Introduction

As retirees, Rhona and I have the luxury of taking extended tandem bicycle tours. For the most part, our tours can last as long as we can stand being away from our four grandchildren (and the rest of our loving family). We successfully used Adventure Cycling map routes for tours, some of which we listed on Crazy Guy. An issue complicating planning our tours has been the logistics involved in transporting cyclists and gear to and from the start and end points of point to point tours. The cost of gasoline is an issue as well as having to leave a vehicle at a remote location. This year we decided to plan a tour which would allow us to cycle from our driveway on a six week adventure and eventually cycle back up our driveway without using any gasoline along the way. We live on the east slope of the Appalachian mountains. Our most severe winter storms (called Nor'easters) travel up the east coast, dump large quantities of rain or snow on us before continuing on up to New England and eventually out to sea in Maine. This tour is a counterclockwise loop following the track of these winter time Nor'easters. Interestingly, we delayed the start of this tour because of a rain event which started in the south and which on tonight's radar image is heading for Maine.

Our Planned Route We live in Keyser, WV, 26 miles from Cumberland, MD. Originally we planned to travel toward Washington, D.C. on the C&O Canal, but because of heavy rains (which changes parts of the canal into a mud bog) decided to stay on roads to where our daughter lives north of Baltimore. We will connect with the Adventure Cycling Atlantic Coast route there and travel north to Bar Harbor, Maine. We'll travel west on the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route through Niagara Falls, Buffalo and to Erie, PA. Adventure Cycling's Underground Railroad Pittsburgh Spur will take us to my parent's home in Pittsburgh. We'll take the Great Allegheny Passage trail back to Cumberland and then to our home. That is the 2,200 mile plan, but who knows what the route will eventually turn out to be.

We are now members of Couch Surfing and Warm Showers and hope to be able to connect with like minded travelers along the way. On past tours we accepted generous invitations to stay in the homes of people we met along the way and we enjoy hosting long distance cyclists in our home. Perhaps we'll meet some new friends on this tour.

Equipment We ride a 1995 era Cannondale Mountain tandem which no longer gets to travel off road very much. It has 26" wheels with 26 x 1.35 Marathon Plus Schwalbe tires. Although a little wider than we used to use for touring, they are rugged enough for unpaved trails and rarely flat. We pull a B.O.B. trailer and no longer have to struggle to cram gear for two into panniers. This is going to be a "Credit Card" tour so we don't have to deal with the weight, bulk and wind resistance of camping gear. A hot shower and air conditioning are nice at the end of the day.

The tandem hitched to an empty B.O.B. in the basement. Tomorrow load it up and head on down the road!

Technology We have a Garmin Etrex Legend HCX GPS mounted on the front handlebar. I flirted with mounting it to the stoker's bar, but Rhona has never clamored for more technology in her life. I'm not really thrilled by the unit but really have no way to compare it to other GPS units designed for bicycle touring. Except on very long days, a set of rechargeable AA batteries seem to do the job.

We use a wireless Mavic E-bolt bicycle computer with an interesting design. Instead of mounting the sensor on the front fork, the sensor is attached to a replacement quick release axle skewer. It is easy to keep it aligned with the spoke magnet. I think it is about five years old, so it has been pretty dependable. I replace the two small disc batteries once a year.

My Christmas present to Rhona this year was a Kindle Fire. I had it in my mind that she would be able to access the internet, check email and even watch Netflix streaming video. It remains to be seen if weak hotel Wi-fi signals will allow it to be functional. If not, we can activate my Motorola Electrify smart phone as a Wi-fi hot spot.

On past tours, we took pictures with a digital camera and made notes on paper. Months later I sat with the computer at home and wrote the journal for CazyGuy. On this tour I am going to try to take pictures with the cell phone camera and do at least a basic write up most days on Crazy Guy. Since we are not taking a legitimate computer, the text captions may be brief and capitalization questionable, but at least they will be fresh. Additional pictures taken with the digital camera and more narrative can be added at the end of the tour.

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