January 2016

My estimated Go Date is now Friday, March 4th.  I’ve delayed the date due to a discovery that it doesn’t warm up in Canada as soon as I assumed.  Nighttime temperatures average below 32 degrees until late April.  I’m not eager to wake up in a sub freezing environment. I’d also like it to be above 40 when I start riding at 8 AM.

In spite of this delay I’ll still be able to attend a Spurs game and two Spring Training baseball games in  Florida.  It may cause the back end of the trip to be hotter than I’d like, but I’ve been planning to follow a northerly route towards home, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

There is also a possibility that I’ll interrupt the trip in July to fly to Scotland and walk across the country.  It’s long been a bucket list item and my sister has expressed a similar interest.  I’m waiting for her availability before setting dates.WalkAcrossScotlandWalkAcrossScotland

WalkAcrossScotland

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What was I, an overweight, 62 year-old man, doing participating in the subject event?  I do not know.  It began many, many months ago when my daughter, who was working, asked me to sign her up for the event.  I did that.  Then my wife Yoriko suggested I sign up too.  In a moment of Pavlovian stupidity, I did.  The idea was that it would give me motivation to reduce weight.  That didn’t happen.

I finished.  That’s about all I can say.  So did approximately 10,000 others, many dressed up as a Star Wars character.  I dressed as a stormtrooper who was running 13.1 miles.  That’s to say I wore gym gear.  It was crowded.  In fact after (time redacted) minutes of spreading the field, I still had to navigate a traffic jam to reach the finish line.  I may again suffer a bout of insanity and do another 13.1 miles, but I doubt I’ll ever be stupid enough to do it with 10,000 others.

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(I have 8 things that will need to be charged!!  I haven’t yet bought a solar charger, but I am considering one.)

Today I found places to stay on the trip, though I can’t make reservations yet.  Our kitchen is on the pathway to remodeling and its progress may impact my Go date. I’m almost sure it won’t, but I don’t want to risk it.

Amazingly I initially made a SWAG for hotel/camp costs at $50 per night.  My much more accurate estimate is $47.  I also planned to stay in hotels 2 out of 7 nights.  Excluding two nights at a timeshare, that is exactly the ratio I’m looking at based on campsite availability.  I’m impressed.

 

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Okay.  Feb 20th, or thereabouts, I will depart on an open-ended adventure.  The end of the first leg will be Key West, Florida.  I have a sketch of an idea to follow this up with legs to Alaska, Nova Scotia, then home.  The trip will be done slowly, with each day having one or more “destinations”.  My goal is to see things along the way.  From past experience it is sometimes difficult to stop and look while tooling along the road on a bike.  It’s the primary challenge of this adventure.

I am prepared to have this adventure take five months.  Interest and funding will be the two limiting factors.

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