March 31, 2014
Return to Cobble Hill
Three weeks between the end of one tour and the beginning of the next is either a short time or a long time. For sane people, of course, it is a short time - too short. The argument there is that one should come home, pack away the gear, and get on with life. Then, after some months or years, start thinking about another trip.
For not sane people (i.e. crazy guys) it is a long time. After all, the bike and gear were presumably going strong when the last tour ended, so why the delay?
Three weeks for us should be just enough time for our friends, family, and cats to remember who we are. It is just enough time to make sure automatic bill payments are still automatic, to keep the wheels on the van from rusting in place from non use, repair some of the ravages of winter around the farm, and to smell the newly sprung daffodils in the garden.
Oh, it has to be enough time to totally rip apart the bikes and rebuild them, because working well or not, we always want to start a new 5000 km with a good selection of new stuff installed.
So here in the first photo is the new stuff for this go around. It is the complete drive trains (crank, chain, cassette), one derailleur, new cable cores for brakes and gears, new tires all around, and new Ergon grips for Steve. You have to be a bit hard core to have worn through your Ergon grips!
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Our first day back, Sandra commented that to be sure we were really back she would expect the formerly perfectly clean and clear dining room floor to be covered in gear. Hah, fooled her! We covered the kitchen counter as well!
We find that when you are gone for a longish while, in the first month your thoughts may be of home - stuff there that still needs to be done, comforts there like good food and bed, etc. But after a while the road becomes your home and your habits adjust. For example, this time even when forced into too many motels we would commonly still sleep in our sleeping bags - though not (usually) on the floor.
So it is that the next photo shows us in a place where we can have any imaginable food (our own kitchen), still eating canned tuna that came out of a pannier. This stuff has a distressing resemblance to cat food, but on the road - it tastes great. At home, we do see that Maggie the cat certifies it is actually cat food!
One of the most uplifting stories to come out of the Southern Tier for us was the appearance of Ardell, in Eunice, Louisiana and her offer of her Bike Friday wheel to replace the one that had just failed us.( See the story HERE, and on the page after that Ardell not only got us back on the road then, but took away the broken wheel and shipped it to our home bike shop for rebuilding! In the last photo for this day's posting we see Jim Arnold, at Experience Cycling, and me with the rebuilt wheel in my hands. Thanks again, Ardell, and Jim! That wheel will get installed and be zooming through Paris in no time.
p.s. On the last tour we finally put a GPS right on the handlebar, using a Samsung Galaxy S3 as the GPS, and a waterproof mount. The mount worked out well, and made the "things that worked" list in our blog just ended. There was some interest in what the mount was. Here are two shots of the box it came in, showing the web site bikeconsole.com. It could be worth checking out.
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