Day 5: Norwalk to New York City
We had hoped to get an early morning start and beat the rain, but when Phil’s alarm clock went off at 6:30 I could hear it downpouring. Michael had left even earlier, at 5am, so we ended up sleeping in until 8 or so.
It rained on and off throughout the day, but it was never too unpleasant. We stopped around 11 for food, at a place called European Deli that was clearly Polish. One highlight of the ride was when a woman started cheering for us from her vehicle, using an orange cone as a megaphone. Penny rode alongside Phil for a bit, and he shared our website with her. Cheering is always wonderful motivation, so we appreciate the support!
In front of the water in NYC
The worst of the rain happened after we made it into the city, and immediately after Phil changed his socks, since the sun had finally come out. We were on a path along the river, and the wind was pretty strong. I wanted to take a photo of the sky, but then it started raining heavily, so we found shelter under a bridge for a few minutes until we thought it had passed. At least it wasn’t cold.
A few miles from our destination, a guy rode by on a touring bike with a For Sale sign on the back panniers. I asked him how much he was asking for it, and he said that he had bought it new only two weeks ago for $2000 and ridden it from Toronto to Manhattan. He was asking $1000. I am considering it, since the bike I have is not designed for touring, but the frame might be too large. My first fall of the trip happened when we were heading for the Queensborough Bridge on York Ave. I was riding behind Phil and looked down at Garmin to see where to turn, when Phil stopped and I crashed into him, knocking off one of his panniers and falling over. Fortunately, both of us and our bikes were fine.
We arrived at Rym and Emily’s apartment in Queens around 5pm, and waited in the lobby for Rym to get home. After Phil and I had each showered and Emily came home, we went into Manhattan to have dinner with 6 of their friends at a Korean restaurant. The food was incredible. We are spending the weekend in NYC, so I will be seeing family and friends (and running) over the next two days before moving on south.
Act Together
So its about time I got my act together and wrote a post or two.
“It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of three”
This trip has been a dream of mine since I was 13 years old. For everyone out there who has dreams of a trip to just set a date and work for it. If you say something like one day or someday it will just keep getting pushed back. Set a date and work towards it.
This part of the trip has been wonderful. Sarah is an excellent travel partner and our personal interests seem to compliment each others fairly well. To all of you planing a trip or thinking about one I strongly suggest a travel partner. I have done a fair amount of traveling on my own and having another person there can be a big mental help.
As for the trip. Its been great aside from today the weather has been amazing and even today’s weather is nothing to complain about. I having been keeping a notebook to record the event and here a few of the technical details for the trip.
10/10/2011
Weather: Clear and Sunny
Temp: High 81 low 58
Distance: 61.15 Miles
Max Speed: 39.5 MPH
Travel Time: 4:52.12
Average Speed: 12.5 MPH
Height Gain: 1515 ft
Total Distance: 61.15 Miles
11/10/2011
Weather: Mostly Sunny/ Cloudy late afternoon
Temp: High 72 low 52
Distance: 37.56 Miles
Max Speed: 34 MPH
Travel Time: 4:44.28
Average Speed: 7.3 MPH
Height Gain: 749 ft
Total Distance: 98.71 Miles
12/10/2011
Weather: Overcast/ light rain past 15:00 pm
Temp: High 65 low 57
Distance: 41.37 Miles
Max Speed: 27.0 MPH
Travel Time: 3:09.27
Average Speed: 13.1 MPH
Height Gain: 701 ft
Total Distance: 140.08 Miles
13/10/2011
Weather: Overcast/ Mist and drizzle past 16:00
Temp: High 65 low 62
Distance: 37.91 Miles
Max Speed: 25.0MPH
Travel Time: 3:07.36
Average Speed: 12.1 MPH
Height Gain: 749 ft
Total Distance: 177.89 Miles
For more on what happened each day you can rely on Sarah’s previous posts a bit more so far but I will be posting more. I promise.”
To everyone who has hosted us so far, thank you so much for all of your kindness and hospitality. I hope to be able to be as generous as all of you someday soon.
All the best,
Phil
Day 4: New Haven to Norwalk
Before leaving on October 13th, with Pete at his studio
In the morning, Pete and Sarah made apple pancakes for breakfast, which were delicious. We only had to ride 37 miles to Norwalk, so we got off to a late start (around noon). After packing up and saying our goodbyes, we were off for day four. Phil had spent a fair amount of time figuring out how to get Garmin to tell us our route, which facilitated our navigation considerably.
