I'm sitting here writing my journal entry and listening to the rain. I'm thankful to be inside, and I'm sending my good wishes for dry weather to the crazyguyonabike authors who are already on the road on the east coast and who are probably enduring this cold rain. Lucky for me that the rain earlier in the week coincided with my need to take a break from training. I've done my share of riding in the rain, and I'm sure there is more to come - just not today!
It just got quiet outside - no more rain - but I just caught something out of the corner of my eye. This is nuts - it's May 18th and it's snowing! Wait, I thought I was done with my winter cycling clothing. Guess not!
I've been out of work for a week and a half now, but it seems like forever. I don't know how I ever had time for work - it seems like I've been busy every minute of every day. My time has been spent with training plus some planning for my trip, visiting with friends, some general logistics with things like health insurance, and using my Yoga/Pilates class to help keep me calm. I've been making lists of things I need to do to get ready, and actually getting those things done. I have a habit of making lists and then ignoring them, but there's just too much to do to ignore the lists this time.
I had a huge jump in training mileage the week of May 6th, which was the week that I was laid off. Riding helps keep me sane, but jumping from 100 miles to 150 miles in one week made me a bit tired. I took Sunday off, and went to the Boston Big Dig's open house on the new cable-stayed bridge. It's a beautiful bridge that unfortunately will carry only motorized traffic once it opens later this year. It was fun to get a chance to walk on it, even though that entailed waiting in a long snaky line in the rain for an hour and a half. I met other people who were in line with me, and had a chance to talk with them about my trip. I always like talking about biking!
One of my goals for next week - besides riding, of course - is to spend some more time with my maps and to figure out how and where I am going to hook up with the Northern Tier route in New Hampshire or Vermont. I stopped by the local AAA office to pick up state maps, and caused a bit of curiosity by asking for maps of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. Now I have 2 big stacks of maps - one from Adventure Cycling, and one from AAA. I think I'm going to take a shallow angle path across southern New Hampshire and Vermont and will probably hit the Northern Tier route somewhere in Vermont.
The other thing I need to do next week is a "practice pack". I want to make sure that what I think I'm taking with me fits nicely in the trailer, that I'm not taking too much or too little (although I'm not sure how to figure that out), and that I still have room for food! I have my packing list from my previous trips, so I think I know what I need. Packing in a trailer instead of panniers is different for me, and I can't really tell if the actual packing space is similar. But - I'm sure everything I need will fit.
Tomorrow my local bike club is having a century ride. I'm planning to do the metric century, which should be a nice addition to my training schedule. This week I'll be above 150 miles on the bike again. If I get out today, plus do the club ride tomorrow I should be closer to 200 miles for this week. I think if I can keep at this level of riding until I leave that I'll have a good base for my trip - even though I figure I'll be riding about 300 to 350 miles a week once I'm on the road.
