Product Review: Garmin GPSMap 62s

Thursday, September 8th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Gear + Product Review, Riding. No Comments.

Caveat first: In the last few days, I’ve gotten loads of advice (some of which I will discuss below) about how to better navigate with our GPS, but the follow is pretty definitively my view about our chosen navigation system.

If you’re a regular reader, you may remember my post from a few months ago lamenting that trying to find a GPS system for a bike tour is a difficult process.  Well… Jessica and I still feel that it is even though we settled on the Garmin GPSMap 62s.  We did this after reading a ton, deciding not to get one right away (at least until we’d ridden a few hundred miles), but then did end up getting one when REI had a sale this past spring/summer and it was a real deal.

The pros are that it’s waterproof and light and it runs off 2 – AA batteries that are very tightly seated (so no popping out if dropped).  It didn’t come with street navigation loaded but the software wasn’t unaffordable ($80) and easy enough to load.  Even when I had a bit of trouble the tech support was friendly, patient and well spoken. Once the City Navigator software is loaded, you are, in theory, able to just plug in an address and it will do turn by turn on city streets, so it then basically becomes a car GPS as well, but more on the in theory part in a sec.

The cons, which took a while to really suss out, are a few, but one might consider them big.  First of all, in the age of touch screens it really takes a fairly long learning curve to figure out how to access each function.  The manual is useless, so I had to learn it from doing.  Eventually, I got it all down pat, but there were a few times in which I was just pushing buttons at random with no knowledge of how to repeat what I’d done.  It’s possible that a person coming from another hiker friendly GPS will find it easier, but I had only previously had experience with car GPSes that are pretty intuitive and simple.

Another major con, that took us until very recently to figure out, is that if you are traveling through many states (long distances), you have to load waypoints for much further along the route if you want it to work all that way.  To explain a bit clearer: On Wednesday night before we left last week, I loaded a route through the City Navigator software to get us from Madison, WI to Johnson Creek, WI.  It worked great.  It re-routed when we veered off track and followed us along.  The next morning though, I tried to simply enter in the address to take whatever it suggested to Delafield, WI but it couldn’t find it.  It also couldn’t find Milwaukee.  Strange, but I couldn’t be bothered to work it out just then because it was taking precious early morning/ cool riding minutes.

Turns out that since I hadn’t loaded a waypoint or a route for further along, it didn’t see that part of the world as existing.  I turned the GPS on to track our miles because the trip computer is very nice, but halfway there and suddenly it was just a pointy blue arrow floating in a checker board screen.

Lesson learned: load more than just a day’s worth of routes or waypoints in and it will load the maps and you can make changes along the way!

And lastly, the other big con is that since there is virtually no Garmin software out there that takes bikes into consideration, there is no way to route along a bike path.  Now, we’ve gotten great advice on other programs to use and we’ve confirmed that Adventure Cycling Association routes will load on as well, but we have yet to try anything else.  I think we’ll try Map My Ride or something else here as we head out from Evanston, IL towards Carmel, IN at the end of this week because the only way to get through Chicago is going to be on bike paths.  I’ll update my review at that point, but as of today, it’s a frustrating point.

In the end, it has great functions and I don’t regret it.  I think it’s the most adaptable device for what we need.  I love that it’s water and shock proof.  I love that it’s light and runs off simple batteries.  I love that it can do turn by turn and that it re-routes you even if you’ve programmed a route with the software and downloaded it.  I love that it’s pretty easy to download the routes once you get the hang of it too.

BUT, both Jessica and I really wish that it just had 3 or 4G capabilities and ran Google maps instead.  If someone were to just make a low power (ie: last forever), waterproof device that ran off Google bike routes instead, we’d immediately return this puppy without a second thought.  It’s better than pulling our phones out every turn and again, I think it’s the best choice for a bike tourist right now, but it just isn’t cutting it as an easy to use, fool proof router.  Anyone want to make that other device?

I’m starting to get nervy….

Friday, August 26th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations, Personal Stories. 3 Comments.

As our launch date (September 1) draws closer, I’m starting to get (probably normal) pre-launch jitters.  Over the past week, I find myself lying in bed at night unable to sleep.  I’m starting to worry about everything from the weather (What if it’s too hot when we launch?  What if it starts thundering while we’re sleeping in our tents under trees?), to our gear (Do we have everything?  Are we bringing too much?  That boom pole is WAY longer than we were expecting!), to our safety (What if we ARE axe murdered????? What if one of us gets hit by a car again?), to our film project (What if no one wants to talk to us?  What if there’s no story?  What if we fail to film ourselves and our story adequately?), to our general preparedness (We’re insane– we’ve barely biked further than 60 miles so far and now we’re trying to bike across America– what if we can’t do it?)

