Day 3 - Anacortes, WA to Poulsbo, WA

Have you ever thought about what your favorite road sign is?  After today I sure as shit know mine.  I was up early again and back in the saddle by around 7:30.  I’m starting to recall certain elements from my previous tour, and the biggest one that came to me today is that the first 5 miles in the morning are always the worst.  Joints are clicking and muscles are burning.  Every part of your body except (maybe) your brain are just asking what was so bad about that warm cozy sleeping bag you so readily abandoned?  As such, yea, I had difficulty getting going and had rapidly resolved to stopping at a county park 40 miles away.  27 miles in I arrived at the ferry that goes from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend at around 10:30. The next boat didn’t leave for a bit and I ended up losing over 2 hours before reaching Port Townsend. 

Getting back to pedaling I spent the next hour on a reinvigorating bike path that ended just shy of the originally planned campsite.  Aside from the obvious physical stressors of riding I also find it draining to constantly be looking up at the helmet mirror making sure death isn’t headed for you.  Feeling strong I pressed on across 22 more miles of rolling “gentle” hills as the lady at the grocery store phrased it.  Not so much.  I did finally make it into Kitsap State Park for the evening where I treated myself to a double shower.  I’ll explain my comedy of errors I’ve had with Washington State Park’s shower token system another time.  62 miles today!

Day 2 - Birch Bay, WA to Anacortes, Wa

Today ended up being a pretty early test of will after starting off smoothly.  In making every effort to avoid getting stuck with the rest of the bill for last night’s campsite I was packed up and back on the road by 7am this morning.  By 9:30 I had made it 25 miles into Bellingham. I hadn’t had anything for breakfast and was starving by then.  I ended up raiding a grocery store for a chicken samosa, two donuts, and a cup of coffee.  One of the perks to bike touring is throwing calories straight out the window because the furnace is hot, and anything will burn.  Following breakfast/lunch I pushed on into 15 miles of rolling hills, spending much of this time alternating between 5mph and 25mph.  Pretty views helped ease the burden as I traveled along the Puget Sound.  I unfortunately had my right knee start chirping a bit later in the day so I’ll need to make sure to monitor that. All in all it was a 64 mile day that brought me into Deception Pass State Park for the evening.

Day 1 - Vancouver, BC to Birch Bay, WA

The trip officially got underway today with a 59 mile ride from Vancouver to Birch Bay State Park.  I left the hotel around 8am, grabbed my final Tim Hortons meal of the trip, and biked the 3 miles to the official starting point shown on my map. After that today was all about wrong turns and correcting them. Cycling through big cities is exciting, but following directions with frequent turns is difficult to do without stopping too often.  There was also a detour with very poor signage for the bridge pictured below that I wasted a nice chunk of time chasing down.  Arriving at the border around 2pm I attempted to ride through the vehicle checkpoint, but was ushered to the pedestrian pass through which meant having to park the bike, go inside, and wait 20 minutes for them to have an available agent to check my passport. All good - they were friendly and let me grab a selfie before riding back into the USA.  Here in Birch Bay I was expecting hiker/biker campsites, but the self-checkin signs stated the cheapest site was $25. I tried calling the number that was posted to ask about the $12 dollar sites I saw online but the number was disconnected. As a result, I grabbed a $35 site and slipped $15 into the envelop. The park is virtually empty so hopefully nothing will backfire there.

April 30th - Vancouver, BC

After a 21 hour train ride to Seattle and 3 hour bus ride I’ve finally made it to my favorite country that I’ve never been to.  The Amtrak ride was difficult to find sleep on due to a cabin mate that snored like a Mack truck. Around 2am I finally slipped down to the empty cafe car and drifted off for a bit before they started to reopen around 5am.  The older gentlemen I was sitting next to in my proper seat was riding up to Seattle from his home in LA only to turn around and head back on the south bound train the next day. A testament to the gorgeous scenery this inland route has to offer - and thankfully inland as to not spoil anything coastal for me. 

Following a customs check at the border the bus dropped me off a couple of kilometers away from my hotel so I set off in the brisk Vancouver night to find it.  Notttt a great part of town to traverse at night but as far as I could tell there was no reason to worry just a lot of homeless folk. Checked in at 1:30 in the morning and passed out the second my head hit the pillow. 

