Blind picture posting

Flew in to Cincinnati today via some strangely empty flights–both legs were barely half-full. Secret talent: I am so great at napping on planes and in airports. In my youth I was one of those people who can’t sleep in public. That is all behind me now, and I probably doubled my night of sleep through some mega-napping.

Also, Rhiannon and I managed to assemble my bike out of the box with only small interventions from Awesome Bike Shop Man John at Biowheels, which based on this encounter I have decided is the greatest shop in the Cincinnati metro region. I learned something about brakes, but still very little about spokes. Next time!

The house in Indian Hills is beautiful, and the Lanier family are incredible hosts. Flying into Cincinnati we got a great view of the city and the surrounding countryside. It’s a lot less farms than I expected! I was envisioning fields as far as the eye could see, but after the plane dropped below the clouds, the only land devoted to agriculture (or anything else) was in the valleys and the half-mile of land right on top of the bends in the Ohio River.  Lots of trees with just fingers of farmland. Pretty.

What follows are a smattering of pictures which we uploaded today for the first time in a while (read: since Day 0). Most of them I was not present for, and Rhiannon is industriously packing in the next room (which I also should be), so captions will be fun.

Rhiannon eats an apple on day 1. See, no hands! Clearly, on that first day, we had not developed the ravenous, all-hands-on-deck approach to food that we currently possess.

Day 4, in the Berkshires. I post this one only because it demonstrates that I was so full of energy upon reaching the top of the hill that I decided to climb a huge rock next to the highway and try to capture the splendid vista. Of course it turns out the vista is not so splendid as it feels when you just climbed it, but it is kind of pretty right?

Hmm, this appears to be a very nice mural! I guess I shouldn't post pictures with neither explanations nor recognizable people in them.

Rhiannon at Niagara Falls!

Looks like a rib fest to me.

This is a charming (sideways) view of our tent in front of a sunset on Lake Erie. I believe this is before the nighttime thunderstorm that sent everyone else packing into their cars. But Rhiannon had no car, so she persevered. At least this is how she tells it.

And then there’s our new masthead, featuring one tired biker parked in the shade of a charming gas station inspecting the contents of her water bottle. I think it sums up the situation pretty well that this gas station was memorably charming.

Route comments: tomorrow we’re wending our way through downtown Cincinnati (first time to get lost on the trip? time will tell) and making it about halfway to Louisville, our next major destination. Hopefully we will have a couch surf there, but really who can say.

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One to Buffalo, One to Boston

So, our whole plan has hit a bit of a hitch, and the crew has temporarily split. No, we have not yet had our first fight (although we keep speculating about what it’ll be)–the problem is disease, specifically mono. On Day 5, which was also kind of a scorcher, the sore throat that has been tickling me since Boston blew up into more of a problem. I was having trouble swallowing, feeling feverish, and exhausted at the top of every hill. Not being entirely lacking in common sense, after some encouragement from my mother, I got myself to urgent care in Albany with the help of our incredible couchsurfing hosts. This time the mono test came back positive.

Fortunately, there are various silver linings. First of all, the bike trip is continuing. The second night we stayed in Albany, another pair of female twenty-something cross-country cyclists stopped in, and expressed interest in riding out together, so Rhiannon has joined them. They are totally great and I think we have a pretty similar ethic about the trip–fairly ungadgety, taking a non-traditional route (different ones, though), low maintenance about proper campgrounds. The main difference is that they have been training since September, where as we only thought of doing this in January and started really training on Monday.

They’re keeping their own blog, which I would link to if only I knew the URL. The plan is that Rhiannon will be traveling with them, if all goes well, up until the Buffalo area, when they’ll be heading into Canada, and Rhiannon will be likely be heading south through Ohio solo, since she has no passport to go to Canada even if she wanted to.

For my part, my parents drove the three hours (only three hours?! it was five days!) from Boston to pick me up, so now I’m home in my kitchen. I’ll get a chance to see a bit more of some of my friends here, and watch entire seasons of Six Feet Under (something which I have fortunately avoided doing at school). I will also be sleeping for at least 12 hours a night with the goal of a speedy recovery, so that I can rejoin Rhiannon somewhere along the road. Because she is a goal-oriented gal, we’ve set the goal of my rejoining by St. Louis, which is both a significant location on our route–the last one before Pueblo, CO–and somewhere that she should reach after about 3 weeks of travel, which is a good recovery estimate for the kind of very mild case of mono that I have.

This all means that Rhiannon is going to be riding solo for a few weeks, unless she can track down a companion somehow or other, of which she seems skeptical. It also calls into question the continuation of our trip blog, since she has been by far the less eager blogger! However, she has made a commitment to updating the blog when possible, since, in her words, she will be “desperate to communicate” and also to reassure everyone that she is not dead. She still refuses to Twitter, though. Hopefully we will hear from her about this. I will now join in heckling her to update, because I want to know what’s up.