I’m sure this is all perfectly normal (please god someone tell me this is all perfectly normal!!!), and that once we’re on the road we’ll start to work all the kinks out.  I keep reminding myself that we’re bike touring the USA, not Antarctica; anything we need will be relatively easy to find.  I’m also trying very hard to ignore the “larger picture” of biking across the whole USA, and instead concentrate on “Where are we going to stay the first night?”

People keep asking Rachel and I if we’re worried about how well we’ll get along with just the two of us and our bikes for the next year.  To be honest, that’s one of the things I’m LEAST worried about.  I’m sure we’ll have arguments (especially when I’m PMSing or when Rachel thinks she’s lost something), but on the whole I feel like we’re kind of going to have to be at the mercy of each other.  I have the cooking skills.  Rachel has the camping/survival skills.  I know bike maintenance.  Rachel knows where the hell we’re going.  I bring the comedic relief.  Rachel brings the practical organization.  We’re genuinely a really good team when we’re filming.  We have different video editing styles, but working that out is all part of the filmmaking process anyway.

Reflecting on all of this is certainly helping to make me feel better.  I’m sure I’ve got several more sleepless nights to come over the next week, though.  I keep alternating between feeling like, “Yay!  I want to leave NOW!” to “Oh shit nothing’s ready!”

I know we’re risking a lot in doing this trip, but what’s even truer is that not taking this risk would mean I’d be scolding myself for who-knows-how-long for not living the life I wanted.

Goodbye, Boston!! Hello…adventure?

Saturday, July 30th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations, Personal Stories. 5 Comments.

Photo credit: Sabrina Scott, taken at our first going away party.  Check our her blog, Nocturnalamore!

Sorry if this post is somewhat confusing.  I genuinely feel like after having heart surgery, leaving my job, packing up my life in Boston, saying “so long” to some of the greatest people I’ve ever known, and driving 19 hours with my worldly possessions– all in the last two weeks…I’m feeling a bit numb.

Quick health update: I had my pacemaker surgery scheduled before my health insurance went away and the surgery itself was great.  We’ll have a video posted as soon as we have time to catch our breaths.  I’m still having some issues settling into my new ticker (as in, at precisely 11:26pm EVERY NIGHT it’s making my heart palpitate for 30 seconds.  Any ideas as to what could be causing this?), but fixing it is going to have to wait until I have health insurance again.  Maybe I’ll be used to the quirks by then.

Leaving Boston was much more difficult for me than I expected it to be.  I left Tennessee for upstate New York when I was 18 with ease.  I left upstate New York at 22 for Boston with no issues.  But suddenly instead of all my friends going off and leaving at the same time as me, I’m leaving my whole life behind.  I only lived in Boston 3 years, but I really feel like I made lifelong friends.  Rachel and I don’t know where we’re going to relocate after our bike trip, but there’s a good chance it won’t be Boston.  With my parents in Cincinnati and Rachel’s parents in Madison, splitting the difference and living in Chicago just makes more sense somehow.  Add to this the fact that Boston is literally the first place I’ve LIKED living, I’m genuinely curious about other parts of the country.  I hear Chicago’s pretty nice.  We’ll see.  We can always come back to Boston.  I miss everyone already.

Rachel and I left Boston at 10pm on Thursday night for Madison, WI, after two separate going away parties.  We woke up at 8am and started loading Rachel’s van.  We have so much crap.  Ugh.  How did we let this happen???  We’re trying really hard to pear down our lives, and we did donate a ton to Goodwill and sell a lot of stuff, but still:  SO. MUCH. CRAP.  We had to load, unload, and reload the van countless times on Thursday– trying to get everything to fit.  Once we fit it all in, Rachel gasped in horror at how dangerously low the van was sitting.  “Like a race car!”, I said.

We discussed.  Could we get a Uhaul trailer on this short of notice?  We’d have to get a hitch installed, too.  It was going to cost $400, total.  We decided to ship 10 of our boxes, figuring at least if it ended up costing $400 it’d be less of a hassle than using a trailer.  Luckily, it only cost about $160.  Then we spent over an hour tying large items like two snowboards, a side table, and an easel to the top of the van.  I would be surprised that nothing’s flown off yet if I hadn’t seen Rachel tie so many meticulous knots all over.  Once again, the van sunk about 8 inches.  “Don’t drive over 55,” Rachel said.

