Missy and Shane's All Around US Tour.

We're in Lancaster, PA today. It's still really cold and windy and there aren't many campgrounds in this area so it's been a rough few days. But it's so beautiful that keeps us going. We put up some more photos that go from New York City to the Pennsylvania Amish country Click Here for those photos (and as always there's a link in the sidebar for all photos). Also a fun link from Kristin of some serious loads on bikes (& motorcycles) can be found Here.

Two days back on the road now. It's taken a little bit to get back in the swing and I think we are both still working on it but things certainly feel better than when we left Ryan and Amy's. It was just so cozy and nice to be spending time with them that it was tough to think about getting back into the great unknown. But here we are now, in that wonderful unknown US countryside (yet very familiar in many ways). We eased our way back into it with a hotel stay last night, though it was incredibly overpriced for how skanky it was it was better than the 60 mile alternate or knocking on doors our first day back out.
Tonight we are back camping and though it is REALLY cold (in the low 30's with the wind-chill) we are both glad to be in the fresh air and surrounded by the beautiful autumn that has come upon this part of the country. Tomorrow is supposed to be cold and windy again, now we know how smart we were when we originally had the Carolinas in our plans for this time of the year. Ah, but when do plans ever work out so nicely?!
Today we rode through Valley Forge, an amazing bit of history on the Revolutionary War. Saw some great old buildings and as we pushed our way through the Autumn headwind I had a tiny feeling of how the 'troops' felt as they pushed through this area.. they were really cold.
So onward we go, south towards Washington D.C., one day at a time.

It's Monday morning, almost two weeks later than our planned departure day out of Lambertville, NJ. We were pretty close to being packed and had a planned Friday departure but Ryan & Amy started talking about their plans for the weekend (which sounded like fun) and the forecast for Saturday looked really wet & windy (which didn't sound so fun) so we decided to wait until after the weekend.
Here we are on Monday morning, the coffee is brewing, Amy's making muffins, we're all packed up and the time has come. Wow, hard to believe it may actually happen. It has been so amazing to have a 'home' again for awhile. Visiting with Ryan & Amy and meeting their sweet little girl Natalie has been a great treat too. I'm so glad we've been able to be here with them. But the time has come to give the road another shot. We've become so comfortable being in a homey spot, near friends, and 'settled' that we lost a little of our momentum and even questioned whether it was time to go home and give the road a rest. But, we've decided that we wouldn't really know what was right until we got out there and rode some more.
It's about 5-6 days to Washington, D.C. so we figured we'd know a little better how things are going once we made it there. There's so much to look forward to either way; the continuation of an amazing journey seeing this awesome country or the wonderful journey of beginning to create our home together. We'll know what's right once we're back on the road.

Our one week in NJ & NY has turned into two weeks. There's just so much to do and see but mostly there are important connections to be made with long time friends here. We have had an amazing time, with so many wonderful and unexpected experiences.
The last you heard from us we were staying with our good friends Ryan, Amy, and their new baby Natalie. We spent a couple days exploring this part of New Jersey and Pennsylvania with them. We made a trip to the amazing Grounds for Sculpture and the Moravian Tile Works. The Grounds is an amazing 35 acre sculpture park & museum located on the old New Jersey fairgrounds. We walked around for a couple hours and only saw some of the amazing grounds. Around every corner, bush, and bend were really wonderful pieces of art (from the sculptures to the landscaping). We also made a visit to a farm and explored the town of Lambertville a little. It's certainly fall harvest time around here with a lot of pumpkins and folks out enjoying the color change of the season and the brisk fall air. It's strange to be zipping around in a car to all these things though, somehow unreal after all the time heading in one direction under our own power.

Last week we headed into New York city via the great transit; the NJ train took us into Manhattan and then the NY subway took us everywhere else. We met Missy's friend Jodi and my friend Quinn at Penn Station. We jumped right in with a walk across the Brooklyn bridge and a great tour of Central Park. It was a Sunday so the park was teeming with activity (music, dancing, roller skating, street performers, bikers, and tons of people just out enjoying the wonderful weather). We strolled down 5th Ave and paid a visit to St. Patrick's Cathedral . It's so impressive when we walked around and below all of these towering skyscrapers we saw many beautiful churches. We finished the day with a walk by the Sky Mirror and the Rockefeller Center before having some great NY Indian food.
The next day we explored the lower east side, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and some more of 5th Ave. with Jodi. Then I headed up to the Upper West side to visit Quinn. We explored his neighborhood (which includes Columbia University, our third Ivy League college visit on this trip) and cooked up some great thai food. Quinn works for a great organization called Cross Cultural Solutions and though he's a Northwesterner at heart he's really loving New York and it's pretty easy to see why. It really is one of the most amazing cities I've visited, so full of life, culture, and history.
It's a little strange though, to walk around a city that I've never been too and yet feel like I know it so well. It is so much a part of our popular culture, showing up in every kind of media. Every where we walked we saw something that was in some movie, t.v. show, book, play, magazine, radio show, or comic book.

