Looking at and using this website!
Well we are still learning about Weebly as we go but this is what we have figured out,
Click and drag under Home to see our weekly updates you can post comments under photos in the Photos area
or you can email any or all of us at [email protected]
Well we are still learning about Weebly as we go but this is what we have figured out,
Click and drag under Home to see our weekly updates you can post comments under photos in the Photos area
or you can email any or all of us at [email protected]
Doing it again... are we nuts??
Well three years later and here we are again. Only this time it feels rushed, poorly
planned and like a run away train barreling out of control. We are heading out he door
in a few days and the bikes are sitting in the yard, gear is strewn around the house and
I am wondering about my sanity..
Family bike ride number two...
The Story starts....
This whole bike touring with the family started over 3 years ago, to make a long story short on April 6th 2009 we mounted our bikes in Washington DC and rode 3333 miles home to the Methow Vally in Eastern Washington State. We rode on tandems our eight year old was my stoker and the 11 year old riding with mom/aka Ina. You can check out the journal and photos here at ....www.crazyguyonabike.com/randomroots. Now the younger child, Wiley is 11 and Maya will be turning 14 on the ride, and we are riding singles this time around. The tandems were incredible bikes, Ina and Maya's never fit Ina real well, it was too big, so when we finished the first trip we sold it to pay the bills. Now 3 years later we still have my Tandem which I love but the thought of riding it on dirt and gravel roads for over 2 thousand miles seems a little daunting. Wiley is bigger and when he throws his weight around the Tandem would be come a chore to handle, as a eight year old that wasn't an issue and Wiley was free to wiggle and jiggle all he wanted, and besides he wants to ride his own ride.
So we will be off in a few days, we will have a sag wagon for the first few days as we start the process of developing our riding legs/butts. the other advantage of the sag this early in the trip is we will have a rolling source of food and water, where the stores are few and far between. It will also give us an opportunity to acclimatize to the warmer climate, and the new exercise routine After the first few days our driver and the rental truck will return ElPaso where our driver, Mary aka my mom, will return home to Washington DC. When she leaves we will become self supported with racks and panniers, tents and sleeping bags.
Equipment:
We will all be riding the same bike, Salsa Fargos, different sizes of course, with a few tweaks to the stock model that we bought. We bought Fargo 3's and then upgraded the brakes to BB-7's, added thudbuster seat post, dropped our granny chainring to a 22 tooth and my bike got some built up wheels. I got the custom wheels cause I'm a big guy as you'll see on the photos, 6'6" a bit of a belly and when I load the bike I load the bike, I'll be hauling Wiley's gear for a while, until he gets his strength built up , and I also carry a lions share of tools, spares, kitchen gear etc. Toss in the 3-4 gallons of water and the bikes on each wheel will be close to 200lbs a piece. I know that the water won't be an everyday thing but the thought of my kids getting dehydrated due to a lack of water is not an option that sits well with me. Hopefully we won't go down that path and that we stay healthy.
I want to give thanks to the folks at Methow Cycle and Sports, in our home town of Winthrop, who ordered and built our bikes to our specs, much thanks to Joe and Julie who are the owners/managers and to the Dave, Dave, Peter, and Chris, who all answered questions and gave our bikes their attention. I also want to give thanks to Rita and Diane at Winthrop Mountain Sports, also in Winthrop for their support in helping us replace outgrown, or worn out gear, along with all those must haves or "wanna haves" that make life on the road so much better..
And to Steve at Rocking Horse Bakery, who before he was a incredible baker was a seller of bikes, for his free wisdom and advice.
As for how are we hauling all this stuff, well we don't like the ideas of trailers so once again we are using panniers and racks. Our rear racks are Old Man Mountain Red Rocks, we used these on our tandems, and on Ina and my bikes we also have Surly Nice Racks on the fronts, I was hoping OMM would build a front platform rack that had a high and low option for mounting panniers but alas not at this time, we love the ride of low riders but feel the need to be able to lift them up if conditions mandate. For panniers we are running a mix of Arkels, heavy but we are loving strength and design of them and the Lone Peaks from our first family ride. All the bikes have a mixture of handle bar bags, seat bags, and water bottle cages, but I won't be surprised if we are tweaking things as the ride begins and progress.
And the Story finishes for now.....
So here it was 10 weeks after we set off and we are done!
We had a small U-Haul truck lined up in Eureka, MT and we loaded the bikes and ourselves into the truck and drove home. We stopped in Missoula at the ACA office, to share our adventure and get our swag. Then we drove on to Look Out Pass where Ina and Wiley rode the Hiawatha trail, something that has been on the wish list for years. I drove around to the bottom as we were going to miss the shuttle bus and neither wanted to ride the 15 miles back up hill.
We are now home and settling back into the “routine” of finding work, paying bills and cooking different meals. Maya is back with us and Wags our dog is eating and happy again, he tends to not eat when stressed and it sounds as if he was starting to stress out the last few weeks.
Till we do the next adventure, what ever that may be…
As for highlights of the trip, hard to pin point. Probably the folks we meet, old friends who we connected with and the sense of accomplishment. For the low points they are easy to remember, and we each have our own…
Cheers
Rob
We had a small U-Haul truck lined up in Eureka, MT and we loaded the bikes and ourselves into the truck and drove home. We stopped in Missoula at the ACA office, to share our adventure and get our swag. Then we drove on to Look Out Pass where Ina and Wiley rode the Hiawatha trail, something that has been on the wish list for years. I drove around to the bottom as we were going to miss the shuttle bus and neither wanted to ride the 15 miles back up hill.
We are now home and settling back into the “routine” of finding work, paying bills and cooking different meals. Maya is back with us and Wags our dog is eating and happy again, he tends to not eat when stressed and it sounds as if he was starting to stress out the last few weeks.
Till we do the next adventure, what ever that may be…
As for highlights of the trip, hard to pin point. Probably the folks we meet, old friends who we connected with and the sense of accomplishment. For the low points they are easy to remember, and we each have our own…
Cheers
Rob