Once all this was done, it was 10pm.  Rachel and I hadn’t had dinner yet, but we just wanted to get going.  We said tearful goodbyes to our lovely roommates and set off.  Rachel was driving, but within 3 hours we were both ready to collapse.  We hadn’t even made it out of Massachusetts yet.  Rather than risk driving an overburdened van with two exhausted drivers, we stayed at a mildewy EconoLodge for the night.  We got up at 8:30 the next morning to find the van had sunk further.  I don’t know anything about cars, but Rachel was worried we were breaking the frame.  We decided to press on, cautiously.

Driving 55mph on I-90 feels like crawling when everyone around you is going 70.  On the upside, I learned how to use the cruise control function, since there was literally no other way to keep the van going 55mph otherwise.  The van kept sinking lower and lower.  We made it to the PA border before Rachel decided something had to be done.  We called up a few rental car places, and short of turning around and driving back to Buffalo, the closest car rental place was in Toledo, OH– about 4.5 hours away.  We’d have the car for 24 hours and we could put half our stuff in and gun it to Madison with the weight off the van.  We’d roll into Madison sometime after 3am and it was going to cost almost $300.  At that point, I was ready to leave all our stuff on the side of the road.  Then I remembered Columbus, OH is only about 2 hours away from my parents’ house.  We Google Mapped it and saw that Columbus was less than 5 hours from where we were.  Figuring, “What’s 30 more minutes?”, I called my dad up and asked him if he could possibly meet us in Columbus in 5 hours.  He said, “Of course!  Then what are you going to do?”

Rachel and I met him in a Wal-Mart parking lot just south of Columbus at 11pm, loaded half the stuff into my dad’s Rav4, and then followed him to Cincinnati.  My mom, dad, and grandma are thrilled we’re visiting.  Rachel and I are staying here until Monday– hopefully we’ll be a bit more rested by then.  Since we’re leaving the majority of our stuff in my closet in my bedroom here, the van should be fine for the drive.

When Rachel’s mother called to ask what our plans were for when we met my dad in Columbus, after telling her we were going to stay in Cincinnati a few days, I added: “I guess when I quit my job last week, this was the adventure I was looking for.”  We haven’t even hopped on our bikes yet, and already we’re meandering around the United States.

Pacemakers and Such Part 2…

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations. No Comments.

Three days later, I had a pacemaker put in. I wish I could say the surgery was easy and I’ve been right as rain ever since. But I can’t. The cardiologist I had in Oak Ridge, Tennessee had never put a pacemaker in anyone under the age of 75 and so of course he set my pacemaker to extremely high settings. These settings made my heart race all the time and for the first six months after the surgery, I felt WORSE than when my heart wasn’t beating at all. To remedy my heart racing, instead of adjusting the settings on my pacemaker, he wrote me prescriptions for medication to slow my heart down. Again, I felt 1,000% crappier than when I was just a kid with weird blackouts. When he got to the point of telling my parents he wanted to put me under the knife again and permanently make my heart unable to beat on its own so I could be 100% pacemaker-controlled, we switched doctors to a pediatric cardiologist in Knoxville.

The doctor in Knoxville balked at the settings my pacemaker was set to and turned them down so low my pacemaker was almost off. I stopped taking the heart medication and I’ve been fine ever since. For eight years, I used my pacemaker a whole 2% of the time. The rest of my heartbeats were all my own. Two years ago, I started using my pacemaker 4% of the time. It’s not much, but my cardiologist reminds me often that 4% of the time is still hundreds of thousands of heartbeats. It adds up to my heart not beating almost a full hour every day. I guess that’s significant.

When I had my pacemaker put in, I was told it could last up to 10 years. At 15, I remember thinking, “25 is SO FAR AWAY! I’ll probably be married with kids by then!” Here I am, 25, not married, no kids– not even any pets, and in need of a new pacemaker. I’m still basically as weird and awkward as I was at 15, too. How time flies.

