We have done this before, but it was a long time ago.

One of the things we had in common when we started dating was biking. In (I think) 1990, we had a group of friends who were planning a two week vacation in England – they were going on a canal boat trip for a week, then a week in London to sight-see and see Phantom of the Opera. Carolyn and I liked the idea, but spending a week on a canal boat did not appeal to us. So we decided to do a bit of bike touring and meet the rest of the group in Worchester. We planned to fly into London, take a train to Bath and start there.

Even though we had never done anything like this before, we decided to play it by ear. The only things we planned ahead were making a reservation for the first night in Bath and ending up in Worchester after a week. We would pick a destination each morning – the proprietors of the B&Bs were very helpful with suggestions for things to see.

We’d ride through the morning and early afternoon and find a B&B when we got to our destination. Then we’d shower and change into “walk-about” clothes and take in our surroundings. The next day was lather rinse and repeat.

We landed in London 5:30am on a Monday, assembled our bikes at the airport and set out for London by tube – and promptly discovered that bikes are not allowed during rush hours when we got kicked off the train at Earl’s Court.

We eventually made our way to Paddington Station and took the train to Bath. It’s a short 90 minute ride, but we fell asleep and almost missed our stop. We spent our first day in England touring the Roman ruins and trying to get our body clocks adjusted to the new time zone.

Our first mission Tuesday was on behalf of a coworker of ours who had gone to school in Bath. She asked us to take a picture of the water tower – she had painted her name on it and wanted to see if it was still there. So we rode our bikes up to the University of Bath. And I do mean up, turns out it is on top of a serious hill. When we got there, the guard wouldn’t let us on campus. When we explained that we had to take pictures of the water tower he looked confused – evidentially it had been torn down years before. Sigh.

Our goal for Tuesday was Cirencester, on the way we went through Malmesbury. As it turns out, I’ve visited Malmesbury several times since then working with a company located there. Life is full of interesting coincidences.

On Wednesday we rode to Oxford the end of the ride was wonderful, it was a long downhill into Oxford a relief after fifty miles of riding.

Unfortunately, that meant that the first thing we had to do on Thursday was ride uphill. That was the beginning of what we call the “Day from Hell” – it seems that every tour has at least one day like that, when nothing goes right. Our goal for the day was Broadway, but between a number of wrong turns, and towns without any place to eat, it was a miserable day. Things got better when we got to Lower Slaughter – a pretty little tourist trap in the Cotswolds. Then they got even better when we got smart and bought an ordinance survey map at a bookshop in Stow-on-the-Wold – that’s a topographic map showing where all the hills are!

(By the way, Carolyn hates every one of these pictures of her. And she thinks I look really young in these pictures, but that she hasn’t changed a bit.)

Friday we decided to go to Warwick where we were told there was a nice castle – I love that sort of thing. On our way we stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon and had a lovely time doing Shakespeare tourism.

Arriving in Warwick, we found a hotel where we left the bikes and went to tour the castle which was right next door. We had a nice early dinner at the hotel and went back out and checked out an interesting World War II museum. When we got back to the hotel afterwards we decided we were still hungry and had another nice dinner (and got a few questioning looks from the same server we had for our first dinner). That’s definitely one of the benefits of bike touring – all you can eat and no guilt!

On Saturday we rode to Worchester, which, while spelled the same as Worchester MA, is not pronounced at all the same, and met up with friends to take a train back to London for the rest of our vacation.

 

All in all, we had a terrific time and discovered a love for bike touring.

So, no we’re not totally crazy, we have done this sort of thing before. But I guess 250 miles in five days isn’t really the same as        2,300 miles in fifty seven days. So maybe we are just a little bit crazy.

 

We are always talking about what to pack for the trip, and how to pack it.  It’s become our default topic of conversation.