We stopped once for lunch, at a sandwich shop in Stratford called Roly Poly. The roads were pleasant aside from a bumpy stretch through Bridgeport. Having Garmin know the route and tell us where to turn was a huge time saver. Still, we didn’t arrive at our host’s house in Norwalk until just after 5pm. Michael is also a triathlete and plans to go on a cycling tour himself next spring, riding out to his daughter’s graduation in California. We relaxed in his living room, drinking Sam Adams Octoberfest and talking about bicycling, while he prepared dinner. Since we’re expecting rain tomorrow, we’re hoping to get an early morning start in our ride to New York City.
Day 3: West Hartford to New Haven
Phil and Bobbie were kind enough to let us stay as long as we needed before heading off, while they went to work in the morning. We had a good breakfast and ended up leaving around 9:30. This was going to be a short day, only 41 miles.
Our first stop was the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, which we passed by before deciding to go in and see if they wanted to interview us. After a brief interview with Art, the director, we were on our way again. The course brought us through some scenic bike trails, and right by an aromatic barbecue place, which drew us in for a late lunch. This day was cooler than the first two, and it started to rain a bit for the last 10 miles of our ride into New Haven.
We arrived at Pete’s apartment in the late afternoon. Pete is a sculpture grad student at Yale, and he showed us his studio behind his apartment, where we could keep our bikes. He had some very interesting projects going on in the studio. Pete shares a spacious 4-bedroom apartment with Thomas, another sculpture grad student, and Sarah and Daria, architecture grad students. Sarah is actually from Rhode Island, and Daria went to Brown, so we were familiar with the same places. Pete found all of these connections fascinating. While Pete was in class, Phil and I went to a Thai restaurant for dinner and Starbucks to take advantage of their free wifi. Afterwards, we shared some good conversation and Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream with Pete, Sarah and Thomas.
Day 2: Mansfield to West Hartford
This morning I awoke with numb arms, having slept on them. During breakfast (Tina and Greg made blueberry pancakes), I embarrassingly drank a sip of maple syrup that had been placed in front of me in a mug before realizing it wasn’t coffee. The day was off to an interesting start.
Morning of October 11th before leaving Tina and Greg's house
Greg and Gioia snapped some photos of us before we left Mansfield. We were only 6 or 7 miles from the UCONN Dairy Bar, so our first stop was to get ice-cream. Twelve miles later, we broke for lunch at Nature’s Grocer in Tolland. This is a great natural foods store, where I must return some day (and of course stop at the dairy bar while in the area). After lunch, we rode to Hartford and stopped at a park and caught up on missed phone calls while waiting for Phil, our Warm Showers host for the evening, to get home from work. Somewhere along the last mile to the house, another cyclist, Bill, started riding and chatting with us.
Sitting on a bench in a park in Hartford
Phil was very generous when we arrived at his beautiful home in West Hartford. He cooked a wonderful dinner while we showered, and he even drove us to the nearby Best Buy so we could buy a netbook. Now we can finally work on getting the website filled with content, upload photos and videos, and, most importantly, figure out how to get maps for Garmin. When we arrived back at the house, we met Phil’s wife, Bobbie, who had just started a new job. The two of them had used Warm Showers once previously when riding a tandem bicycle in Rhode Island, and they are excellent hosts. Already, I am definitely eating better than I ever have when I lived alone in Providence. Both Phil and I hope that we can someday be as hospitable to other travelers in the future.
Day 1: Providence to Mansfield
Phil and I had decided it would be a good idea to meet at a local coffee shop for an hour or so before leaving to let friends and family say goodbye one last time and ride the first few miles with us for as far as they wish. We had a good turn-out for the send-off gathering. After eating and making sure the bikes were all packed properly, Phil and I took off, escorted by Phil’s parents and Dick, Cameron and Adam from US Open Cycling Foundation. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, and I will miss the people more than anything.
We started down the West Bay Washington Secondary bike path towards Coventry and stopped for ice-cream near the end. When we finally turned off the greenway, it was just me and Phil. We had begun the first day of a very long journey.
The day was predominantly uneventful, aside from a pit stop at a biker bar/pizza restaurant just over the Connecticut state line, where the owner hooked us up with ice water and the regulars had plenty of questions and advice for us. There were a few bike paths that existed in Google maps but not on the roads, so we ran into a few dead ends and climbed a few unnecessary hills. As we neared the home where we were staying that night, the roads grew even hillier.
Tina and Greg live in Mansfield with their 5 year old daughter, Gioia. They were kind enough to host us for our first night on the road. They shared their delicious dinner with us, including homemade wine, homemade bread, and homemade strawberry ice-cream! We are both very grateful for their generosity in hosting us.
