Ride Day 68

Bay Area to Bodega Bay today 62 miles 4200' of climbing with a head wind.  Arduous day to ride but beautiful.  The sun was out and the breeze kept me cool but did slow me down and make it more work.  The first fifty miles went well even though it was way more rolling hlls than I had expected today.  I am 210 pounds to restart my ride and I guess a bit out of shape despite traing hard in Bakersfield for the last few months. 

I had allergy problems for the first time today.  I was sneezing and had thick mucus coming up all day which seems to have made me more tired since I couldn't breathe right.  It hit 80 and I covered myself a few times with sunscreen and pedaled on.  I was enjoying being back on the road.  I missed the sense of adventure.  I toyed with the idea of riding out to the Point Reyes lighthouse just for a side trip but quickly changed my mind and turned around to get back on route for Bodega Bay.  The lighthouse would have added 35 miles to the daily total putting me closer to 100.  Glad I turned around too.  When I was only 10 miles from Bodega I started to seriously cramp up.  I had to stop often and rest and a couple of times walk off cramps.  I would have stopped for the day right there but I was meeting Karen in Bodega Bay so I had to push on because there was no way to contact her and she would have worried about me.  It took me a couple hours to crawl the last 9 miles.  I made it to Bodega Bay and then had a hard time finding Karen.  We are so used to having cell phones that when they do not work we screw up.  It worked out but I had to sit on the side of the road for an hour just hoping that she would drive by and luckily she did.  I couldn't pedal another foot at that point.  We went down to the campsite and I was seriously in bad shape.  I considered going for medical care but I hate doctors so much that I just crawled into the tent in the hopes that I would recover by morning.  All night long the cramps bothered me.  By morning they had subsided but I felt like I was beat up.  So today I am not riding but instead Karen and I are enjoying Bodega Bay.  If I don't feel better by tomorrow I may have to cancel this trip for now and go back to the bay and try to get healthier.  The allergies were a big problem draining my energy which an old man like me needs to do these grueling rides like this.  There are a lot of tough days ahead I can't fool myself and feeling this bad at day one is scary.  I will decide in the morning whether to abort now or try one more time to keep going. 

Twas the night before riding

Twas the night before riding and scattered through the room my maps and my camping gear were all cleaned and rolled tight.  The bags were all hung from the bike racks with care in hopes of dry weather and winds from the rear.  I inspected them all closely and then I sat down to a big carb load of goodies. 

I am ready to hit the road in the morning now.  My bike is ready and my gear is ready with the electronics all charged and everything clean and dry.  My body however is not doing so well.  I know I am crazy to go on the road feeling as poorly as I do but damn it I am going to live my life despite my body until I finally just drop dead.  My pain is high and my mobility is low.  I feel like I will be able to ride but if I break down there is no way I could walk to save myself.  I might make it a hundred feet on foot if I am lucky.  I am leaving anyway. 

Last year I was in such poor shape when I left that I had to load myself up with narcotics to be able to move at all.  This year I am better off than that but still feel like crap.  I am no longer using narcotics and I account that to the strength I gained on last year's ride.  I am actually hoping that after this year's ride I will improve even more.  I know it sounds strange to logical thinking people to hear me say I am all messed up but an leaving on a ridiculously arduous 8000 mile bike ride but I need this challenge to give my life some validity and a goal to reach for.  I very easily may not complete the ride as planned but that is not important to me.  The important thing for me is to try and get out there and push myself hard.  To work on my determination and focus so that I am better able to conquer my chronic pain demons which is my main goal.  If somewhere along the route I am stopped by something or other than so be it.  The only losing path is to just sit here and suffer until I off myself in despair.  Leaving and not getting all the way won't break my spirit.  I will just start again at a later date. 

Tomorrow I will try to get to Bodega Bay.  It is only about a 60 mile ride mostly along the cliffs of the Pacific coast.  I will ride through big trees and farmland.  I look forward to my ride through Point Reyes Park.  Nature should be all around me and I love that.  I could see whales along the coast.  Hopefully traffic will not be heavy.  I will be happy when I get far enough away from the Bay Area that traffic gets lighter and the riding will be safer.  The weather starting out will be warm with a 20 mph headwind slowing me down but I should still make it.  I have my friend meeting me in Bodega Bay where we plan on camping at the state park.  She is going to carry some of my gear so my bike will be lighter than usual which is a nice way to get started back on the road.  I will post some pics and a record of my day here when I get access to the net.  I will also post the Garmin link to my route with daily stats included. 

