through the trees.

We finally made it to my cousin Rosheen’s house at 7pm.  We finished off the pasta, roast beef, and quiche that she had made, as well as most of the chocolate chip cookies that her daughter, Elizabeth, had made.  We still don’t have a place to stay south of here, so we are probably going to spend Wednesday in Washington, DC, while we’re so close to the capital city.

The next morning, Phil and I were still feeling sore from the hills, so we decided to take a rest day in Baltimore before moving on towards Washington, DC. Except that it wasn’t really a rest day, because we walked to a yoga studio in Harbor East to take a Bikram yoga class.

On our walk, we passed through the Occupy Baltimore crowd and talked to a few of the people there. One guy, who looked no older than mid fifties, claimed to be 70 years old and was juggling. The yoga class was in a room heated to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. After an hour and a half of Bikram, one of the guys in our class invited Phil and I to join him and his wife for happy hour at Ra, a nearby sushi restaurant. Brian and Carmen arrived shortly after Phil and I sat down, and we enjoyed a late lunch with the couple. Carmen is from Spain and teaches violin, while Brian is from England but originally from Zimbabwe. They also love to travel and hope to visit New Zealand some day, among a long list of other places.

When we returned to Coleman’s house, I could barely move my arms enough to take my sweaty clothes and yoga mat out of my bag before flopping face-down on the bed and passing out for about an hour. After waking from my nap, Phil and I biked to the grocery store to buy ingredients for the next morning’s breakfast. Coleman was home by then, and I went with him to a nearby pub to have a beer and watch the Ravens game.

Me, Norma and Phil before leaving Elkton

Before leaving Elkton, we ate fresh pineapple and muffins that Norma had baked the night before.  We went over the route that google had planned for us with Norma, and then packed and said good bye.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we warmed up within the first mile or two on the hills, enough to stop and peel off a layer.  While the weather was beautiful, the terrain was again full of rolling hills, and about halfway through the day, we lost the wide, protective shoulder on which we were riding.  It became a rather frightening ride on route 1, where we rode as close to the edge of the road as possible, hoping that no cars would hit us.  I was unable to look back, for fear that I might veer into the ditch to my right or into oncoming traffic on the left.

A great view from the orchard

We stopped at yet another orchard at the top of one of the hills and bought cookies.  Never have I been to so many orchards in one season.  Had I known that they all sold freshly baked cookies, I may have gone out of my way to visit more of them before.  We were still too far from Baltimore to buy a pie to strap to the bike, so we continued along route 1 after tasting a few of the cookies.  Our last stop was around 3pm for a late lunch at the Gunpowder Lounge, just on the edge of Gunpowder Falls State Park.  We stopped there for about an hour, cooled down significantly, and hopped back on our bikes to head into Baltimore.  My descents were poorly timed, such that I would arrive at the bottom of each hill to stop at a traffic light and lose all momentum for the next uphill.

When we were 6 miles from our destination, we stopped so I could phone Coleman, my friend who was hosting us.  As I took my phone out, it was ringing, and it was Coleman, who was already on his bike.  I shared with him our location, and we confirmed a meeting spot.  Coleman found us on North Broadway and led us through the city to his house, on his mountain bike.

We showered and walked to a new restaurant nearby, where we had beer and pizza, and then bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream to take back and eat at the house.  I planned a route for the next day and programmed it into Garmin before going to bed.

Breakfast with Lucia and Steve

Steve and Lucia treated us to an excellent breakfast at a famous Jewish Deli within walking distance of their house, where the portions were enormous.  Afterwards, we went back to pack up our bikes.  Steve and Lucia biked with us to a bike shop, s0 we could buy a spoke wrench, and then escorted us through the city, including the Italian market, and to the edge of town where we said goodbye.

While the wind wasn’t nearly as heavy as it had been the previous two days, it still did not blow in our favor.  To top it off, the terrain was hillier than it has been for the entire trip thus far.  About 25 miles out, Phil realized that his fleece had fallen off his back rack, where he had secured it with a bungee cord.  We ended up cycling a few miles past the Delaware state line sign (which proudly announces that you are entering the home of tax-free shopping) on a busy road to get to a mall, where he could buy a new one at EMS.

Welcome to Delaware!

