It’s shaping up to be a pretty nice day.
I am on Aquidneck Island in Narraganset Bay, so
I have a day here built into my mileage to ride around Newport and gawp at how the affluent in this country spend their money.
Gawping is about all I can afford at this point, but hey- I get to ride a bicycle from Nova Scotia to Florida, so that makes me more than even.
I’ve mentioned that, south of New York City, my trip plan calls for me to put in 60 mile/100 kilometer days. Every day. For a month.
Now, this is basically possible because, between there and Key West, the terrain can pretty much be summed up in two words: parking lot. During the trip to date hills have slowed me down, sometimes a lot. On stretches like rail-trails where there is no appreciable elevation change or, at worst, almost imperceptible grades I am currently riding at around 14-15 miles/~25 kilometers an hour, and I can apparently sustain that speed for a long time.
So I was pleased today on a somewhat hilly route to find that I had made it 58.5 miles/about 95 kilometers.
I can do this!
I did run into my first major routing glitch.
A three year bridge replacement project according to a nice guy who stopped and asked if I was lost when he spotted me staring forlornly at the construction barriers. The bridge still shows up as open on both Google and Apple maps. Oopsie.
Oh, and
Weigh-in day tomorrow. The suspense is killing me.
I’ll open a little hole in the wall liquor, beer and wine store on the coast north of Boston and call it the… the…
…the Bunghole!!
That name’s already taken? Who’d a thunk it?
Stay classy, Massachusetts!
I’m in Buzzards Bay, another place name from my youth. I plan to ride to Newport, Rhode Island today. Good bye, Massachusetts.
It has pretty much stopped raining and the extended forecast looks much better.
Still looks foggy and damp this morning, though. Nothing like yesterday- I white-knuckled my way over the Bourne Bridge off Cape Cod in the fog at dusk. This is the first of several really big bridges on the trip.
I had breakfast with two great friends in Buzzards Bay. Thanks, Art and Bev, for meeting me and treating me to a nice meal and some excellent conversation.
If there were tides in Cape Cod Bay?
Guess that answers that question.
I get wet. If it rains hard I get real wet.
I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee and an old fashioned after riding for an hour. There is now a large puddle under my chair.
I have never bothered with biking rain gear. You just sweat under it and get as soaked as you would have if you didn’t bother. And what you are soaked in is sweat. Yecch!
I had hoped to do major miles today over a particularly flat area, including stopping at a bike shop and meeting up with a friend.
But, as that ominous TV music goes… dah, dah, dah, DAAAH!
It is an understatement to say that there is rain in the forecast today.
This is on top of it pretty much pouring from 2:00 pm on yesterday. The bike and I were soaked when I finally stopped for the night. Everything except my shoes pretty much dried overnight, but it looks like I’ll be doing that all over again today.
But nothing inside my panniers or handlebar bag is even damp, thanks to Ortlieb’s “Waterproof Classic” series. The panniers, front and rear, are essentially heavy-duty dry bags on a frame that allows easy attachment to the correct kind of bicycle rack. They do a lot towards helping me keep my spirits up on wet days. I recommend them unconditionally for the kind of trip I’m making.
Well, at least the wind should be more or less at my back.
In recognition of where I am, I’ll listen to the rest of Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book “Cod” as I ride.
Last night was the halftime point in my ride from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Key West, Florida. I have been on the road for 42 days and given my plan to arrive in Key West on November the 10th, I have 42 more days left to ride.
My RidewithGPS app tells me that I have ridden almost exactly 1,300 miles/2,100 kilometers since starting in Halifax six weeks ago. It also tells me I have about 2,100 miles/3,350 kilometers to go. This is what that situation looks like.
I’m at the map pin, eating breakfast
In order to accomplish the remaining distance, I will have to ride on average 50 miles/80 kilometers every day between now and the 10th of November. That will be tough, but it has always pretty much been the plan, as I planned 60 mile/100 kilometer days every day south of New York City with a rest day about once a week. So, believe it or not, I am pretty much on track to do this.
A big factor in my favor is that three quarters of the elevation gain is now already overcome and behind me. RidewithGPS tells me that, since I started riding, I have climbed almost 68,000 feet/20,500 meters- a gain of more than 12 miles/20 kilometers. On the entire remainder of the ride, there’s only another 22,000 feet/6,600 meters to go, and that works out to a little more than 100 feet/30 meters per mile/1.6 kilometers. That’s less than a two percent grade on average, which is close to imperceptible on a bicycle.
Not bad for an old fat guy, eh? Or at least I was at the start of the ride. We’ll see if we can do the “fat” part of that in completely by the end.
See you along the way to Key West!
When you make lodging arrangements at a non-chain hotel or motel through an online service- hotels.com as an example- in a distant place of which you have no current familiarity it has been my experience that you quite frequently wind up surprised when you check in- sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. Yesterday when circumstances- a credit card transaction at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and two plain old fashioned that was declined, which led to the discovery when I called Wells Fargo that the card had apparently been compromised the previous day when I stopped for breakfast and had been run up by $3,000 or so- required that I scramble to reserve lodging somewhere so that I had a fixed address at which I could receive a Fedex package from the bank, I wound up having just that happen to me.
Provincetown- P-town– Massachusetts shares with Key West, Florida the longstanding reputation for being the center of the gay scene on the Atlantic Coast. This goes way back to a time long before the current widespread acceptance. I have had a few openly gay friends over the years and a few others who had never come out, but my exposure to any ubiquitous gay cultural environment was nil.
Until yesterday, when I found myself in a hotel lobby conversing with a number of really friendly men (in a nice way), all of them seemingly fascinated by a guy dressed in black spandex and polyester wearing shoes with cleats on the bottom that made this just wonderful “click-click-click” sound when I walked. It was fun, and was repeated at the hotel’s continental breakfast bar this morning.
It appears I am staying in the premier gay hostelry in P-town. I was personally invited tonight to the “Underwear Party” in the club, which happens to be in the basement of where I’m staying, seen in the picture above but I probably won’t go, as my stock of good-looking bicycling underwear is woefully short. Cool to be included, though.
b2bbiketrip.com - A 2019 bike trip blog 