This surgery is annoying because the interface for the battery indicator for my pacemaker is shitty. The indicator looks like a car gas gauge, with “full”, “halfway”, and “empty” markings. I’ve spent the last year going to the cardiologist every three months (when I normally go 1-2 times a year) because my battery indicator was halfway between the “halfway” point and “empty”. I wanted to have surgery in April to make sure I would be all set for the next ten years without having to worry about needing a new one in the middle of the trip, but the cardiologist said the battery wasn’t drained enough and my insurance company wouldn’t cover it. We both assumed that at this rate, I’d be fine for AT LEAST another year, if not two. After all, I only use it 4% of the time. I went in last week for one final checkup before my farewell to Boston to find that the pacemaker battery indicator was right on the cusp of being empty. And now I’m anxiously waiting for a call from the scheduling department at my hospital so I can try to get a surgery scheduled before next Friday (when I leave my job/good health insurance) so I don’t have to pay upwards of $2,000 for a new pacemaker.

I know this was practically a novel, but hopefully this explains everything a little better than that video I edited together in a flash. I’ll post more updates as they come. Thanks to everyone for your well-wishes!

Pacemakers and Such Part 1…

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations. No Comments.

I just wanted to elaborate a bit on the video I posted last week about needing to get a pacemaker. Folks have sent me many worried messages over the last few days, including some notes from people flabbergasted that I would even have a pacemaker in the first place. Aren’t they usually for the very elderly, after all? I appreciate the words of support as I go through the (SUPER OBNOXIOUS) task of facing (minor) heart surgery right before my giant bicycle trip. I promise if all goes according to my wishes, I’ll be 100% healed and good to go by September 1st. It’s just annoying because I wanted this surgery three months ago, and my good health insurance ends next Friday. Just typing that last sentence makes me cringe. Talk about a dramatic start to our bike tour!

So here’s the back story in a nutshell: When I was 12, I realized that the “black outs” I was having every day were not normal. I never passed out, but I would experience bursts of not being able to breathe or see for about 2-8 seconds, hundreds of times a day (give or take). I literally thought nothing of it until I was 12. When I finally brought it up to my parents, my poor folks spent countless hours (and money) taking me to seizure specialists; getting me tested (multiple times) for diabetes; getting MRI’s, CT scans, EEG’s; taking me to sleep specialists; and finally, when it was decided by the doctor that there was nothing physically wrong that he could see, a therapist.

Fast forward three years. I was 15, still having blackouts, and I wanted to learn to drive a car. My parents made the responsible decision that until my blackouts went away, I wasn’t allowed in the driver’s seat. This time we started from square one. My mom took me to a new primary care physician and I described my symptoms to her. She immediately recommended that I wear a heart monitor for a week and press a button any time I blacked out. The heart monitor could only hold 8 “events” at a time, so I used it sparingly for the first three days to get some really “good” ones. I had to send the readings over a telephone in my school office– really weird technology. I’ll never forget the first time I sent them over, the technician on the other line said, “There are…abnormalities…” but couldn’t elaborate. 20 minutes later, I was called into my school office and told my parents were coming to pick me up to take me to the doctor. I guess the doctor had called my parents and told them it was an emergency or something.

When we arrived, the doctor showed me printouts of my heart monitor results. What a mess! My heartbeat would start out looking like regular EKG tics, but then would flatline for a bit before jumbling like crazy and then returning back to normal. He then told me I had a rare heart disease called Sinoatrial Node Dysfunction (also called Sick Sinus Syndrome). At the time, it was reported that it happens to something like 3 out of every 10,000 people and was basically unheard of in anyone under the age of 50. I’m not sure what the statistics say on it now, but just doing a quick internet search now I’m finding way more than I did 10 years ago. Basically, my heart’s natural pacemaker, the sinoatrial node, wasn’t working properly.

To be continued…

Friend-Raising

Monday, June 20th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations. No Comments.

Today’s post is going to be short!  Because we managed to raise over $1000 in five days, helping us to reach our goal 33 days early, we must find a new way to keep spreading the word about our project.  Thus, it’s time to do a FRIEND-raiser.  We can still accept donations for the next month, but we’re done asking for money.  We’ll be just as grateful for your pledge now, but there won’t be anymore emails!

So, how does a friend-raiser work?  Right now, we have 160 fans on Facebook and 109 followers on Twitter.  Not so great…

But if you wish to support us and our cause, share our website on your own Facebook or Twitter.  Or sent out our Kickstarter campaign on the social networks.  We have been asking you to do this all along, and thank you to those who have shared!!  But after seeing how all of you banded together to help us out last week, we have some serious confidence in your power.

Let’s get to 200 friends by Friday, yes?

And as always, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!

So today is my birthday…

Friday, June 17th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations, Mini-Adventure. No Comments.