Our only other stop was at an orchard about 4 miles from the home where we were staying, drawn in again by the smell of donuts and apple pie.  We bought a pumpkin pie and some ice-cream to take to our hostess, Norma, as a gift.  Norma’s home is absolutely beautiful, and the plumbing in the bathroom adjacent to the room where we were to stay had been finished in the nick of time, just a half hour before our arrival that evening.  Norma cooked a lovely stew, and her boyfriend, Peter arrived with fresh bread.  Her neighbor, Darrell, joined us a bit later (arriving by golf cart) to hear about our trip.  Since we were so tired from the long ride, Phil and I excused ourselves around 10pm to go to bed (and here I am, just finishing this post).

Me, Ellen and Phil before leaving Langhorne

We awoke later than planned, at 9am.  Ellen’s friend, Dan, stopped by with coffee, tea and bagels from Dunkin Donuts on his way home from his graveyard shift job.

Phil changes his flat tire

Fortunately, we had a short ride to Philadelphia from Langhorne, although, after Dan’s suggested changes to our route, the distance went from under 30 to close to 35 miles.  We made good time in spite of the wind, stopping only twice – once for a snack and once about 4 miles out from our destination due to a flat tire.  This was Phil’s 4th flat tire in only 4 days of riding.  This time it was the front tire, which isn’t as much of a pain to change, but we are going through tubes much faster than we had planned!

Philly Cheesesteak!

When we reached Steve and Lucia’s home in Philadelphia, their dog Danny greeted us eagerly and followed us to our room.  We quickly changeed our clothes and walked a few blocks to Jim’s on South Street, where we ordered the classic Philly cheesesteak sandwiches (hoagies?).  After eating, we walked west to EMS, stopping for ice-cream at Scoops DeVille on the way.  After purchasing a pair of pants at EMS, we walked back towards our hosts’ home.

Phil relaxing at the Coffee Bar

I was really craving a beer, and Phil wanted tea, so we found the perfect place to chill out and drink our beverages of choice while listening to good music and catching up on e-mail – The Coffee Bar.

We walked back to Steve and Lucia’s house, where we had some tea, loaded the next day’s route into Garmin, and talked about bicycling and traveling before retiring to bed.

Phil with Liz and Brian

This morning we weighed our bikes on Liz’s scale.  My bike weighed just over 80 pounds with all its gear, and Phil’s weighed in at just under 80.  This was going to be my second day riding the heavier bike, and my legs could definitely feel the difference after day one (although maybe climbing the mountain had something to do with it).  Phil and I had changed our brake pads the day before, so we felt ready to go downhill.

When one begins at the top of a mountain, and there’s nowhere to go but down from there, one would expect the day’s ride to be relatively easy.  This was not the case for me and Phil today, as we fought strong headwinds for the entire length of our course.  Even going downhill, we struggled against the wind’s invisible force that was persistently trying to push us backwards, barely able to reach 20 mph at the steepest descents.  I am almost certain that if the wind had been at our backs we would have reached Ellen’s house in half the time.  There was a beautiful bike trail that went on for a sizeable portion of the course, but its surface was composed of loose gravel and was bordered by steep banks down to a river and a canal on either side.  It was flat, but slow, so we decided to deviate from the original path and take the roads to where we met up with the course that Garmin had laid out for us, in Princeton.

Despite being on fairly main roads for most of the journey, the apple orchard was the only place we passed where we could get food, so it ended up being a wise move when we allowed the alluring aromas of apple pie to pull us off the road for a pit stop about 16 miles from the end.  We bought an apple cranberry crisp, which Phil strapped to his bike to bring as a gift to share with our hostess.

Ellen met us outside of her house and invited us out of the wind.  She is an avid cyclist who rode across the country, from Portland, Oregon to Gloucester, Massachusetts two summers ago, and she shared with us photos and tips from her touring experience.  She also has traveled extensively and has lovely decorations from all over the world around her home.  Since the grocery store did not have anymore roasted chicken, Ellen actually cooked for us, which apparently never happens, so I feel rather special.  The food was delicious.  After the meal, Ellen went over the route we planned to take out of Langhorne, making suggestions to put us on better roads, and taught us the numbers in Arabic.

