Craig's Big RIde

This might be the final entry of this blog. When I first posted my spreadsheet, I was surprised at the responses I received. It seems a lot of people really liked it. So here is the final version of my spreadsheet. I added a couple more columns: Moving Time (as tracked by Strava) and Calories (again, a Strava data point). I'm not sure how much trust I put in the Calorie calculation. I did enter my starting weight and height in Strava, but part of the calorie calculation should include how much my bike weighs (including water bottles, BlueTooth speaker, cell phone, and all the other "stuff" attached to me or the bike), plus an estimation of the ride-time winds (i.e. headwind, tailwind, crosswind, no wind), road quailty (bumpy or rough pavements has more rolling resistance than new, very smooth blacktop...I can feel the difference), and other factors that I'm not even aware of. Still, I included it just for general interest; it's probably not totally inaccurate. The...

We repacked the car today in preparation for our drive back home. And instead of keeping the bicycle assembled and inside the car (i.e. ready for me to pull out and ride), I partially disassembled it and was able to get it into the Thule "rocket box" on top of the car. As you can imagine, that cleared up a great deal of room inside the car so that we could rearrange things in a better way for a more normal road trip. We also did a couple other chores, but then we had a free afternoon to go to downtown Portland. The weather was very pleasant with a high near 82F and it was a nice afternoon to go walkabout. We tried following the Portland Freedom Trail, which documented the sites of Underground Railroad. Mostly what we found was that everything burned down in the Great Fire of 1866. So that was kind of dud. (Sorry, Portland.) The one thing we did find that was interesting was the Eastern Cemetery, where they just happened to have a graveyard tour every Saturday afternoon at 4pm...

We made it to Portland, Maine, today and thereby completed the transcontinental bicycle ride! I rode to the Portland Head Light (lighthouse) and Lailla was waiting for me there. We took a few photos on the beach and then a couple at the lighthouse as well. That's a wrap!   I started in Fryeburg, Maine, near the border with New Hampshire this morning. The first few miles of the ride was on the Maine Mountain Division Trail. I started without my windbreaker on, but stopped after just 1.55 miles to put it on because it was quite chilly. Somehow, I paused Strava while messing with my phone at that stop. I didn't realize that it wasn't recording my ride until I was nearly 20 miles into the day's ride. I've been so careful every day to make sure Strava was accurately recording each day's ride and I messed up the final day. Using Google Maps and matching it up with my Strava map, I determined that I had missed recording 18 miles of my ride. Doh! So today's total wi...

Before I get to today's ride details and photos, I wanted to briefly mention my plans for this blog. Tomorrow is my last day of riding and of course I'm going to post something tomorrow evening. But I also plan to post some entries for a few days after the ride. Lailla and I have some "awards" in mind (like best hotel and worst hotel), but we need some time to think about the dozens of places we've stayed and what else we might give awards to. And I also plan to post some general impressions, an updated spreadsheet of my ride data, and so on. So keep checking back for a few days to see what other goodies I can come up with. I also haven't posted all the photos I took and I may be able to post a few more that I overlooked in my post-ride-and-a-beer-or-two tiredness. Okay, back to our regular programming... After yesterday's struggle, today was a good day. I had to tackle a couple significant climbs. But it wasn't windy, my legs and attitude were feeling...

I finished my ninth state today! I finished Vermont and rode into New Hampshire at Lyme this afternoon. From Lyme, I was heading mostly north--directly into a head wind--and I finished out the day in North Haverhill. I struggled some today, finishing with 71.4 miles at an average speed of 12.6 mph. There was no "Welcome to New Hampshire" sign, so I had to be content with a state line marker on the bridge into New Hampshire. But before I started across the bridge, I did look back and noticed that there was a "Welcome to Vermont" sign coming off this bridge, unlike the one yesterday. I did take a few pictures before leaving Vermont. This old motorcycle was bolted to a rock just a few miles south of my starting point of Rochester. Shortly after stopping for the picture of the motorcycle, something stung me on my forehead just above my left eye. I barely saw the unidentified insect coming toward me as I was cruising along at almost 20 mph at that point. It hit my forehe...