Preparations

Jodi and I are getting ready for this summer's bicycle tour. It's not an epic trip like Tanzania two years ago, or our long-anticipated but not yet realized trip to Eastern Europe. We're keeping it simple and keeping it local this year. On Saturday morning we will roll out of our condo parking lot and head towards Washington, DC. Actually, we'll head to Bethesda, MD, just north of DC. Jodi's sister and her family live in Bethesda and their house is our target.

We'll be following a portion of Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast route. I followed another portion of this route back in 1999 when I started from DC heading south with the intention of riding to my parents' house in South Carolina. (http://www.allenf.com/EastCoast99.htm) That trip was aborted when I ran into Hurricane Floyd. Hopefully this year's trip won't be quite as eventful!

Our route will take us southwest from Boston towards north-eastern Connecticut, then across northern Connecticut (lots of hills!) and into New York State. We'll cross the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie then head south swinging west around New York City and heading for the Delaware Water Gap. From here we'll swing a bit west through Valley Forge and into Pennsylvania before heading south again. We'll either go through Baltimore or swing out to the west to go around it, then head in towards the DC beltway until we finally arrive in Bethesda.
It looks like the whole trip should only be about 700 miles, a comfortable, easy, two week ride.

We have started to make piles of gear on the living room floor, and come Friday evening we'll have to stuff it all into our panniers. We haven't used what I refer to as "the big tent" in four years, so I set that up the other day to make sure we had all the stakes and poles and that everything was in good shape. Since I have spent the last year or so converting my backpacking gear over to ultra-light stuff, it seems like a monster. I'm glad we'll be carrying it on our bikes and not on our backs! It is a luxurious abode, nonetheless.

We should have decent cell phone coverage in the area we are touring this year, so I will be bringing my Palm Treo and a foldable bluetooth keyboard which makes writing emails much easier. I'll be using this to update this blog. If you'd like to follow along on this year's tour there is a link to the right that will allow you to subscribe and be notified by email whenever the blog is updated.