Blue View - Another Great Adventure?
/Great Adventures
A while back, I wrote a blog about my search for a great adventure. We had just finished our 18 years of sailing around the world on Nine of Cups, which certainly qualified as a great adventure, and were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. We bought Blue, our cargo van, and began outfitting it as a camper. While this is still a work in progress (and probably always will be), we’ve made several long road trips in Blue, enjoying them all immensely... but this wasn’t really on our list of great adventures.
The 1300 mile via francigena
Then we discovered long distance trekking. We first did a 185 mile trek along the Thames River in England, and enjoyed it so much we took on a longer one, the 1300 mile Via Francigena, and walked from Rome to Canterbury England. We were set to do a similar trek through Portugal and Spain this spring, but the pandemic put that on hold. Maybe we can try again next spring - maybe not. Who knows what the situation will be by then?
Nick’s Suggestion
A couple of weeks ago, we got a Facebook message from our nephew, Nick, who sent us a link to an article describing the Great America Rail to Trail Path. Over the last few decades, hundreds of old, unused railway lines throughout the U.S. have been converted to bike and hiking paths. Enough of them have been connected together to form what will eventually become a coast-to-coast bike path, extending from Washington D.C. to Washington State. There are a number of missing segments now, but when completed, one will be able to hike or bike the entire 3,700 miles or so without having to travel along busy roads or highways. In addition, since, for the most part, it follows old railway beds, the grades are all gradual enough for trains. Nick suggested this might be something we’d be interested in. Could we do this? It would certainly qualify as a great adventure.
The in-process cross country trail
Need some expert advice
Let’s get serious here. It’s been decades since we did any bike riding. We all know the old adage “______ (fill in the blank here) is just like riding a bike... you never forget.” Does that apply to septuagenarians? Can we still even get on a bike, let alone ride one for any distance? What bikes and gear would be best for this? We needed to find some expert advice.
Turns out we have a couple of experts in our family. Our youngest nephew, Erik, was a bike messenger when he was a teenager and a world class road racer when he was a little older. After that, he took up long distance bike trekking. His most awesome trip was a 3,500 mile trek from Missoula, MT to Anchorage, AK via the Yukon Territory and Fairbanks... my kind of adventure. In between all that, he spent a good part of his life working in bike shops.
Erik enroute in British columbia
Canoeing on the YUKON River ….They couldn’t do it all by road
Our oldest son, Brennan, is also quite knowledgeable about bikes. When he and his wife Hannah aren’t working, they’re kayaking or biking. They’ve logged a lot of miles, including the D.C. to Pittsburgh section of the Great America Rail to Trail Path. He too is a fountain of information.
Their suggestions
It’s always reassuring when two experts give you the same recommendations. Both Erik and Brennan said that we’d need heavy, solid, steel bikes that would hold up for thousands of miles on everything from pavement to gravel to dirt paths. Both also said that it would be easy to spend several thousands of dollars on amazing bikes that were designed for what we had in mind, but the company Surly made good touring/trekking bikes that would be quite adequate for us, and for much less. Since we weren’t even sure we could still ride at all, let alone ride for any distance, however, they both advised that we might want to find inexpensive used bikes on Craigslist or a local bike shop, and see how we managed before spending a lot of money... all good advice. The bikes are only the beginning, of course. They gave us lots of pointers on helmets, saddles, tires, and all the other gear we’ll need if we find we can and want to do this.
The surly long haul trucker
We still have a lot of research to do, but we did find a couple of bikes to get started on. What did we decide on? You will be surprised. Stay tuned and find out not only which bikes we found, but how many times I’ve fallen off mine so far.