One more day…
On Friday morning we biked back to Fairhaven after saying goodbye to our wonderful host and stopping at the nearest bike shop to fix my shoes. The bike shop, Idle Times, was right at the corner of a bike path that we had missed on our way up the previous day and was highly recommended by Rick and Julie. The mechanic was kind enough to not only replace the plates that the cleats screw into, but he also gave me a few extras. I doubt I will need them now that I’ve got some strong Shimano plates (the Keen ones that came with my shoes were weak). Also along the way, we stopped at a jam/honey shop and a fudge shop to sample the offerings. We finished cycling before dark this time and drove to LL Bean, where I bought a much-needed headlamp and Garmin Edge 605.
The weekend in Providence was crazy. It was a huge weekend for the bike crowd, as the cyclocross festival was in town, there was a bike-walk summit on Friday, a frame builders ball at the Biltmore, and a veloswap going on in Roger Williams park concurrent to the cross fest. Upon returning to Providence on Friday I went straight to the builders ball, where several frame builders from New England had an array of frames on display. This was a good networking opportunity for possibly finding a bike sponsor.
Saturday was unseasonably warm – a perfect beach day. Unfortunately, I spent mine selling my belongings at a yard sale on the front lawn. I woke up at 7am and the neighbor was also having a yard sale. When I looked out the window and saw a crowd of people across the street, I panicked briefly, thinking that all these people had shown up hours early and were waiting for my yard sale. I started putting the boxes outside at 10am, and people were immediately picking through everything. This was my third yard sale of the year, and I noticed that the majority of my customers are spanish-speaking, they all want to buy tons of stuff, and they don’t want to pay more than 25 cents for everything. After the yard sale, I had just enough time to put away all of the unpopular items that didn’t sell, shower, and go to our going away party downtown. In preparing for the trip, I had accidentally purchased two sleeping bags, thinking that one of them was a sleeping bag liner, when in fact it was a sleeping bag that came with a liner. I brought this extra sleeping bag to the party to raffle off. It was a great party, with the highlight (in my personal opinion) being that my friend Andrew brought an entire gateau concorde to share with everyone. I discovered this cake only within the past year, and it is my absolute favorite. I encourage everyone to try it from either Meeting Street Cafe or Rue De L’Espoir.
Sunday was the last day before taking off for good, and I had more to do than time permitted. I woke up early to check out the cyclocross fest before meeting my friend Ashley for breakfast at the Duck & Bunny (one of the places I’m going to miss). After breakfast I drove to Dartmouth to visit family before leaving, and then drove to Warwick to look into buying a netbook or tablet so I can upload photos and videos (and update this website) from the road. I spent several hours looking around but became overwhelmed by the options and ended up leaving empty-handed. I needed to go to Newport one more time to collect the last of my things from the apartment where I was living and to say goodbye to my friends down there.
I felt like I was doing an awful lot of driving a car in preparation for a bicycle trip. I struggled to stay awake long enough to drive back to Cranston and try to sleep before the big departure.
Practice day 1
This morning Phil and I set off on a practice ride from Fairhaven to Orleans, where we are staying with Julie and Rick, a couple that Phil contacted through Warm Showers. Despite a late start, the day flew by insanely fast.
We drove from Providence to Tiverton, where Phil made sandwiches and I wrote out the route that we were planning to take (we still have yet to acquire a GPS navigation device). From there we drove to my family’s beach house in Fairhaven, where I discovered that a squirrel had broken in and made itself at home. We finished packing our panniers and set off towards the cape.
broken screw plate on shoe
We had planned to hit LL Bean on the way out, but because of the late start decided it was best to save it for the way back. Several stops were made along the way to adjust seat height, check directions, refuel and stretch. Due to the adapting to our new rides with all of our equipment weighing us down and challenging our balance, our average moving speed was a modest 13-14mph. My new shoes broke less than halfway through the day! The screws holding the cleat to the bottom of the shoe tore apart the fitting on the shoe, so it could no longer be held to the shoe, and the right cleat ended up stuck in the pedal.
Rick and Julie's dog, Dude, lounging on the couch
By the time sun had set we were still 15 miles from our destination. After pedaling 6 or 7 miles with me using Phil’s head lamp and Phil using a blinking light on the back of his helmet, we decided it was too dangerous to continue in the dark on that road. We ended up hitching a ride with Tim, who generously went out of is way to drive us and our bikes straight to the door of our hosts. After a delicious meal and good conversation (and a warm shower), it has been an eventful and educational practice day. We owe enormous thanks to Tim for the ride and to Rick and Julie for their hospitality.