Ah! But there are also lots of things to say about the days of riding that preceded this trip-altering event! I will attempt to communicate them in bullet form, in no particular order:

• we had two mega-successful couch surfs, with people who I will not name here lest they have net.privacy concerns, but they were both completely lovely. In Amherst, we stayed with some graduating seniors who shared their falafel & one of their last nights on campus with us. In Albany, where we crashed for an extra unexpected night, we stayed with an incredibly open and generous family who, additionally, were absolutely in love with the place they lived, which made for some wonderful conversations. They also had two incredibly charming children who overcame Rhiannon & my shared reticence around kids, which is a major win.
• free stuff count continues upward: one free night of camping, free New York State bike maps, free cookstove when ours broke.
• we made friends with our first group of bikers–like, big folks on motorcycles–who we met in Windsor, MA, which is an absurd little town at the top of a hill whose two noticeable buildings are a tall, white, eminently New England church steeple and a structure that is simultaneously gas station, general station, and US post office. I have no idea if anyone lives there or not, but it was a wonderful destination after a day of climbing in the Berkshires, which is our first named range of mountains (OK, some people call them hills.)  Most of the time when you are approaching a town, you will be heading downhill, because reasonable pioneers in the 18th/19th century wanted to settle down by a river where there was good farmland and good transit and good weather. But not Windsor!
• A side note on the Berkshires: they are described on a green highway sign thusly: “Welcome to the Berkshires! America’s Premier Cultural Resort!” Har har.
• I’m totally in love with Albany, for a collection of not very interesting reasons that fortunate fellow Aaron Podolny received in a rapturous email. Why do people say bad things about Albany? It is so pretty, and also appears to be the only real city on our route between Boston and Buffalo. The politics seem like they are maybe a little filthy but as a visitor on a bicycle it was pretty great.
• In Western Mass, the Jesus signs had already begun. We were a little freaked out by the overpowering size of the lettering on “When no one cares… JESUS DOES !” and baffled by “Jesus Saves, Government Spends.” That kind of sentiment 1) makes me understand better why Mitt Romney was ever elected governor of Massachusetts and 2) makes me wonder about how the red parts of blue states compare to the red parts of red states, because these parts of Western Mass feels like what I imagine Kansas to be like. My gut feeling is that I am wrong and that Kansas is much worse but Rhiannon advances the alternate hypothesis that red parts of blue states are even redder in reaction, just like blue parts of red states are bluer in reaction (see Austin, TX or Asheville, NC)

Anyway, Rhiannon can take it from here. Go Rhiannon!

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ROUTE PLANNING

This trip is starting to feel more and more real – in the last four days we have been to two bike shops, two outdoor stores, three optometrists, one hardware store, and three ice cream shops. We have bought (almost) everything we need to start our trip, and we have officially planned the first TEN DAYS of our route (from Boston to Buffalo via NIAGARA FALLS), complete with couch surfing and camping plans.

This is our most exciting purchase, which was made with the assistance of two adorable slash really awkward EMS employees who may or may not have given us an unauthorized $25 discount on an $80 product for no reason as far as we could see. Hopefully this trend of free stuff will continue.

We are so excited to make dinner with it tomorrow in Katie’s backyard. We might even sleep in the tent. We also had to buy an accompanying massive tin of white gas to fuel it, which for some reason made us both oddly giddy (not the fumes even).

In other news, due to Katie’s inability to navigate the streets of her hometown (3+ hours spent driving in circles and counting…), we have determined that Rhiannon will navigate the trip (this is also because of her totally SWEET handlebar bag with a clear plastic cover perfect for holding maps). Today also saw that first rush of mechanical glee, as we attached a rearview mirror and an odometer to Rhiannon’s bike, which involved the use of SEVERAL tools.

Tomorrow we will saddle up both bikes for the first time and hopefully attempt to wobble down Katie’s street at 2 mph.

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Google Maps route and HOW YOU CAN HELP.

Finals are almost over, we’re leaving for Boston in 2 days to begin bicycle boot camp, and STILL I have trouble rattling off the states we’ll be passing through (my knowledge of the midwest is a little hairy, which is after all one of the reasons we are going on this trip). So I made a Google Maps rendition of the general direction we’ll be heading. Check it out.

We paid $120(!) for some sweet maps from Adventure Cycling which claim to point out every campsite, bike shop, and scary stretch of highway. So theoretically our route is mapped right down to the “left at Church St, continue for 0.1 miles” level (although yes, we will be cross-checking our directions with GMaps).

To the point:
Do you know anyone anywhere along the way who would want to lend us a bed, futon, floor space, or backyard? GIVE A HOLLER at kathreen.harrison@gmail.com or rhiannon.bronstein@gmail.com. Or leave a comment. Camping along the highway is great, but all of the things mentioned above are much, much better, and we would gladly deviate at least a coupla miles for them. Also, if you or anyone else wants to join us for a stretch of the way…GIVE A HOLLER. Rhiannon is way charming, but an occasional third (or more) set of wheels would be so great. RIDE WITH US!

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