25 years ago today at 3:33pm EST, my dear mother pushed me out of her womb three days late without epidural. Talk about brave! She’s always been an extremely strong, often times badass, female role model for me growing up. Whenever I’ve had crazy ideas like living with Aboriginal protestors in tents outside the Australian parliament house, my mom’s response was always “You go girl!”, while my dad, though also supportive, was more apt to say, “Now think this through, Jess.” Guess who I take after more? (Hint: definitely the parent who left home in rural east Tennessee and moved to Hawaii at the age of 17)

As Rachel and I continue planning our bike trip, I’ve begun to realize that so many more people than just my mom and dad are supporting me. When Rachel and I launched our Kickstarter campaign, I was extremely wary and pessimistic. I HATE asking for money, and asking for money from people whom I truly care about was especially difficult. But here we are now with only $220 left to raise and 33 days left to do it. I feel so confident we’re going to make it, now.

I’m not friends with rich people by any means, either. We all know the economy sucks right now, but Rachel and I have friends and family who still care about us and believe in us enough to donate what they can. Some of our friends who donated are currently unemployed. Some of them are working jobs while also enrolled in school full time. Some are retired and don’t have disposable income streaming in. Some of them are freelance artists. Some of them have families to provide for and kids to feed. One is currently serving in the Peace Corps. Many of them have an exhausting amount of college loans to pay off. Most of them I don’t keep in contact with nearly as much as I should. Friends and family who couldn’t afford to donate passed our Kickstarter link around, which is just as awesome as donating. I’m just so completely blown away by the kindness of the people around me.

So today is my birthday. Usually around my birthday I get really anxious. I think a combination of not having a lot of friends in high school mixed with having a birthday when most people are on vacation made it so not many people were around on my birthday throughout the years. Last year I got really anxious again and Rachel and my awesome friend Meagan (our web designer!) planned an amazing birthday for me that involved a fancy Mexican restaurant, a homemade owl cake, and drinking wine in my tent in my living room.

This year I don’t feel insecure at all. Thank you so much to all the people who’ve supported me throughout the years and continue to believe in me now. The love I feel for all of you is indescribable and I promise I won’t let you down and I will return the favor when you need it.

I am a heat stroke sufferer.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations, How to.... 5 Comments.

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you will know we were in New Orleans and Baton Rouge this weekend for my cousin’s wedding.  It’s getting near to the peak of the heat there (they had a heat wave that made it feel like July).  But surprising myself and I think others, I suffered less than I thought I would!

If you are a part of my family or close friends, you know that I am of 100% German stock.  It has caused me to believe that genetics plays a serious role in who we are.  That is because I can’t stand the heat.  That nordic blood just isn’t capable of keeping me cool in the sun.  And this past weekend, I certainly did struggle when we were in the sun for long periods, but still better than expected.

Last summer in Assateague Island, Jessica saw how bad it can get for me.  After only 30 minutes of riding in the noontime sun and 90 degree weather, my face was completely red as though I was badly sunburnt, I was panting heavily and had a massive headache forming.  Needless to say Jessica was worried about me.  But it’s pretty par for the course for me and I didn’t really worry.  We headed into some A/C and within about ten minutes I was recovered.

As you can imagine, this presents a problem for riding my bike long term.  We’re bound to run into some heat more often than not, and it doesn’t take much direct sun for the headache to form for me.  But I have a few ideas.  One is that I find away to shield my eyes from the sun as much as possible.  The squinting against it is what gives me the headaches.  The tension starts there and it just crawls all the way over my head and down my neck.  Another idea is that I definitely keep a Camelpak going.  Another is that I learn how to pedal fast!  The wind created from moving feels so nice!  And finally, that I insist we take a lunch break during the highest heat of the day!

But what gives me hope in general is that this past trip wasn’t as bad as I expected.  Since moving out of my parent’s house in 2002, I’ve pretty much been living without air conditioning every summer.  And as it turns out, I don’t like it much anymore, even in the heat of August.  Sure, I pretty much only end up sitting still with a fan blowing over me, but air conditioners feel artifical, make my sinuses dry out and my skin crawl.  But maybe that’s just because people always have them up too high.  Regardless, I see it now as training!

But what I’d love to know any suggestions you all may have.  How do you stay cool in the sun?  Comment below!

Adding hiking to our bike trip

Monday, May 23rd, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations, Gear + Product Review, Mini-Adventure. No Comments.