Back home and back to planning
I returned from my weekend in Minnesota, sore but happy. I had managed to run the marathon on Sunday in 3:37:18, only 3 minutes slower than my PR, despite not having run farther than 11 miles all summer. And my legs are not in as much pain as I remember they were after running my last marathon. I do wish I could have seen more of Minnesota. The International Wolf Center is in Ely, a 4 and a half hour drive from where I was staying in St-Paul. Wolves have always been my favorite animal, and when I was younger I had speculated about going up to Minnesota to live with them for a while and make friends with a wolf pup. Anyway, I didn’t want to tire myself out beforehand and was too sore to do much after the race, and there wasn’t enough time to really explore. I’ll have to go back another time, hopefully on bicycle.
Phil and I had tentatively planned to do a practice ride tomorrow and Wednesday, but we still have much to do to get all of our gear together and bikes ready, and it’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow anyway. Instead, we will leave one day later, on Wednesday. We may be able to stop at LL Bean on the way to Provincetown, our chosen destination for this ride, and collect the remaining equipment necessary. Among the things I need to do before the real trip commences are write to potential sponsors, add content to complete the website, advertise my yard sale, and plan our going away party/fundraiser. The party deserves its own post, which I will promptly write once I have an idea of prizes for our raffle!
Preparation and contemplation, the weekend before departure
This is the first post I am attempting to write from my phone. I’m doing this on the number 60 RIPTA bus from Newport to Providence to get my pre-marathon massage from Lori-Ann before I head to the airport and fly to Minnesota. I’m practicing blogging from my phone because I suspect this will be the method of choice for the majority of the journey. It’s Friday afternoon and my dad called to tell me that Michelle Obama is visiting Providence, so hopefully this won’t interfere with my ability to get to the airprt on time.
I’m flying to Minnesota to run my 9th marathon, and 8th state in my goal to run a marathon in each of the 50 states. I’m also visiting my cousins Jeremy and Dina, and their two sons, George and Michael. The timing seems bad, to run a race of this distance only a week before I expect to head off on an indefinite bicycling/sailing journey – and maybe it is, but I had registered for it months ago, before I had planned on leaving in October. I feel more underprepared for this marathon than I ever have in previous races, due to the fact that I haven’t been running as much as usual all summer.
I was originally planning on leaving for my trip in the springtime, so I would have the whole summer to cross North America. I wanted to start in Providence and cycle to Newfoundland first, crossing southern Canada from there to Vancouver, and then hugging the west coast all the way down to Patagonia. From there I would go up the east coast of Argentina and Brazil, trying to find a sailboat crossing the Atlantic that would hire me on as crew. I didn’t necessarily want to do this alone, but I didn’t know anyone who would want to go with me. I was just hoping to meet up with some fellow cyclists along the way, preferably before I got to Mexico.
I met Phil at a CouchSurfing (CS) meetup at AS:220 in Providence, Rhode Island. We were both members of the CS community and lived in RI, so we went to this informal event to meet other local CS members. After that, I didn’t see him again for maybe 2 years, when we were both at a mutual friend’s barbecue. I saw him again at the CVS 5k, where I was racing and he was volunteering as medical support. At some point, we realized that we both had similar aspirations to circumnavigate the world, so we met for lunch one day to discuss and compare our plans. Months later, we still weren’t planning to go together. Phil quit his job in June and was planning to leave in July. I quit my job in June because I needed to get outdoors and away from the office. I still planned to take a year or so to plan my trip in detail and find sponsorship. I was also committed to the US Open Cycling Foundation, a non-profit organization that I had become a part of in the fall of 2009, and I wanted to see a cross country bike tour for high school students get off the ground before I left. My heart is still committed to USOCF, and I plan to donate a portion of whatever sponsorship I receive to the organization. Anyway, one day Phil came over and asked me to just come with him. I was never going to leave if I waited until I found sponsorship and was completely “ready”. I knew he was right, and that I would never feel ready for an undertaking like this. Just like I never feel ready for any race in which I participate, I just have to plunge in and see what happens. This trip is going to be interesting, exciting, and challenging…and I may not even be close to ready for it, but we’re in no rush, our plans are extremely flexible, and we will constantly be making adjustments along the way.
The closer we get to the date of departure, the more things I think of that I need to do, the more people I realize I want to see before I leave, since I don’t know when I’ll get to see them again, and the more places (mostly restaurants) I want to go to one last time. As much as I feel the need to get out of here, I’m really going to miss this place and these people.
Nomadic Cycling 