Hi Keith,

Oh, it would be tight on July 16, I didn't pay attention to your start date and was thinking you would be coming through before we would leave end of May-June.

But the invitation to stay with anytime you come through Boise stands (bike or vehicle)

Racpat

The Bike Surgeon is (or was, in the mid-1980s) one of three bike shops in Carbondale.  It was decidedly the funkiest and the one with the most personality.  

The owner, a guy not much over 30 at the time, catered specifically to the touring crowd.  For them, no repair was more than $5 plus parts, which I think he sold at cost.  He had an apartment above the shop where through riders could stay for as long as they wanted, free, gratis, and for nothing.

He also had a stock of things like sponges and travel toothbrushes and small chamois-type towels that he gave to any rider passing through.

The wheels he built - one of his specialties - were guaranteed.  Period.  No exceptions for things like potholes, collisions, or whatnot.  If you wanted truly bombproof wheels, Mark was the guy you wanted to have build them.

He had a mid-fifties vintage Plymouth Fury parked out back of the shop.  It was painted pink and nicknamed "Christine" (a Stephen King reference), and had fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view window and matching dice as valve stem caps on all the wheels.

It appears that the original shop is gone, but the name seems to live on in another shop a few miles east, in Crainville IL.

Hi-

Roger that.  I'll be starting on 2 July, at the end of my family event in Bend.  Looks like I'll be hitting Missoula just at the beginning of my third week on the road (and well after your own departure).

Have a great tour!

Wayne I don’t have any firm cycle touring plans for 2022. It’s more like a wish list.

 International travel, or any travel using planes, is still very uncertain because of the ever changing covid requirements. However, being an optimist, I’ve applied for a passport renewal. In the best scenario option we’d go to NZ, and then later to Europe with our folding bikes. The main reason for travel will be to see rels and friends, but there’ll also be an opportunity for some cycle touring in Italy, Spain and Portugal.

More likely (unless air travel becomes more certain)  will be tours based from home.  I’d especially like to do more off-seal, bike-packing type touring with a new, fat tyred 29er I bought last year. I’ve been riding it on local trails, and it’s an excellent bike on rough-stuff. The next step will be to see how it handles a load for touring in the back-country.  It will be fun experimenting with a different touring set up.

Hi Jeff-

Thanks!  If I stay anywhere near close to the provisional itinerary I should be arriving in your area in mid-September.  Keep an eye on my progress to see whether that changes.  I'd love to take you up on your kind offer of a place to stay.

Thanks also for the heads-up on the demise of Taylor Mill Road leaving Maysville.  I saw, in a journal somewhere (they've already started to blur) that someone crossed over the river at Maysville then stayed on the Ohio side to get from Maysville to Portsmouth.  Was that you, maybe?

The Portsmouth-to-Pittsburgh leg is partly off the ACA network, as you are no doubt aware. I'll pick up the Chicago to NYC route around Zanesville, I think, and follow that into PGH.  Portsmouth to Chillicothe will follow the TOSRV route (not an ACA route) and then I'll be on my own to get to Zanesville.  I think the route shown was entirely selected by Ride With GPS.

We wish you a great tour as well, and disappointed the timing is off in meeting up.

Will be watching for your journal!

Racpat

You can cross the Ohio River at Maysville on two different bridges. The old one, the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge, is very pretty (it looks like a small version of the Golden Gate Bridge), but is narrow. There's a sidewalk, though, which the UGRR maps say you should walk your bike across. I (and lots of local cyclists) have also taken the lane... but I wouldn't recommend that at rush hour.

There's also a new, modern bridge just outside of town, which has wide shoulders.

If you do cross the river at Maysville, to get to Portsmouth the most direct route is US-52, which stays pretty close to the river most of the way. Shoulders are variable. I've ridden much of it (although not during a tour), but I found it a little too trafficky for my taste. I think I'd prefer your route through Lewis County, on the Kentucky side of the river, but: It might get a little hilly when you are away from Route 8.

Maysville is a small town (maybe 9,000 people) and no bike shop, but there's a large number of cyclists considering its size, some of whom would undoubtedly be able to help you out if you have bike problems while you're in the area. 

There's some interesting historical stuff there, and in nearby Ripley, if you're into that kind of thing. It might be a nice place for a day off.

There's also a Bike Surgeon in O'Fallon, Illinois. We lived in Lebanon, Illinois, the next town over from O'Fallon, for six years.

My understanding is that they had some sort of licensing arrangement with the original Bike Surgeon in Carbondale

Apparently the name did, or does, still have some value.

Once again, my thanks!  I've already updated the route to use Hwy 11 instead of the road-no-longer-there.  My provisional plan calls for a layover in Maysville- the rest, laundry, and general lolling about eating bon bons day that I've built into every week.

Although I'm relatively "traffic hardened", meaning I'm accustomed to sharing busy roads from time to time, I much prefer quieter byways when they are a viable alternative.

In thinking about it a bit more I now recall where I saw US 52 used as the route from Maysville (actually, from Ripley) to Portsmouth: several of my friends traveled that way back in 2012, on a ride from Nashville to DC.

Keith, I see that your planned route takes you through the Black Hills and Badlands in South Dakota. I rode through there a few years ago and enjoyed it so much that I'm going back with a friend this July. When you get to Hill City, I'd suggest taking the Mickelson Trail south a few miles and then getting on the Needles Highway (SD route 87). It has some of the most interesting rock formations east of the Rockies.

Your route also uses Sage Creek Road, skirting the north side of Badlands National Park. That has some nice prairie scenery along with views of the Badlands, and you're likely to see bison. But it's a gravel road, and while most of it is fine, there are stretches that were unrideably muddy when I rode it. So if it's been raining when you get to Scenic, you might want to stay on SD 44 to Interior.