After taking the Boston Appalachian Mountain Club hiking class and going on the weekend trips, Rachel and I have realized that we need to stop thinking about our bike trip as simply a bike trip across the country, and more as a biking AND hiking trip.  In accumulating gear for our trip over the past year, we read up on other bike touring blogs for what to buy.  One of the first purchases we made were Keen cycling sandals, thinking they’d be great for both cycling and hiking.  Rachel learned the hard way on one of our hiking trips that while they’re a great trail shoe, actual hiking provides the fun of slippery-sweaty feet and no ankle support.  Neither of us want to risk hurting ourselves on the trip in exchange for lighter panniers, so now it looks like we’ll be bringing these sandals AND hiking boots.

Going on day hikes also requires bringing some sort of pack for you to carry your lunch, rain jacket, headlamp, etc in.  I bought the tiny 9-liter REI Stroke 9 backpack, figuring it was small enough to fit in a pannier or even wear while biking for extra hydration, since it can fit a 2-liter Camelback bladder; but also big enough to stuff a rolled-up rain jacket and trail food in.  So far on the hikes I’ve been on I’ve definitely had the smallest pack on the trail, but I’ve managed to fit everything that I needed in it.  Rachel’s purchased the slightly larger 19-liter REI Stroke 19 backpack, figuring she can stow it across her rear bike rack while she’s not hiking.  Rachel has yet to pick her’s up from REI (since she ordered it online and had it shipped to the store), so I’m not sure yet if I’ll be jealous of the extra space she’ll have or be glad that I can wear mine as a hydration pack comfortably while cycling.

Other than the shoes and the backpacks, the rest of our gear is roughly the same for biking and hiking.  Smartwool socks are excellent for both, and I’ve learned while hiking that my cycling jersey does the job at wicking sweat on the trail as well.  We both have a pair of convertible trail pants, figuring they’ll be handy on and off the trail while we’re not hiking.  Layering while avoiding cotton works the same as well at retaining warmth.  Rain jacket, rain pants, gloves, all the same.  Who knew bike touring and hiking could go hand-in-hand so comfortably?

I’m shocked I like hiking.

Thursday, May 19th, 2011 Posted by Jessica. Published under Bike Tour Preparations, Mini-Adventure. No Comments.

I grew up in the Smoky Mountains.  My neighborhood was tucked right on the side of a mountain ridge where if I stood at the top of my street, I could see two other mountain peaks poking out behind my neighbor’s house and hear cows echoing through the valley in the mornings while I waited for the school bus.  My neighbor’s back yard led for miles through thick forest, uninterrupted by roads until you finally reached a farm the next county over.  I think I’ve only hiked through the Smoky Mountains once, when I was about eight years old.  I remember the hike leader telling me to stop looking at the ground when I was walking, to enjoy the scenery around me.  I looked up and immediately tripped on a tree root sticking out of the ground, faceplanting into the dirt.  I didn’t care for hiking in the woods after that.

Rachel and I on top of Mt. Monadnock

Years passed, and I didn’t hike.  I played in the woods behind my house plenty, and I have fond memories of my dad taking my brother and I to the local arboretum for long walks as a kid, but I never was interested in hiking.  When Rachel suggested we take a hiking class through Boston’s chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club, I agreed, thinking it would be useful to apply the skills we learned to our bike trip.  I didn’t know that we’d actually get to go on hikes through the class.  When I saw that we would get to hike, I figured it’d be good fitness training for our trip and not much else.  I also thought that as a bike commuter for the past three years I wouldn’t care much for hiking because it’s so much slower than riding a bike (walking down the street is pretty lame when I could be zipping by on my Surly) and I wouldn’t like having to carry a heavy bag on my back.  I was really wrong!

Beautiful view from the trail on the Welch-Dickey Loop in the White Mountains

The breathtaking views at the top are enough alone to make the effort worth it.  I even love the climbing part.  As Rachel can attest to, the White Mountains in the Northeast are notoriously rocky and boulder-y.  There were times when I felt like I was literally walking up a stone wall– I couldn’t believe the trail went that way!  But it was SO much fun.  I felt like a spider monkey scaling the rock walls like that.  While hiking, I felt like I was learning so many new things about my body: what it could do, how it could balance on a vertical wall, how it was strong enough to climb over boulders.  Believe me– I’ve never considered myself athletic by any stretch of the imagination.  I’m pretty wimpy and don’t have any muscle definition.  But hiking has really struck a new chord with me and I am now eagerly anticipating the hikes we will go on once we launch.

Dorky and happy on my way up the mountain.