In 1997 four friends planned out an Old Men's Bicycle Tour (OMBT) and cycled from Waynesboro, VA to Williamsburg, VA over 5 days, Cycleblaze journal here. We had a lot of fun and decided to make it an annual event. However, in 1998 job changes by two of the gang caused cancellation of OMBT 98, so 1999 was the second OMBT.

 In 1999, we were all about 42 years old, known each other for 20 years, and all flew desks for a living. We all were fairly active cyclists, doing things like the TOSRV ride in Ohio and the Seagull Century in Maryland but were generally weekend warriors. That year – with the exception of Rick – our cycling mileage was way down, as the demands of work and family intruded on the important things in life.

 Based on information provided by the Lake Champlain Bikeways organization (and excellent source of information), the plan was to cycle around Lake Champlain through upstate New York and western Vermont. We would drive from Maryland on Sunday, cycle Monday through Friday and then our wives would meet us somewhere for weekend of connubial bliss and possibly some additional cycling.

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 As Lake Champlain is about 500 miles from where we live in Maryland, there was no way to do route planning by actually seeing any of the roads or hotels, so the entire trip was planned over the Internet - commonplace today, but pretty high tech in 1999. Hotel reservations, except for one, were made via Travelocity; Amtrak train reservations were made on Amtrak’s web site; and route planning depended on the Bikeways info supplemented by using DeLorme Topo mapping software.

 The initial plan was to put the bikes on Amtrak from Baltimore to Whitehall, NY. However, to make the connections we would have had to leave Baltimore at 0330 am. The next plan involved driving to Whitehall, taking Amtrak to Plattsburgh, NY and then cycling about 70 miles per day for 5 days to completely circumnavigate Lake Champlain. This plan met with immediate resistance by the OMBTers, who pointed out that a) 70 mile days were miserable in OMBT 97;  b) we were now 2 years older; and c) our buttocks had much fewer training miles on them this time.

 The final route involved driving to Glen Falls, NY, cycling about 55 miles per day for 4 days and then taking Amtrak back from Plattsburgh to Glen Falls. This met with consensus from the OMBTers, but involved much scrambling on the Internet to revise hotel and train reservations and to redefine the daily routes.