Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Nothing hard is ever easy: A bicycle tour attempt.

Wonderful adventure. Many Thanks!! Enjoy your much deserved rest with your family.

Congratulations, Mike!
You coming to Q?

As as has been mentioned many times, THANK YOU MIKE. What a great story and adventure for us, what a life story and first hand adventure for you. Not many people you run across can one up a round of bench racing (that's bullschit to some) as you now can.
I will agree with who ever said it first.

BOOK!

Thanks again.

Mike

Congratulations on reaching your goal and completing a gigantic feat. As so many have so well said, daily we have immensely enjoyed this adventure with you. Thanks for sharing your heart, photos, and script with us.

Jim

Congrats Mike!! You have set the bar for "older guys can still ride long distances on a bicycle". Certainly fun to follow your adventure ride that took you thru an area where I used to ride 4+ decades ago.....how did your knees hold up??

WOW, a bit overwhelmed by the responses here.

OK the concept seemed incredible to me too before I did it. Turns out all ya gotta do is get up every morning and ride a bike all day. Two hours into it on any given day you'll be someplace entirely different. After a month of that you'll be someplace REALLY different.

As Rog said, my cousin and his wife's response was "No, really, where's the car?" and even called my wife to confirm

I will allow a certain cognitive disjunct, as in its even hard for me to believe I actually rode a bicycle to these old familiar surroundings up here. The other thing is this past month has been an event-filled blur of uncertain length, just an endless series of days not divided into weeks. I get shocked when I get on this thread and see my own writing from "day 19" or whatever and think "geeze, was I really riding for that many days?".

Near as I can estimate, total miles ridden coming here was 2,003, averaging 65 miles per day of actual riding and not including the three rest/weather days en route. Total travel time including the three rest days 34 days.

Haven't tallied the cost, probably around $1,500 for lodging and food all told.

But, to put things in context, as bike tours go, this was a moderate one. Coast to coast and I'd only be 2/3 of the way by now.

Physically I lost only a small amount of weight, my knees are a tad stronger than they were but I already found out me and the nephews are going paintballing this weekend. In the movie The Seven Samurai there's a line to the effect that those who cannot run in battle die. I'm gonna get absolutely plastered by paintballs

Been off the bike only a day and a half at my cousin's house and already I'm so far removed from it mentally I musta really been ready to get off it for a bit, but a thirty-five mile ride to my brother's house for an evening family gathering is in the works today. None of 'em have any idea

The bike is in good shape. Front tire is still good, formerly rounded-profile back tire is worn flat along the treads but no cords showing yet. Schram 550 (??) chain, new at start, was already well-stretched 500 miles ago back at Century Cycles in Ohio, after 2000 miles its gotta be totally worn out by now. Still, if I ride 150 miles between houses in the next ten days that will be a lot. I think its good to go. I do have a spare. When I get home I'll replace the chain and rear sprockets right off.

One thing they recommended at Century Cycles was a product called Chain-L, a petroleum-based chain lube that worked really well. They said one application was good for 500 miles and that appears to have been the case. I'll be ordering some after I get home.

Most appreciated items brought on trip; inflatable pillow from REI. Never had used one before. I can sleep most anywhere, but having that pillow sure did help. That and a $4 LED flashlight from a Dollar Store along the way. What made it essential was it had a lanyard attached, and the single most important thing about stealth camping was having that little flashlight attached to my wrist so I could find it right away in the dark.

The REI quarter dome tent was near ideal, needed mostly as a screened-in shelter as I got rained on very little, went up in just a couple of minutes. Many bike tourers use hammocks but I couldn't have used one at most of the roadside places I stopped and certainly couldn't have literally dropped out of sight as easily as I did.

As for where I stayed, a quick tally; thirteen nights at campgrounds, eight nights in cheap motels, seven nights visiting friends or enjoying the hospitality of strangers, and just five nights in the weeds just off the roadway. If I had it to do over again I'd spend more nights in the weeds, but that takes a few tries to get used to, hence all the motels. Twenty-two showers en-route, a surprise, I didn't think it was that many.

Posting pics takes a good while, but in a few days when I get a chance I'll update the thread.

Thanks to all,

Birdwatcher

Looking forward to photos! Thanks again!

As I daily read your post, I followed with my minds eye every step of the way.

I have been thinking about your night in the weeds somewhere around Deposit. The number of ticks around has increased greatly over the past couple of years and there is plenty of Lyme in southern New York. I really hope you didn't pick up any passengers. You might still give a check and see if there are any hiding on ya.

