Day -42: Putting on the Brakes

March 29, 2020

Everything is slowing down

COVID-19 is taking.

If you’re reading this, it probably means you can forgive me for mourning the probable loss of our summer biking plans. There are much bigger things to mourn for, and you have probably been affected more deeply than I. I am sorry.

But you are here for the tour journal.

I meant putting on the brakes literally, too. Still doing brake work on those big bikes. If you've seen these "parallelogram tensioning system" v-brakes before, I'd love to know more about them. They elude the forums—even Google itself. But they're geometrically just right for the RANS.

So we are still planning to go…eventually. It may be in Summer 2021. It may be later on this summer. Maybe still in May? (But it’s hard to turn a train this big around. Law of large numbers, you know.) Hopefully warmer temperatures can give us some respite and drop the infection rate to the point where sheltering-in-place and social distancing are not needed. But for now, they are, and we are not going to cheat—even for this.

So we are still hoping, planning, and preparing. Because if we do not do this bike trip this summer, it is not going to be because we weren’t ready. No excuses.

Just don’t be surprised if the dates change. And let’s all do our part. (Que music.) For the country. For the world. For cyclists…everywhere.

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Rachael AndersonI’m so sorry your trip is likely to be delayed. I’ve really enjoyed reading about your preparations and am looking forward to reading about the trip. You’re a great writer! Be careful and stay safe!
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