We took a day off here in Muskegon. Generally speaking, we planned our days off either as rest days (after a long stretch of riding), or as tourism days (when we want to see/do things in an interesting place).

Today was neither. Instead, this served as a kind of insurance day. If we had been unable to ride on one of the previous days due to weather/injury/sickness/whatever, then we could have got back on schedule here. Or, if we had been waylayed two days, we could have skipped Muskegon entirely by riding straight from Holland to Grand Rapids. We have a few more of these insurance days scheduled later in the trip.

But, as it happened, everything has gone according to schedule over the first 18 days. So, we had a day off here in Muskegon.

Read more…

Today was a fairly uninteresting ride from Holland to Muskegon. This is the end of the second leg of our trip. We're still in good spirits and feeling good, although honestly the last two day's rides weren't anything special.

I say we started in Holland, but we actually started in Beechwood, which is right across the river from Holland. Beechwood is gross: every road is a multilane high-speed road with a Burger King and a Chick-Fil-A. Sidewalks randomly just end. Every business is a chain store with a gigantic parking lot in front.

Read more…

We got an early start today, and finished most of our riding before lunch. Today's our first theme park of the trip!

Today's ride was about 2/3 on-road, and 1/3 on sidepaths. Roads were very quiet today. I'm not sure if that's because it's Sunday, or if that's just how things are around here. We will find out tomorrow.

Summer has reached us! Despite being within a stone's throw of Lake Michigan for 12 days, today is the first day that it was warm enough to actually go into the water. Good timing, because we'll only have about 10 more miles near the lake.

Read more…

Rest day today!

We had a day off in Milwaukee, and we had two days off in Chicago, but in those places, we had lots of things to do. Here, we mainly spent the day resting. So, there's not a lot to report.

This was our first of probably many days of doing laundry in the bathtub!

Read more…

Today was a bit of a "challenge day". It's our longest and hilliest ride so far, coming the day after the previously longest and hilliest ride, and is the 4th consecutive riding day. (Although, these rides are still relatively short and flat compared with the rides we were doing 15 years ago)

I'm very happy to say that the day went pretty smoothly. We're definitely not in tip-top shape by any means, and we were definitely a little lacking in extra power to get up hills... but neither of us had any pain or cramping, and we actually had the leg energy to make this our fastest average speed of the trip (I highly encourage you not to look up the weather to learn if we had a brisk tailwind pushing us!)

Read more…

What a great ride today was. Easily the most varied day in terms of scenery so far. Another chilly morning. 45F when we were leaving!

This was our first ride over 50 miles, as we continue to work ourselves into shape. I was expecting the last half of today to be a bit of slog, but I actually feel pretty good still. Tomorrow will be a bit longer of a ride, so we'll see how that goes.

Read more…

State #3! Indiana!

Today was a great day of riding. A little chilly, but we dressed for it. Clear skies all day, and generally very good bike infrastructure almost all of the way.

A wise philosopher on the internet once told me "There is no such thing as a day with a tailwind. There are days with headwinds, and then there are days where it's easy riding and you're going fast because you're in good shape and you're doing a really good job". Today was the latter.

Read more…

A quick easy day today, just 17 miles across the city from the north side to the south side. This is the second of hopefully three very short rides (next one is Detroit to Windsor). This generally has the do with the spacing of acceptable places to stay -- in this case, we preferred to do a short day then a medium day, rather than a long day.

Thunderstorms are moving through the area from the northwest today. So, we were watching the radar map, and we tried to time our ride so that we arrived at our hotel after checkin time, but before the storms caught up to us. We just barely succeeded -- rain started a few minutes after we checked in.

Read more…

We took a couple of days off here in Chicago to visit family and explore the city. We're staying with Peter (Marna's brother), Jill, and Malcolm.

On Saturday, Peter and Malcolm met us partway along our route, and we rode together for the last bit. We mostly spent the evening catching up with P&J, and being taught (by Malcolm) how to play various board games.

Read more…

We made it to Chicago, and to the end of the first leg! We are still in good spirits and we're feeling pretty good. I think we made the right call by keeping the mileages low early in the trip, to try to work ourselves into shape gradually.

Today's ride was smooth and uneventful. Beautiful weather all day, and for a change, we were not fighting a headwind today.

Read more…