Woke up around 8am and was deadset on having my first Tim Hortons experience.  I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I think Timmy’s are more common in Canada than McDonald’s are in the homeland. As such, within a 5 minute walk I was inhaling a TH breakfast burrito that was magical after an Amtrak pretzel dinner the previous evening. 

Post-breakfast I showered, grabbed the bike, and headed out for a mini tour of Vancouver.  My budget friendly hotel while basic had the enormous perk of being just slightly east of downtown.  I pedaled around the bike-friendly city for an hour before beginning an amazing 10 mile loop around the famous Stanley Park.  Breathtaking views of downtown and North Vancouver were available here.  Now back at the hotel to quickly post this before walking around to find a good dinner spot and some Canadian pals.  Tomorrow it begins.

A New Adventure - Vancouver, BC to Lake Tahoe, CA

Nearly 6 years ago to the day I completed my first bike tour across the Southern portion of the US.  It was an incredible experience that I knew back then I'd never forget.  It's always nice to read through the old blog here and try and relive some of the magic that is cycle touring - definitely glad that I chose to chronicle it like I did.  

Fast forward to 2018 and here I am on the precipice of diving into a whole new adventure.  During the first trip I ran into quite a few touring cyclists whom were not on their inaugural trip.  I distinctly remember hearing about how, if the trip was enjoyable to me, I'd plan another one down the line.  I suppose they knew what they were talking about.

When in the planning stages of this new tour I quickly decided that the preference was to see as much of the West Coast as possible having moved out to California last year.  In researching Adventure Cycling's map offerings for this region I was excited to see that the Pacific Coast is widely considered a world class cycling route.  It begins in Vancouver, BC and with only a few exceptions has you riding right along the ocean all the way to San Diego, CA.  I immediately knew this would be a part of the route, but the two concerns were that I'd already been through San Diego on the last trip, and that at roughly 1,700 miles the tour wasn't going to be quite long enough to fill the gap of free time I'd carved out.  My goal was to have the tour end in Lake Tahoe, CA in early July as a I have a family vacation scheduled there.  To not end up cycling back the same way I'd came I pieced together some other routes that will take me East once I reach Los Angeles.  From there I'll make my way to the Grand Canyon before looping back Northwest via Utah and Nevada to get back into California.

The idea for this trip was hatched back at the beginning of the year, and I can't believe how fast time has flown since then.  In just 5 days I'll be boarding the train that'll take me to the starting line.  So many hours have gone into preparation and planning, but soon it'll just be time to pedal.  I'll be trying to update the blog as frequently as possible, although on my last tour I chose to bring a netbook with me which made the blogging easier.  This time I'll just be rolling with an iPhone, so we'll see how that goes.  Please feel free to comment on the entries as extra motivation is always welcomed.  The trip will officially be underway on May 1st!

Gear breakdown (loosely from left to right):  Sleeping bag, tent poles, tent, sleeping pad, towel & wash cloth, inflatable pillow, rain suite, rain shoe covers, cycling shorts, camelbak, spare tubes, lifestraw filter, cleaning wipes, cycling gloves, shorts, underwear, t-shirts, maps, passport, socks, long johns, toilet paper, mess kit, stove, fuel canisters, bike light, head lamp, sunscreen, vitamins, caffeine pills, bear mace, air pump, chain grease, chainlink tool, tube repair kit, bike muli-tool, tire lever, duct tape, camera, kindle, solar power bank

It all packs pretty neatly into rear paniers, a handlebar bag, and a couple compression bags
Weighing in at just over 35 lbs

The noble steed packed and ready for the journey

Day 54 [St. Augustine, FL] & The End

And just like that biking across America turns from something I'm trying to accomplish into something I've done.  It feels so good to proclaim this, now and for the rest of my life: I did it!  2,780 miles and exactly two months later I've pedaled my way into the Atlantic Ocean.  This final addition to my biking blog will consist of two parts; a quantitative analysis (the stats), and a qualitative one (the sentimental crap).  So, to avoid writing the emotional part of this entry for a little while longer I'm going to begin with some statistics from the trip.

------------------------------------------------By the Numbers-------------------------------------------------

Total days................................................................62

Pedaling days...........................................................54

Days w/ a sore ass.....................................................62

Consecutive days wearing one pair of shorts.................62

Total Miles...........................................................2,780

Avg. Miles per day................................................51.48

Total time spent pedaling..................................258 hours

Avg. Miles per hour.................................................10.8

Flat Tires..................................................................16

Rest days....................................................................5

Rain/Snow days..........................................................3

Body weight lost..................................................18 lbs.

