Bicycle Trip

Last Thursday, mom, dad, Sarah, and John flew down to Florida with me and we've been on vacation in Key West since. Lots of good food, snorkeling and fun.

While the serious riding begins tomorrow, I put in a test ride today and took care of the first few kms. I've had a few minor setbacks including my back wheel being pulled significantly out of true during shipping, and my phone no longer making voice calls without headphones due to water damage already, but I guess that's how it goes.

Thanks
I want to start with a big thanks to everyone who helped out along the way. I definitely couldn't have done it without all of you.

After a big breakfast of sausage gravy, cereal, and a waffle, I hit the road at 9:30.

I was glad I went extra far yesterday so today could be shorter. I cruised along steadily and quickly. The big breakfast seemed to help. I never made a proper rest stop today; the longest rest was about five minutes to refill my bottles. I stayed in a higher gear today opting for forth or fifth instead of third, and sometimes shifting all the way up and riding standing up just to give my butt a rest. The change in cadence was nice and kept me moving quickly.

Sleep was weird last night. I fell asleep immediately, but then lay awake from three to five in the morning. Luckily I woke up just after seven and got on the road just after eight. It was my earliest start yet.

I had a quick turkey cheese wrap with ingredients I bought the night before, but then ditched the rest of the meat and cheese because I was afraid they had gone bad over night, and my stummy already felt a little funny when I woke up.

Even though I was camping out in a technically illegal spot, I still snoozed a few alarms this morning. I finally got up when raindrops started to fall. I quickly moved everything to the one bench in my clearing that had an overhang so I could pack up while staying dry. Between the rain and the sorer-than-expected ankle I wasn't in the best mood. But it got even worse when I was packing my tent into my saddle bags and one of them ripped open. Right across the top; a huge rip. The tent was in well enough that it wouldn't fall out so I left it and decided to think about it more later.

I left Aaron's house and got on the road around 9:30. It still wasn't on time but I'm getting closer. Leaving the Pittsburgh suburbs wasn't as bad as many cities and the roads became country roads and then the Montour trail pretty quickly.

I did a better job waking up this morning because the campground owner offered to make new breakfast and I figured I should be there on time. We had eggs over easy together and chatted for a while, and I finally hit the road about 10:00.

I had a hard time getting out of bed this morning. Although I planned to be up by 8:00 and on the road by 9:00, I ended up getting up just after 9:00 and on the road by 9:40.

Early on I got a foot long sub at subway and saved half for lunch. They took my gift card this time.

I've kept pretty good track of my progress, riding trends, and expenses on this trip, and that data is summarized in a few representative figures here. The raw data is also available is you want to do your own analysis. Hopefully this data will be interesting in its own right as well as helpful to others who want to take similar trips in the future.

How far do you ride each day?