(“Post mortem” seemed a little too… fatal, so I turned to Google Translate for the Latin translation of “after the journey.”)
Here’s the wheels, before-and-after. (This is not Highlights magazine, so you do not have to circle the differences between the two.)
I don’t want this to be a purely quantitative recitation of the week’s travels; as with so much, numbers can’t tell the full story. But here’s how it all broke down:
Total distance: 326.2 miles
Total time: 25:40 over six days
Average speed: 12.7 mph
Total ascent: 6,485 ft (although Jon’s Strava has it significantly lower)
Longest day: 71.9 miles, Pontiac to Lincoln (Monday)
Shortest day: 13.4 miles, Lincoln to Elkhart (Tuesday)
Best cheap hotel: Comfort Inn in Joliet, because we didn’t have a Plan B that night
Qualitatively, I’m still thinking about it all. Right off the bat, I have a mountain of gratitude to Jon for wanting to come along for the ride. On more than one occasion, I found myself reflecting on the crazy concatenation of coincidences that first connected us at Rice in the spring of 1982, and then again in Alabama forty years later. I also lost count of the number of times that Jon pointed something out to me that I was about to point out to him, or he made an observation about some town (or resident thereof) that was exactly what I was about to say. It makes me happy to know that we have more riding together ahead. (And I can say that with some confidence because I have his bike.)
Physically, I was ready for the demands of the trip… or at least my legs were. The undercarriage, not so much. We got into a comfortable pattern: after breakfast (and NYT word games), we head out around 8:00 am when the air is cool, and ride at an easy 12-13 mile pace for four hours or so. It’s lunchtime. If possible, we sit in a nice padded booth. We take our time eating and drinking plenty of water, then get back on the bikes and ride for 2-3 more hours… and we’re at >60 miles. Just like that. My concerns that we’d reach our physical limits and still be 20 miles from a town with a hotel never materialized.
Route 66 itself, I feel kind of “meh” about. Don’t get me wrong: I’m the kind of person who can stand in the middle of a cracked and overgrown roadbed and transport myself back in time to visualize what it must have been like for motorists, “back in the day.” Problem is, we aren’t back in the day anymore, and it feels like every town along the route is clutching at the same “historic” straws. It’s not pathetic, but it is a bit sad. The cynical me looks behind every Route 66-branded enterprise and sees someone who lost their job at the bank, or the grain elevator, or the car dealership, and decides to hawk Route 66 merch instead. Jon and I both suspect that there just aren’t enough people riding the route–cars, motorcycles, or bicycles–to sustain these entrepreneurs. And I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to see this story repeated “from Chicago to LA.”
It’s not totally depressing. There remains a genuine charm and spirit in these towns, and I readily confess that I don’t do a great job of taking time to look for it. I’ll get better. One of the reasons that I wanted to start this blog was to compel myself to find something other than downs-and-distance to write about each evening. When I’m out on my weekend rides, and I come to a town, I usually go out of my way to find the town square and make at least one circuit of it. As I map the rest of this little journey, I need to make sure that I “see where I’m going,” and not just ride by.
I went out this morning and got on my bike for the first time since coming home on Friday. I felt great, and I cranked out 20 miles in (what is for me) a blistering pace of 15.2 mph. (The word “blistering” is deliberate, sadly, because the old tuchus is much more tender than I expected it to be after having just ridden for more than 300 miles last week.) Those 20 miles put me at 650 for the year, more than I’ve ever done by Memorial Day.
There’s more to come, but that’s my next post.
Rideworthy 