"Just Ride Your Bike"

The 81 mile ride from my brother and sister in law Tom and Sharon’s home in Lake Worth, Florida to Ft. Pierce, Florida took a toll on Christine, a pulled muscle in right leg just behind and below her knee, probably caused by her compensating for some numbness in two of her toes. We concluded that a rest was in order and began to consider our options in case a couple days rest did not find Christine able to continue to ride. I will ride my bike 63 miles to Daytona Beach, rent a car at the Daytona Beach Airport and drive back to Chapel Hill, pick up our Jetta and return to Ft. Pierce. Christine will then drive from campsite to campsite with her bike and kit in the car (a kit is all the items on her bike) until her injury has healed; I shall continue to ride carrying my kit and meet her at each campground. We spent two days at The Road Runner Travel Resort in Ft. Pierce while Christine nursed her injury, packing her knee with ice and applying Chinese liniment, praying for the healing gods to remove the soreness. A short 6 mile ride to the farmers market on the water front in downtown Ft. Pierce on Saturday was without pain, what a relief, perhaps she will be able to continue. Christine decided to go for it on Sunday, a 63 mile ride to Wickham Park Campground in Orange Park, Florida, the healing gods had come through for us and she rode without pain. Two days later we cut a ride short due to Christine having pain in her sciatica and again began to worry about her being able to continue, it is not looking good. I massaged the sore area and suggested the she had become a hypochondriac, causing these injuries by worrying too much about being injured, I made a suggestion; “maybe you should stop worrying so much and just ride your fucking bike”. We rode 240 miles in the next three days , Christine was back, stronger than ever and now pulling me for a change, no more pain; even combining days rides to make up for a lost day on our schedule so we can play longer when we get to Maine.

The alarm rings at 4:00am on my Droid, I push the snooze for 10 additional minutes of rest before we begin to dismantle our camp, Christine dresses and begins by making Starbucks Via instant coffee and prepares to pack the cooking utensils and food, I compress the pillows, roll the sheet and stuff them in their waterproof stuff sack, next I roll the Therma-Rest sleeping pads and stuff the sleeping bag and the rolled sleeping pads into their waterproof stuff sack. I dress in the riding outfit chosen the night before and placed in the tent, usually the same clothes as the day before, and get out of the tent; we then take the tent down stuff it in its sack. We do all the usual morning hygiene and personal care, I shall not list them, and begin to load the bikes, turn on all the running lights; a LED headlight, a blinking white LED headlight, a red LED taillight and a blinking red LED taillight, boot our trusty 76CSx Garmin GPS and get it on the page displaying the map, mount up and we are off by 5:15-5:40 depending on how things go. The first 25 miles is very pleasant, waiting for the sun to rise at 6:23, the air is cool; we are fresh and riding at our cruising speed, 13-15 mph looking forward to a rest stop and second cup of coffee after two hours. We are out of nutrition now, consuming 2-28 ounce bottles of Hammer Heed and now must resupply with 2-28 ounce bottles of Hammer Perpetum that will last for the next 2 hours or 25 miles when again we stop to resupply our nutrition and perhaps have a small amount to eat to prepare for the last 10 to 30 miles. We arrive at the campsite usually between 1:00 and 3:00pm and set up our camp, this usually takes about 45 minutes, followed by a nap that ranges from one to three hours, followed by dinner, some bike maintenance, a shower, nutritional preparation for the next day’s ride and then back to bed by 9:00, soon it will be 4:00am again.

The four running lights, the Garmin GPS, two I-Pods, two phones, the electric toothbrush, two Canon cameras, the Minty Boost charger, the HP Mini Computer, the Coleman tent light and the Petzl Tinkka Plus head lamps all require batteries or charging. The Garmin GPS requires two AA batteries a day, the bike running lights require fresh batteries about every three or four days; 8 AA, 6 AAA and 4 N batteries, the Petzl headlamps 2 AAA each and the Coleman tent light 4 AA, the phones and the I-Pods need charging every day and the cameras when needed require 4 AA each. I carry 16 AA 2600ma and 16 AAA 1400ma spare NiMH batteries, 4 spare N batteries and 2 kit made Minty Boost battery powered chargers requiring 2 AA batteries each, the Minty Boost can be used to charge the phones or the I-Pods if no other source is available. We use Tenergy batteries and a Tenergy battery charger capable of charging 8 batteries at the same time in any combination of AA or AAA, this requires from 1-3 hours depending on the state of charge and the ampacity of the batteries placed in the charger. The tour would require about 360 batteries if we used alkaline batteries, not to good for the environment or our budget, hence the NiMH rechargeables. The management of this gives me something to do in my spare time between naps and bike maintenance. The photo shows our charging set up in full action.

We are at the end of a day of rest after 7 consecutive days of riding to do laundry, charge batteries, do bike maintenance and catch up on rest in Statesboro, Georgia before the 73 mile ride to Point South, South Carolina in the morning. The batteries are charged, the laundry is complete, the bikes are washed and tuned and we are rested; off to Point South KOA and exceeding the 1000 mile point of our tour.