“I’m older now and still running against the wind.” —Bob Seger Shortly after posting yesterday’s entry, while Jon and I were cooling our heels before dinner, he texted me the weather report for Flagstaff on Tuesday. It was… not good: the wind was picking up, the temperature was coming down, and there was a chance …
Route 66, Day 23: The sound of your own wheels
Today was originally planned to be the second of three short days, Chambers-to-Holbrook, with a trip to the laundromat. Our ability to reach Holbrook yesterday shifted “laundry day” to Winslow. With the exception of our initial Chicago-to-St. Louis trip, when laundry was done at my house in Springfield, we’ve always had a day like this… …
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Route 66, Day 22: Racing Arizona
91.7 miles with an average moving speed of 16.3mph is just nuts. It reminded me of the first Grand Illinois Bike Tour that I went on, in 2019. On one of the tour’s last days, we were biking a 60-mi loop from Charleston to Casey and back. That morning over breakfast, the ride coordinator announced …
Route 66, Day 21: Steel wheels
“You see them long trains runnin' / And you watch them disappear.” — The Doobie Brothers Not one of my favorite songs, but entirely apropos for the day. I don’t think that we went more than an hour without seeing a very long (100+ cars) train heading east. Most were carrying intermodal containers, probably originating …
Route 66, Day 20: Ulysses, Cary, Ginger, Lee, Lou, Amy, Richard E., and…
“We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue / And then we'll take it higher” — Eddy We are in Grants, NM. It’s a plural, owing to the three Grant brothers—Angus, John, and Lewis—who were granted the rights to build a section of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad through the area. With apologies to Eddy Grant, …
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Route 66, Day 19: Right Back to It
“I knew I shoulda taken that left turn in Albuquerque.” — Bugs Bunny I probably heard Bugs say those words at least a dozen times long before I knew that Albuquerque was a city in New Mexico. As a kid, I generally had to be dynamited out of bed in the morning… except for Saturdays, …
Bike-fit
In less than 48 hours, I’ll be meeting Jon in Albuquerque—a little farther along than where we left off in April of 2024—to resume our way on Route 66. Yeah, I’ve had a bit of a hiatus from this blog, and from long-distance bike-riding as well. Rather than bog down the blog with backstory of …
Perry, Illinois: Once upon a time
"Never bet on the other person's game" The final day of the ride was my longest distance of 2024: 82.2 miles... and that only got me as far as Jacksonville. That had been the plan all along. I held out some hope that, with a stiff tailwind, I would reach Jacksonville in the early afternoon, …
Life on the Mississippi
“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it …
Free solo
Today was something of a new experience for me, in two ways. First, although I’ve done several long point-to-point rides, either with Jon or as part of an organized tour (e.g., the Erie Canal), I’ve never done one by myself. Second, I’ve never done one on a route of my own creation; Jon and I …
Rideworthy 