The next day Missy and I explored Manhattan on our own, visiting the World Trade Center site, the financial district (including Wall Street), a bit of China town, the great Tenement museum, the Apple store , and then finally took a pedicab ride to our Broadway play. It was the first time either of us had seen a Broadway play (Missy had been to NY once before). We ended up watching Avenue Q and it was really, really great! It's sort of like Sesame Street after the characters have grown up into their twenties (and were having a bit of a rough time of it). Very funny. After the show we walked around Times Square, an overwhelming experience to say the least, but we did have some folks video us and we may be posting that later.
On what we had planned to be our final day in New York we went to the MOMA. Through a great connection of a family member of a friend we were treated very well and spent a great afternoon in exploring the museum (save for the $17 cheese plate!). We closed the place down and then wandered out into the rain back to Brooklyn.

Since then the weather has been off and on with some cold nights, some rain, but then some sunny spots as well. That's outside and in our hearts as well. We've decided to extend our stay in the area visiting our old friends. Since the beginning this journey has been about many things, not the least of which are Home, Friends, Place, and Letting Go. And right now we are experiencing and defining all of those things more than ever. We're excited to get back on the road but are also working on being here, now, present and in the moment.

We've got some New Photos Here (Sept. 29 - Oct. 7)!

Also, we have a special Times Square video (click here) someone filmed.

Just a quick note to let everyone know we are alive and well. We have been having a great time in New Jersey and New York City visiting friends and exploring. The time has flown by! We thought we might be on the road south by now but plans have changed a little and we're not sure when we'll be pedaling out of the area yet.
We're enjoying more of the fall colors and even had a frost last night. Though, upstate New York got two feet of snow so we know it's catching up with us. We'll do a blog in the next day or two with a little bit about what we saw in NYC.

This is a post we've wanted to do for awhile and a subject that I've thought a lot about over the years. When you're packing for a bike tour the general rule is to lay everything out that you think you will need and then take half of it out. In this day and age there is so much light weight gear and there are so many ways to do a bike tour with hardly any gear at all on your bike (supported rides or credit card touring). But with my background in cargo-bike work and Missy's need for the 'creature comforts' of home we have become a deadly duo in not only breaking that first rule but we're pretty much pulverizing it into little bits (and blending them into a great smoothie). And we knew that the kind of adventure we were planning was one that we would have to do self-supported and couldn't be done 'charging' along the way.
So, as we packed for our possibly year long (plus) journey around the US we talked about what would make it possible and one of the most important parts for both of us was comfort. We didn't want this to be a suffer-fest. So I knew from the beginning that I would be bringing my Xtracycle to be able to carry a bit more gear. When we started the list of things to bring and laid them out we actually did manage to take some things out, but mostly we kept what we thought we might want because we knew we could always send them back later. So our gear list is pretty hefty.
Now, many of my friends are minimalists in their bike touring, taking as little gear as is "necessary", traveling light and fast and I can appreciate this ideal, it's just not something I've ever been interested (or able) in repeating. Not only am I not good at being a minimalist I also could not picture Missy sleeping under a tarp or in a bivy sack in a storm. Who really wants to do that? This is a good time to mention that most of the minimalists I know are guys. A tip to all those people trying to get their friends (or partners) into bike touring... don't take them on a minimalist tour as an introduction. Bring the luxury items and just make it a shorter trip, they'll appreciate it more and may be more likely to join you again, maybe even adopting your minimalist ways.
So we've determined that we're not minimalists. So what kind of touring do we do? Well, I've come up with a term that sums it up. We call our type of touring LOTS (Luxury Overnight Touring, Self-supported). On a LOTS tour you don't worry about cutting grams off your bike frame, you don't worry about throwing in that extra pair of cozy socks, and you most certainly would never sleep under a tarp! Of course this is not car camping, you do have to carry your own stuff under your own power so there are limits. We don't call it Maximalist touring. It's not carrying as much as possible (save that for Pedal Express), it's about bringing the gear that makes you comfortable- both in carrying it and in camp. Some examples?
*We not only have a tent but a Kelty tarp to put over the picnic table. It has made living on the road enjoyable. It becomes our living room on the road. The weight to comfort ratio is big- Small weight-Huge comfort.
*We use two cook stoves and a 'full pantry'. Between my love of cooking and the importance of food as fuel it's essential to us to have a kitchen on the road that makes cooking enjoyable. By having two burners and lot's of base ingredients our menus never get boring or old. We're already bringing all the gear to cook with, adding one lightweight stove didn't add that much weight.
*Missy has the largest thermarest pillow and backpacking sleep pad available. A good nights sleep makes all the difference!
*We use a Coleman lantern instead of just headlamps. Now that we are not touring in the summer and darkness comes around 6:00 there are a lot of things we would like to do around the 'living room' at night (needlepoint, knitting, bike repairs, cooking, reading, etc.) and having a lantern makes it so much more enjoyable.
*And yes, we did carry a human-powered Byerly Bike Blender for awhile. This was a great luxury, making smoothies for breakfast and even a soup for dinner. Sadly, we sent it home awhile back. It was more the space than the weight really.

