Today was our last training ride, this time hilariously fully loaded with our gear. We look like pack mules and tip over with absurd ease, which became a problem at various points. It was gorgeous out, in the sense that it was foggy and frigid. As Rhiannon says, we inhaled salt water for the last time for another three months. We contemplated dipping our wheels into the ocean, because apparently it is a thing in the not-insignificant subculture of people who ride bicycles across continents. But it was too hard to get our bikes to the water and we had real fear that we would not be able to get them back up the stairs with all the gear. So instead we just took a picture near the water, which would be enclosed, but it isn’t. Maybe Rhiannon will post it later.
It was the first time I used my new clipless pedals:
which are one of the most gadgety-biker items in my repertoire at the moment. There are these special shoes that snap into them kind of like ski boots, and you get a ton of extra power. Basically the effect of the shoes is to make me feel like a centaur: part machine, part flesh. Maybe that is more like an android. Anyway it is great except I did a few of those narcoleptic style body slams to the ground. It is all good though I am not broken.
So: we are leaving Monday in a blaze of glory from my house, heading to stay with some extended family about 35 miles away. Planning on taking it pretty slow for the first week and a half as we get our “bicycle legs,” which will take us to about Niagara Falls before we kick it into high gear, by which I actually mean low gear because we will be getting ready for hills.
Leave us comments, we want to hear from you! Or link us to your own blogs. We will read them whenever we hit up a public library with non-excruciating internet access (i.e. rarely). We are trying to escape but we do not want to escape from you guys!
Boston to Seattle or Bust 