Cycling – Page 8 – Our Pod Life

September 27, 2019April 23, 2020

Chicago to New York City – Day One

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Start: Chicago, Illinois
End: Fair Oaks, Indiana
Mileage today/cumulative: 74 / 74
Elevation Ascended: 817′
Weather: Sunny, 59° at start; sunny, 71º at finish
Flat tires (entire group) day/cumulative: 1 / 1

We could not have asked for a better day to begin our ride to New York City. Perfect weather, beautiful views, and low traffic made for a very easy 74 miles. Our ceremonial start was at Buckingham Fountain in Chicago’s Grant Park and we all wore special Chicago – New York City jerseys that we purchased from Adventure Cycling. This seemed like the perfect spot for a group of baby boomers. The Fountain’s water capacity is 1.5 million gallons and depending on wind conditions, the major displays recirculate approximately 14,100 gallons of water per minute. The original pumps and motors are still in operation today. Old and still going, just like us.

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September 26, 2019April 23, 2020

Team Pea Back on Their Bikes

Welcome back friends! In this latest chapter of our “go-go” years, we’re headed out on another epic journey.

This time we’re riding our bicycles from Chicago to New York City. We spent a few days before the trip visiting our friends Deb and Julie in Pennsylvania, where our car will stay for the duration of our journey. Deb and Julie were kind enough to drive us to the Washington D.C. Amtrak station, where we boarded an overnight train to Chicago. We will reunite with them (and our car) at the end of the trip.

After bidding our friends farewell in the “Kiss and Drop” parking lot, we prepared to board the Capitol Limited train to Chicago. We rolled our bicycles into a baggage car and checked into our “Sleepliner Roomette”. We had expected to hang our bikes on racks in the baggage car, only to discover that racks were not available on this train. The Amtrak agent had us roll our bikes into the car and lay them down. While not the ideal method for storing bicycles, it still beats packing them in a bike box and shipping them in advance or, worse, handing them over to the airlines. The bikes were no worse for wear when we retrieved them from the baggage car in Chicago, but we were troubled by the fact that no Amtrak employee was monitoring the car and we were able to just grab them and walk out of the station.

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May 24, 2019August 24, 2019

Tuscany Cycling

The cycling portion of our trip ended last week and we were very sad to leave Lecchi in Chianti. It is a special place that we’ll think of often and hope to return to someday.

Before talking about the experience with inGamba cycling, it helps to know a little bit about Lecchi. This is a village of 80 residents with one main street. The coffee shop/restaurant and small market are owned by a man named Paolo. Everybody in the region knows Paolo and most of them stop by for a caffé at some point during the day. We never saw the locals pay for food or drink when they ordered it but we did see Paolo, during a quiet moment, open a ledger and record what each customer purchased, their accounts presumably to be settled later. In Lecchi, smartphones exist but the locals don’t walk around staring at them and the coffee shop is for human interaction.

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May 15, 2019August 24, 2019

Hello Legs…

We’ve put Rome in the rear view mirror and begun the cornerstone of our Italian adventure, cycling in Tuscany. The sea and the mountains will be fabulous but they must wait. The cycling is why we’re here and we must heed the call.

A high speed train ride from Rome and a full day of rest in Florence was the perfect recovery for our tired legs before being picked up by inGamba (our cycling tour group) and driven to the village of Lecchi in Chianti, population 80. Our little cycling group of six has made a sizable bump in their numbers!

We chose inGamba for the experience. More about that in a different post, but this is their classic Tuscany trip, what they describe as “the culmination of all their local knowledge and a perfect expression of the Mangia, Beve, Bici experience.” Eat, Drink, Bike.

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August 7, 2017August 7, 2017

Bike Across America – Day 50

Monday, August 7, 2017

Start: Manchester, New Hampshire
End: Rye, New Hampshire
Mileage today/cumulative: 65 / 3,654
Elevation Ascended: 2,923′
Weather: Sunny, 57° at start; sunny, 75º at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

This was not just another day at the beach. After 50 days and pedaling every single one of the 3,642 miles since leaving the Pacific Ocean, we finally dipped our wheels in the Atlantic. It must have been an odd sight to all of the New Hampshire beach goers to see 40+ cyclists arrive with a police escort, kick off their shoes, and run into the surf hoisting bicycles. And because that wasn’t enough, Team Pea also did a short 12 mile bonus ride into Maine, bringing our total miles to 3,654 in eleven states.

Photos from the day tell the story and I’ll write a wrap-up post in a few days, but in the meantime:

We rode under spacious skies
We rode through amber waves of grain
We rode over purple mountain majesties
We rode across the fruited plain
And we rode from sea to shining sea.
America really is beautiful.