Some people look at our bikes and say "you biked that over the Rockies"? But you know, no matter how you slice it (or ride it) going up some of those big hills on an ultra-light racing bike, a bike loaded with the minimalist 15 pounds of gear, or 140 pounds of bike and gear is not easy. At the end of the day(s) I'd rather have the 'things' we have and have worked a little harder to bring them along than to have not worked as hard and have very little in camp. On the note of the ultra-light racing bikes and working a little harder; it has always amazed me that people who ride for sport (rather than transport) and work so hard at getting in shape are also the ones so concerned about cutting the grams.

We've made up a gear list that can be found as a link on the sidebar (though it's not in the best format) and one 'feature' I'd like to include on the blogs in the future is a little "gear review" of things that are working well or not so well for us. So watch for that.
There is one thing that hasn't made the gear list yet that we added along the way and that is our little cooler. Missy carries it on her rack it allows us to pick up eggs, milk, yogurt, etc. or even the more important occasional six pack of local brew, because like I say- We like to ride fully loaded.

The last few days we've been riding along some beautiful (and historic) rivers. We crossed over from Connecticut to New York and rode along the Hudson for a little while and then cut over to the Delaware. The last two days we rode along small roads that wound alongside the Delaware with some great views of the river, the hills that surround it, and the valleys that stretch between them. We've had some longer climbs and downhills as well as the usual East Coast Rollercoasters. The riding has been pretty rural with some great scenery.
The sleeping situations have been interesting still. Came across one campground that we thought would be closed (and it was) but that was the perfect mileage for the day so we stayed there anyway. It was the Taconic State Park campground in Millerton, NY. It was a peaceful stay with a couple owls welcoming us to our site. We woke up to some rain the next day and have had some on and off rainy days but always with a little break to dry things off a little. That first day it rained really hard for several hours of our ride in the morning and around lunchtime we rolled into the tiny town of Stanfordville, NY and found a great cafe called Desserticus. It was a warm little paradise with hot cocoa, a great lunch and of course, awesome desserts. We sheltered there for about an hour and by then the rain had stopped, one of those sweet road moments.
We went through an interestingly historical area, Hyde Park, New York. It was the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt , the Vanderbilt mansion and also a great brew pub. Made a stop at a great little farm market for dinner & donuts (I love cider donuts!!) and asked around about camping since our map didn't show any in the area and we rode less miles than planned that day (beer is not an energy drink). There wasn't anything on our route but they said up the road a few miles folks camped out near a climbing area. We decided to stick to our route and just start knocking on doors to ask for "a patch of grass" to pitch our tent. About three miles down the road we passed the fairgrounds and saw about 20 tents out in the field. Turns out the Connecticut Climbing & Mountaineering group were set up for the weekend there. We asked if we could 'blend in' with them and they were very welcoming, inviting us to dinner (and beer!) as well as to breakfast. It was another wonderful example of road magic working for us.
Two days of riding along the Delaware has been really great with the final miles yesterday to Ryan & Amy's along the tow path, a path similar to the Erie Canal trail. Really, really beautiful.
And now we are at Ryan and Amy's visiting for a few days before we head into NY city for a couple days. They live in a great historic home in the cute town of Lambertville, NJ (right across the river from New Hope, Pennsylvania) and have a new little girl (Natalie Eva) that we are meeting for the first time. I've already been to one of the best coffee shops yet, called Rojo's and there are a lot of great things to see in this area so I'm sure the time will fly by all to quickly.