I know this isn't the exact route, I created it from one of the initial posts where Birdie stated his intended route. I wanted to get a scale and track progress. Even though it's not exact it gives a visual of just how amazing this trip was. I've kept up with it from the beginning and being a former rider (nothing even in the same ball park as this epic journey!!) I'm even more impressed. This actually inspired me to get a bike and start riding again, I pick it up today!!

Hats off to ya Birdie, awesome accomplishment!!!

Good God, you'd probably die down here.

Congratulations Mike, Thanks for posting the road trip.... I especially enjoyed your posts from my old home town, Westfield NY. It is a beautiful area. If the NYC, Long Island, Albany and other Eastern Liberal cesspools had not contaminated the State so badly I might well still be living there...

Glad the folks at the dinner treated you well.

Congratulations, Mike!

Congratulations, Mike!

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and seeing the pictures of your adventure.

I wish I could be there to see the faces of your brother and the rest of the family when you ride up.

Thank you again for sharing this with us and particularly, thank you for including Barbara and I in one of your stops.

Ed

BRAVO, birdie, BRAVO!!!



A recurring theme throughout and a great metaphor for life. Sig worthy to be sure.

Thank you. The pleasure has been all ours.

CF

I been out of pocket so just caught up to you, ramblin',man. Glad to see you made it where you was going.
Now all you got to do is Vaminos pa la casa!

Good Job Mike, thanks for taking us along for the ride.rio7

Hey, thanks for going to the time and trouble, I intend to use that image if'n you don't mind.

Anyways....

Turns out I failed in my mission to totally blow away my nephews by arriving on a bicycle. Their reaction was to say; while they were not expecting a bicycle, neither were they surprised on account of they have come to expect this sort of thing from me. Anybody else and they would have been shocked, me, not so much....... �SIGH....�

OK, photos, I got hundreds of this beautiful state, literally. Here's just a few.

Actually, its pretty easy to PO a kingbird like this, the Eastern Kingbird being on of my favorites. If it survives the Gulf crossing, by October this one will be back in the Amazon Basin among a flock of hundreds of its kind, living as a mobile fruit-eater in the forest canopy.



...and a brief aside, this outside a business in Olean NY, the necessary fence being yet more evidence of the habitual intolerance of the Left...




The campsite on the Genesee River. When the Sullivan Campaign burned out the Iroquois in the Late Summer/Fall of 1779, the sheer scale and productivity of the Seneca crop fields along the Genesee Valley stunned the American forces, being the epitome of the �Indian cornfields five miles long� sort of historical accounts. It was my good fortune to have a third floor dorm room view of the Genesee Valley in college; the sight of flocks of tundra swans flying amid snowfall being one not easily forgotten





A BLUE barn? Always gotta be a non-conformist in the mix I guess, or maybe there was a sale on blue paint, I dunno...



Not sure exactly along the Southern Tier where this was....



Pretty sure though this was on the divide between the Genesee (emptying into the St Lawrence) and Susquehanna (Chesapeake Bay) watersheds, looking generally east towards Corning...

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/Bike/btripst57_zps9ff3d495.jpg[/img]

More.....

Point taken, but it might have helped that I slept in the insect-repellent mesh sleeping bag liner from REI, amongst other things it served to catch anything important falling out of my pockets during the night.

Point of interest, and jumping out of chronological sequence, here's a couple of shots of that 45 degree stealth camp behind the on-ramp barrier, that yellow thing up top in the night shot is a road sign





Corning views....





Bill (Southerntier) and his wife Patti; excellent hosts, a credit to the 'Fire...



Me, as I was leaving...



And a dead giveaway you're visiting a Campfire member's house....

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/Bike/btripst65_zps1a16b7f2.jpg[/img]

Maybe I really was tired leaving Bill and Patti's house, my lower back hurt and, more alarmingly so did my wrists and shoulders. Recall I was still at least a few days out from my goal and might yet be grounded by some sort of physical breakdown.

Just then I came across this organically-grown blueberry stand and a voice inside my head said �Mike, eat some of those blueberries, they contain a cure for what ails you.� I dunno that's true but a pint of these certainly did seem to help.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/Bike/btripst66_zps64afdd0a.jpg[/img]

...and a view from along the road at that point. There should be an Indian legend to the point that when New York State was made, the Creator forgot to beat it with the ugly stick, so he beat New Jersey twice

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/Bike/btripst67_zpse3824281.jpg[/img]


More.....

Have at it and PM me if you would like me to edit it in any way