Enjoy life.

Tildenride 4/10 by jimfrogs at Garmin Connect - Details

Tildenride 4/10 by jimfrogs at Garmin Connect - Details

starting to prep for 2013 ride

I am starting to prepare for my bike ride up the West coast to Seattle where I will turn right and take the Northern tier over to Maine and then go down the East coast. I have ordered the maps from Adventure Cycling Association. I bought a new sleeping bag. I found the mummy shape to be uncomfortable on my last ride. My legs would get restless after long rides and the mummy shape restricted my movement too much. In the warm weather which I will be in most of the time the mummy was also too warm for me. When I go over the mountain passes where it is colder, I can just wear my sweats at night to keep warmer and I will get by without the hot mummy bag. I still need to get a new sleeping pad also. A few more cooking pots and pans are on my list too so that I can eat better and cheaper on this trip cooking more food myself. I ate too many cans of soup and stew last year just because it was easy to open a can and heat it up on my stove. I need to improve that diet this time. I plan on leaving in April so I have less than three more months to get ready. My body weight is already high again even though I have been riding almost three hundred miles a week weather permitting. I just put new tires and tubes on the bike also. Marathon Plus tires again and heavy duty tubes. That combination slows me down a tad but it is worth going a bit slower and not getting flats. They are a bit tough to fix when there is a flat but such is life. My health still sucks. I am healthier on my rides than I am living in one place maybe because I only do about half the mileage when I live someplace. I also have been overindulging in food and beer so that does not help things. I will update again in a few weeks.

The end of my ride for now

Well I made it safely to San Francisco on American Airlines yesterday. My ride is officially over for now. I will not make it around the country right now. I may restart the ride going North from San Francisco to Virginia but I have no idea when that might happen. A number of things contributed to the decision to stop riding now. Number one was I was running out of money. I did this ride on my $1000 a month social security income and all the hotel bills I incurred due to the bad weather coming up the East coast were just too expensive. Also the campgrounds here on the East Coast are also very expensive. If I need to pay $30 a day to camp that would leave about $4 for food and everything else. Obviously it would not work. So I called it off. I still consider it a success. I rode 5000 miles in 67 days of riding through 12 states. Almost half that was in high heat and high humidity. I think I proved that being a crippled old man that can't walk does not mean that I can't do other things. Now if I could just get someone to pay me for riding my bike everyday I could even have a job and not be a parasite any more. Like that would ever happen. My flight to SF sucked to put it bluntly. American Airlines does not exactly go out of their way to make the experience pleasant or efficient. Like almost all the airlines they charged for everything from luggage to food and internet. They were not helpful at all. Sure they were polite if you call automaton responses polite. They refused to call over to the other connecting plane to tell them that we were going to try to make the connection after our plane was late arriving. They did look it up and tell us it had not left yet but that was all they would do. I had requested transportation assistance because I can't walk and it was not there when I arrived. They repeatedly told me there was no way that I was disabled and made me prove it with my ID. That is probably illegal. I was not impressed at all with American Airlines and I will try to fly with some other airline next time. Once in SF I was too late to take BART because of the delay. I ended up taking a taxi that cost me another $90 to get to the house. So now I only have $200 to last for the rest of the month. That is only $10 per day, barely enough for food if that. I think I will survive but I will need to rely on help from others to do it. Makes me feel like I should have kept riding in a straight line when I hit the coast of Florida. Such is the life of a poverty stricken crippled old man. More later but no more daily posting until I get a little interest going in my life again. I will miss my bike touring for now. Enjoy life while you still are able to. P.S. If you have not read the beginning of this blog maybe now is the time to go to Jimfrogs.blogspot.com and click on the first blog in 2010 called Calabar and start reading from there. Some people can't even believe that really happened. Real life is usually more crazy than fiction.