Phil and I decided to stay in for the day in Watchung, and Liz and Brian were generous enough to allow us to stay one more night at their home.  It was going to rain all day, and would have been a miserable ride to Pennsylvania.  I feel like it was still a productive day, as I made progress on the website.  Please excuse the slowness with which we have been able to improve the site by adding content.  We are always so tired at the end of our ride, and the few hours between arriving somewhere and going to sleep are usually spent showering, eating, and making conversation with our gracious hosts, leaving little time for web content editing.  It still needs work, but today’s work brought the website a great leap forward, in my opinion – although, I still need to figure out how to display a map of our journey.  I worked on the website nonstop until 3:30, when I decided to venture out for a run before it got too late.  I’ve only been able to run twice since we left Providence, and I really miss it.  Since I’ve only brought my vibrams with me, I can’t yet run more than 5 or 6 miles without my feet and calves screaming at me.  Running back up the steep mountain was a wonderful cardio experience, and I felt quite good afterwards.  The rest of the day was spent inside eating, talking and reading.

This morning I woke up to Phil making blueberry pancakes for breakfast.  I made peanut butter sandwiches with the leftover pancakes, and discovered that they are a surprisingly tasty and satisfying snack when you’re in the middle of a long bike ride.  Getting out of the city was a challenge.  I realized when we got to Central Park that Garmin was not cooperating, and insisted that I was off course.  Stopping to investigate, I saw that all of the courses saved in Garmin were actually maps of the course we had done on Friday on our way into the city.  That didn’t help.  We continued through the park and made our way to the nearest Starbucks so we could use their free wifi to sort out the map issue.

Even with Garmin programmed correctly, finding the proper route to the George Washington Bridge was tricky.  I kept missing turns, and then when I paused to consult more closely with Garmin, the orientation would change and I would have no idea which way to turn until I started going in the wrong direction.  It must have been frustrating for Phil to follow me in circles.  At one point, I saw a way onto what I thought was the bridge, up two long flights of steps.  We struggled with our heavily loaded bikes to climb the stairs, only to find that we could have ridden around a block and ended up in the same place without involving the stairs at all.  When we did finally reach the bridge, the experience was breathtaking.  There was an excellent view of Manhattan from a distance, and we were so high above the water.  We could feel the bridge shudder with every passing vehicle.

Phil and Sarah on the George Washington Bridge

If the ride out of the city was bad, the next bridge we ended up crossing in New Jersey was a nightmare.  Garmin had led us along the river on a pleasant pathway for a few miles, but then we were forced onto a main highway with no shoulder or bike lane, and with several lanes of high speed, heavy traffic. After this, we were led into an industrial area, past a prison and straight into a train that was sitting idly on its tracks.  We waited for a few minutes as the train started to move forward.  Unable to see the end of the train, we weren’t sure how long we’d be waiting.  Before we could see its end, the train stopped in its tracks and started to slowly roll in reverse. This continued for a few cycles, where the train would go one direction, stop, and then go in the other direction, but it never went far enough in either direction for us to get around it.  Phil was getting impatient and contemplated jumping between cars while the train was stopped for a few minutes, but a man who had approached from behind in his SUV saw his intentions and warned against it.  He did tell us how to get around the train, but it sent us back in the direction from which we came, to the main road.

Once again, large trucks whizzed by us while we maintained our course on a busy highway lined with garbage and other debris.  From diesel fumes to chemicals to garbage, there were all sorts of horrible smells in this part of New Jersey.  We had a bit of trouble relocating the route from where we had deviated but we did pick it up again.  An ice-cream truck drove behind us for a while in the run-down industrial neighborhood outside of Newark, playing an almost eerie tune that got stuck in my head for a few miles.  Another point of confusion was when Garmin directed us to a commuter rail station, where we had to cross the tracks and take an elevator up to the street on the other side.

Eventually the roads grew more residential as we approached Watchung.  Watchung is actually a mountain, and the roads through the park area are really quite nice, albeit steep.  We had a great climb about 6 miles from the end and were rewarded with a really pleasant descent.  Then, about a mile before we reached our destination, it got steep again.  In our lowest gears, we pedaled hard to reach the top of the mountain where Liz and Brian live.  Liz (also called Mike) is a friend of my step-mom, Paulette, who is from New Jersey.  Brian invited us in and showed us our rooms.  After showering and eating Chinese food, we both retired to our rooms and found books to read.  Feeling content, but slightly sore from the climb at the end of the day, we prepared our route to our next host in Pennsylvania.  Depending on the weather tomorrow, we might delay our departure by a day and leave on Thursday.