May 3, 2021
Four weeks out / Sauvie Sunday
Four weeks out
We fly out to Minneapolis four weeks from today. Suddenly it feels like it’s almost time to break camp and that we’re running out of days to prepare ourselves. We’re starting to mentally run through what needs to happen before then, and feeling just a bit stressed. We haven’t left on a ‘real’ tour since last August when we departed for Croatia, and we’ve gotten pretty relaxed since we returned by the convenience of being able to haul our raft of junk around with us in the car. We need to start thinking small again, and take preparations seriously.
The Mapping Problem
One item we’re wrestling with is maps and GPS devices. As usual, I’ve planned out the entire five month itinerary from MSP to Rome in a series of routes on RideWithGPS - one for each of the roughly 100 travel days we anticipate. They’re just a plan of course, and much deviation will undoubtedly occur on the road; but we like to at least start out with a plan.
So Rachael has been working on loading maps and routes to our Garmin 64S devices, using the same method we’ve used for the last decade. It isn’t going well this time though, because our map source - free open street map downloads - doesn’t work the same way any more. As recently as a year ago you could select all of the fairly small quadrants you needed, order a download of the set, and transfer it to the devices.
Easy enough then, but seemingly no longer an option. In fact, it looks like maintenance of these maps may have stopped about a year ago, and they’re starting to go stale. The only option now is selection of entire countries and entire states; and the size of these maps blows past the storage capacity of our antiquated devices.
In theory we could select by state or country and load as we go - load just the maps for Minnesota and Wisconsin first, then replace those with downloads of Michigan and Ohio, and so on; but for that to be practical we’d need a method for downloading on the fly. Rachael’s been experimenting for several days with this, trying to download directly to the phone (from which we can transfer them to the Garmins). She’s not had much success though, and thinks she needs a real computer with a USB port. So we spent a day or two looking at minicomputers, trying to decide whether it made sense to buy one that she could carry instead of her IPad and also use as a file transfer device. None of the options really looked quite right to us in the end, so we moved on.
The other idea is to buy downloadable maps, which we’re more than happy to do. Garmin sells downloadable maps suitable for cycling - one for all of the US, and one for all of Europe. These would work fine, if we could load them onto our 64S’s, but they’re too big. We could get them on micro SD cards that provide extended memory, but we aren’t really keen on that idea either.
So now we’re considering upscaling to more modern devices and are looking at the Garmin Edge 1030 Plus. This new device has lots of capacity and comes preloaded with USA and Europe. We’re not there yet, but it’s looking likely that we’ll go this route. We’d better decide soon - the sand is draining through the hourglass.
The Plan
So as long as we’re talking about maps, we may as well look at one. Here’s the plan for the first half of the tour: Minneapolis to New York. It’s gone through quite a few revisions since we first started teasing it out, but we’re feeling pretty good about it now and think that barring the unexpected we’ll generally follow it. It’s broken down into 56 stages, which leaves us quite a bit of flexibility - We’ll leave Minneapolis on June 3rd and (hopefully) fly out from Newark to Amsterdam on August 10th, so that leaves 12 float days to play with. And there are enough places where we can shorten the route if we’re running short of time that we should have no problems. Barring the unexpected.
Some stats:
- Start June 3, at the MSP airport terminal, and end August 8th in The Bronx.
- 56 travel days, 12 slop days.
- 10 states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut.
- Total distance and elevation, not counting day rides: 2,400 miles and 68,000’.
- Average travel day: 43 miles, with 1,100’ of climbing.
Sauvie Sunday
It’s becoming a bit of a tradition to bike out to Sauvie Island on Sunday, as long as the weather is agreeable - which it nearly always has been since we returned to Portland. The city is just coming off of its driest April on record.
Sauvie Island is one of our favorite local cycling destinations, but to get there you have to ride for about seven miles each way on busy Highway 30. This road just seems to get worse all the time, and during the week there’s enough large truck traffic that it’s not really enjoyable any more. Rachael doesn’t care for it at all now, except on the weekend when the trucks are mostly gone and it’s much quieter. Sundays are the best. I think Rachael has been out every Sunday since we arrived, and I’ve joined her on three of them.
We’ve seen plenty of Sauvie Island here in the blog, so mostly I’m just going along for the ride now. I almost didn’t even take the camera yesterday, and didn’t stop for a shot until over 20 miles into the ride, not until the north end of the road along Multnomah Channel. These last few miles are the best of the best though, and there’s always something. today it’s the sheep and lambs, always a delight at this time of year. I finally pulled the camera out for a few shots, Rachael was kind enough to wait for me, and then we rode straight home.
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3 years ago
Looking forward to following your next adventure. Nick
3 years ago
As far as the advice goes though, you’re either too late or we’re too hasty. We’ve already committed ourselves and have sprung for a pair of new 1030+ devices. Hopefully I’m not too old to learn a new trick!
Cheers,
Scott
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