Chesapeake Virginia

Well today I rested. I can't even walk around the block and I am having a hard time believing that I have already ridden 5000 miles around the country on my bike. My body believes it though and it is telling me loud and clear. I am very stiff and sore today after my 435 miles in the last four days riding. I have been trying to gently stretch and move to try to loosen up but I think it is going to take me a few days to recover. I ate well today. A friend of Wendy's and her family came over for lunch today and we had home made spaghetti with meatballs and also crawfish gravy over fresh mahi mahi that Wendy caught the other day. It was a great meal with great people. I need to learn how to make both of those dishes like they made them today. After the lunch I have mostly been catching up on all my internet stuff like sorting my pics and things and reading all my backed up messages. I have been getting some questions about my plans again. Well here is a surprise twist in my plans. On Tuesday I am flying back to California to visit with my grandson and the rest of my family and friends. I just booked the ticket to San Francisco International Airport. I will ship my bike back through the bike store. That will leave me with a few days of not having any wheels but I think my body could use the rest. I will either fly back and continue my ride or maybe go north from San Francisco to restart my ride. No promises about anything though because I live for today as tomorrow may never come. Enjoy life. more later...PURAVIDA

Ride Day 67

I left Kittyhawk before it was light this morning. Crossing the bridge back to the mainland was fine with no traffic on it. Then I rode on and on and on with very little to see or else I am just too jaded by now. I finally stopped at a small store and had some breakfast which was soso, but the staff was friendly and entertaining to talk to. The road had been fine to this point with wide smooth shoulders that were relatively clean of glass and debris. the traffic was also light on the four lane road so most cars and trucks moved over to the middle lane for me. Then the road sign I dread appeared and it was not a detour sign, it said simply "UNEVEN ROAD SURFACE AHEAD". It was not joking. They were resurfacing the road into the nice smooth road I had been riding on and they roughed up the surface of the old road first. For about twenty miles I had a bone jarring, teeth shattering, tire eating ride in the high heat and humidity. The shoulder had also been reduced by more than half its width and sometimes disappeared entirely. I was almost at the Virginia state line when my first tire blew out. I looked at the tire when I stopped and got ready to fix my flat and the tire was shredded to almost nothing left. I was a long way from anywhere and I am too disabled to walk so I replaced the tube and tried to gingerly ride on to a safer place to figure out where to get a new tire from. I made it less than a mile before my new tube was also history and I was again stranded. There was no choice but to hitch hike my way down the road. There was about nine or ten miles to go to get to Chesapeake Virginia where I was spending the night. I figured I could buy a new tire to get me going at a Walmart until I could find a real bike shop to get a quality tire at. I stood there with my thumb out for about ten minutes when a bright red pickup truck stopped. The driver jumped out and helped me put my bike in the back. He told me he would give me a ride up the road to a service station where I would not be so in the middle of nowhere. He told me that was as far as he could take me but that I would be better off there. I had to agree with him. He was a roofer that was staying home being the house husband while his wife worked because she made better steady money than he did as a roofer. We crossed the state line and then stopped at a service station. I was unloading my bike and putting my bags back on it when I had to stop to go wash the grease off my hands from changing the tire. On the way I met and started talking to a woman called Beth that offered to give me a ride to the Walmart just up the road. I had to wait a few minutes while her car was serviced and then she gave me a ride to Walmart. They did not have my tire but told me where to go to get one at a real bike shop and it was only a mile and a half away. Beth offered to give me a ride there so we were off to Fat Frog bike store. Beth dropped me off and I thanked her for her help. The bike store was just as I had been told, run by a nice friendly helpful man that knew bikes well. They did not have my desired tires in stock but I did buy one for my rear that would get me back on the road again. I replaced it right there in their shop and after a short conversation I left the bike in his shop while I went next door to a Starbucks for a cup of coffee and to look at a map of where my friend's house was here in Chesapeake. I was only a few miles away from their house so after my coffee I headed in their direction. A half mile up the road my new tire blew out. I grumbled and took it off to look at the tube. It had blown out along the seam on the inside of the inner tube which is a factory flaw. I had another tube and put it on to get me to my friend's house. I was again covered in grease with nothing to clean up my hands with so I rubbed them on the dry grass as best as I could. I then made a wrong turn on my directions as I had trusted the directions to my failing memory and the time spent changing the tire was just long enough to forget the exact turns. In other words I got lost. I asked directions a few times from the rare person out in the extremely hot afternoon. From putting all their directions into a general direction I finally got close enough to where someone actually knew where I was going. I pulled up to their house after pedaling 5000 miles from where I had started plus a few short rides with helpful good samaritans when I needed them. I was tired, hot, sweaty, dirty and very thirsty for a cold glass of water. Today was slightly less than 85 miles of riding so in the last four days I had ridden 435 miles and I certainly felt like I had ridden that far. I looked forward to a short rest in Chesapeake Virginia. More later...