Day: August 7, 2016

And the answer is…

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…Halifax!

Wheel full 70px Tomorrow I’ll fly to Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving just after midnight.  I’ll hang around in the airport until about five in the morning when the buses start to run.  At that time I’ll catch one and travel on to my lodgings for the next few days- an unoccupied (for the summer) dorm room at Mt. St. Vincent University.  For $22 a night it was a great deal.  I will then spend my time sightseeing in Halifax until my bicycle arrives on Friday.

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Well, it is Fedex Ground

Wheel full 70px I’ll assemble the bike Friday evening and the next morning I’ll start riding as far south as I can go by the third week or so of October.

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Wheel full 70px Key West, here I come.  A RidewithGPS map link will follow shortly.

My SAG Team

Wheel full 70px While this is a solo bike trip, in that I’ll be riding alone and do not have a support vehicle traveling with me, I do have a SAG (support and gear) crew helping me along the road from home in Alaska about 5,000 miles/8,000 km away.

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Wheel full 70px My wife Heather and her mom Frankie are there for me every day over the phone and by text and email with words of encouragement, advice and news from Alaska.  They are taking care of the things at home that I can’t while I’m gone and are there when I need things mailed to me, like refills of meds, along the way.  Frankie came all the way up from her home in Tennessee to stay with Heather and do this with her.

Wheel full 70px Heather and Frankie make the best support crew I could ask for and I know I owe each a great deal for their willingness to be a big part of my b2b trip.

How do I…

…find a place on my bike to put my Quad-Lock [linkie] iPhone mount when there is no regular tubular surface on the handlebars or stem?

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Wheel full 70px I plan to use my iPhone 6 Plus as a cycling computer during my ride.  To this and I have bought one of those nifty Quad-Lock cases which allows the phone to be securely mounted to a corresponding Quad-Lock handlebar mount.   You just simply position the phone over the mount 45° from the up-and-down or sideways position, press, and twist it into place.   There is a locking system on the mount that makes it virtually impossible for the phone to come off during a ride.  It is the best handlebar mounting system for a smart phone that I have seen, and I think I looked at most of them.

Wheel full 70px So after thinking about it for a while I went out and bought a piece of 1 inch PVC pipe, which I trimmed to about 6 inches long. I attached the Quad-Lock mount to it with two zip ties.  Then I drilled two sets of holes on the other side of the pipe from the mount the corresponded to the spacing of the supports for my Ortlieb handlebar bag.  I inserted two more zip ties into the holes,  leaving me with this.

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Wheel full 70px Attaching those zip ties to the handlebar bag supports fixed my new Quad-Lock mount bar quite securely.

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Wheel full 70px So now I have an iPhone dashboard for my bike!

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