Calories burned...........................who knows (~150,000?)

Percentage of nights spent camping..........................52%

Percentage of nights spent in a motel........................32%

Percentage of nights spent at a friend's......................16%

-----------------------------------------------Closing Thoughts------------------------------------------------

This trip has been everything I'd hoped for and much, much more.  At times I even got to enjoy far more than I ever bargained for, but it will always have a piece of my heart because for two straight months I gave it everything I had.  Going into this, I figured biking across America was just a series of long bike rides.  Purely a physical challenge, an endurance race.  I quickly discovered that it's just as much a mental battle as anything else.  The will to self-motivate yourself - to wake up, pack all your gear up, and climb back into that saddle every morning.  It's tough, it really is.  The legs tend to get with the program fairly early on, but the mental struggle continues throughout the entire adventure.

With this all being said, it has also been one of the most enjoyable and rewarding events of my life thus far.  I've traveled the back roads of America at dismally slow speeds...I've seen some things that's for sure, and some stuff.  I've met people from all across the Southern portion of America.  From the swamp rats in Louisiana (sorry), to the cattle ranchers in west Texas.  Through all the differences I took note of that separate my culture from theirs, the overarching realization is that people are pretty much the same regardless of their home state.  I also enjoyed an incredible change of scenery across the country as I went from the mountainous west, to super dry desert, the swamp-lands, and finally to the tall pines of Florida.  There is so much beauty in this section of the country that was all just there waiting for me to see.

I've doubtlessly learned much about myself along the trip, too.  What better way is their towards self-discovery and growth than a two month solo vacation?  Out of an extensive list of improvements I made I will name a few that are currently on the top my head.  For one thing, I know I greatly improved my patience and level of self-reliance for unexpected incidents.  Flat tires, wrong turns, and other such setbacks can be extremely aggravating, but eventually I got tired of hearing myself bitch and just started righting these things without protest.  I also suspect I'm more outgoing, as I spoke with hundreds of people throughout the journey.  It also became easier to ask others for a little bit of help when I needed it, and in fact got pretty good at doing so.  Most importantly, that mental battle that I mentioned, well I figure fighting it for 2 months and coming out successful has to be a positive as well.

The friends I saw along the way, old and new, were all awesome.  I met at least 20 other cyclists out on the road accomplishing the same thing I was.  I spoke to nearly all of them and they were some unique and interesting people.  I made new friends and opened up connections for myself all over country.  The random acts of kindness I received from various strangers was a great reminder that most people have good hearts.  A special thank you to all the people that helped me out on this tour.  In addition, I'd also like to thank my friends and family members that kept in touch while I was on the road.  Phone calls and Skype calls from home got me through many otherwise boring nights in the tent.  You guys rock.  Finally, thanks to all of you who took the time to read my blog and share my adventure with me!

As I slip back into "normal life", I'll always carry the memories of this trip with me and am looking forward to reliving them on some shorter weekend tours.  Maybe I'll even wear my Yankees shorts that I wore every single day of this tour to make it more authentic.  Like all great things this adventure has come to an end.  Who knows, maybe one day down the road I'll do something crazy enough to be deserving of a blog again.  Until then, I'll see you all around.

Day 53 [Palatka, FL]

Reppin' the Hokies across America!

All five of our touring machines.

The Gainesville visit ended up being pretty epic.  The trio I met back in Louisiana picked up a stray and became a foursome.  We have kept in touch, and realized that we'd all be in the same place tonight.  An awesome hostel resides in this town, and we went Real World style and all shared one big room for the night.  For dinner we went to a pretty good Mexican restaurant and hung out there for a few hours.  A real good group of future doctors here.  Their pour souls have already been through eight years of college and medical school, but they still know how to have some fun.  The next morning we stopped by a unique place that sells coffee and muffins while at the same time is a bike shop.  The owner took an interest in our trip and we ended up hanging here for quite a while this morning.  A bunch of photos were taken of us that may or may not end up being hung up in the establishment.  After breakfast, we all rode together for awhile until the group decided they wanted to camp for their final night, whereas I preferred a lush motel to rest up for victory lane.  However, we will all rejoice together tomorrow in St. Augustine!  As I type this, I sit in utter disbelief that this entire adventure will end in one more little bike ride.