NOMADS

These last few months have been great, but they are the total opposite of what I had planned. We were supposed to spend a sun filled winter cycling the Florida keys. Instead I’m writing this from Benson’s folks place in Port Angeles looking at a foot of snow. So, what happened? Did we do something wrong or have a huge malfunction? No, not at all, we made the best decision we could based on how we were feeling and what would make us happiest. It just turns out that bicycling in the south did not make us happy; there were a lot of contributing factors but that was what it boiled down to.

As we headed for Austin we knew that something was going to have to change and we saw three options. Make a fast jump to Florida where we’d be warmer, sublet in Austin or head home. It turns out that flying between Austin and Seattle is not very expensive, that combined with the fact that Benson’s dad was scheduled for heart surgery made it easy to decide. So we’ve spent the last few months mostly in PA decompressing, working on all of the side projects that we talked about during our trip but couldn’t stop for and generally enjoying the pleasures that come with being in a house (i.e. cookies whenever I want them).

We’ve had a lot of time to think about what made us happy during the first leg of the trip and we do plan to make some changes to our schedule. Basically the pacific coast made us happy; the views, people, and campgrounds were pretty great and we just aren’t going to find that on the other legs. To compensate we’re going to try really hard to lighten our load by another 15 pounds and treat ourselves to good food more frequently. Less gear to carry and better food should help us chew through the miles. And of course if we still really aren’t enjoying ourselves a car rental is easy enough. I’m hopeful that once we get down along the gulf and over to the east coast there will be more and better food and lodging opportunities.

One of the most surprising things I’ve learned so far is that I actually think cars are awesome. It’s easy to be a bicycle snob when you live in a city with bike lanes everywhere. It was very easy to think that I could love bicycling all over the country – but I was wrong. There are parts of this country that just aren’t fun on a bike, due to extremely bad road surface, 30mph head winds, boring terrain or all of the above. One of my best and favorite memories of our time in the south was renting a uhaul and driving out to carlsbad caverns. There was no way we were going to bike up the narrow dangerous road to the caverns. I’m sure there are hard core tourers who would vehemently disagree, but I have a pretty good sense of what I think is fun now and the difference between good miserable and bad miserable.

There are a lot of untold stories from the month of touring prior to coming home, and I feel bad about that. I am going to try to fill some of those stories in as we travel but first and foremost I plan to focus on keeping on top of recent events. Benson has done a great job with his posts, and while mine won’t be nearly as good, I will do what I can to help decrease the interval between posts.