The trick to this sort of thing is to pack as little as possible, because whatever you pack has to be carried for 2200 miles.  So we are each bringing 3 pairs of bike shorts – one to wear, one that has been washed and is now drying, and a backup pair because bike shorts are totally necessary to avoid serious pain in all the wrong places.  We are each bringing 5 or 6 shirts to bike in.  I weighed some of my shirts – 4 to a pound!  I am very excited.

We are each bringing one pair of non-biking pants, one decent shirt, and one pair of lightweight sneakers, which we will wear whenever we go out while not actually on the bikes.  If a restaurant has a dress code, we simply will not eat there.  As for the decent shirts, mine will be a dark color, because I will wear it multiple nights in a row, I am a slob when I eat, and when I spill food, it always lands on my boobs.

We are also bringing rain jackets and bathing suits, underwear and socks, and a minimum of toiletries.  I never wear makeup and jewelry, and I’m not going to start now.

So that’s basically it.  Or at least I thought it was, until Dana starting making suggestions about more stuff we can buy.

First it was waterproof panniers.  He read about someone who did a trip like this, and for laundry he just put some soap in a pannier and shook everything up.  I said no.  For so many reasons I can’t even begin to list them.

But Dana was still at me about the waterproof panniers.  He really, REALLY wants to spend money on new panniers.  I suggested putting stuff in plastic trash bags.  He suggested buying stuff sacks.  I suggested Ziploc bags.  He’s working on a counter-attack to the Ziplocs, probably one that costs a lot of money.

Then he ordered wireless headsets.  They’re these little radios that clip to our bike helmets, which will allow us to talk while safely riding single file.  I cannot possibly understand why he bought these, because I’m the one who’s always talking, and he’s always trying to either ignore me or get me to shut up.  But he said he loves me and wants to hear me talking on the ride.  The latter is total crap, but I think it proves that he loves me.

The night the headsets arrived, Dana dutifully read the instruction manual.  He’s really good a reading manuals, which is great, because I get panic attacks whenever I look at them.  So after he understood the instructions, he clipped the headsets onto our helmets, and we clipped the helmets onto our heads.

I’ve always thought that bike helmets make people look like mushrooms.  Now the headsets look like little mushrooms on top of the mushrooms.  It’s really not a good look.  Meanwhile, Dana had to figure out how to get the radios to communicate, so I sat down and played Words with Friends while he walked around the house, fiddling with the mushroom, saying “Can you hear me now?”  The entire process, involving taking off his helmet, and my helmet, and swearing, and additional manual reading, and button pushing, took about 20 minutes.  And now our helmets communicate with each other.

Did I mention that Dana is an electronics genius?  If he ever leaves me, he has to promise to remain my tech support guy, showing up every day to make sure that my laptop talks to my cell phone talks to my TiVo talks to my speakers.  He will also have to read my manuals.

The weird thing about this trip is that it was actually my idea.  One evening last year, while Katie was deciding where to go to college, we were telling her that we wanted her to stay local.  Her response to our advice was this dramatic sobbing thing, the back of her hand on her forehead, heaving gasps emanating from her chest.  “I can’t stay here for college!  I just can’t!” and more such drama.  So eventually she stormed into her room, and we remained in the kitchen sipping wine.  I was cooking dinner, Dana watching me cook dinner.

The man does not cook.  It’s OK, I’m good with that.

Whenever Katie does the drama hand thing, I get upset.  I often yell back, and sometimes I cry, and sometimes I chase her into her room shouting obscenities.  I’ve even been known to slam a few doors.  Dana is much calmer with her, so that night, after the where-to-go-to-college dramatic presentation, I followed his lead and calmly sipped my wine.

Did I mention that I love sipping wine?

And we discussed where we had gone to college.  Not that we hadn’t already talked about college on many occasions.  We’d laughed about our bad roommates, roach infested apartments, drinking mistakes, 8 AM calculus classes, and all the rest of what college was, and still is, about.  But when our kids started going to college, we began to take a new look at our own experiences.  So, when deciding if we were right telling Katie to go to college close to home, we agreed that my college in Albany, about 3 hours from my home in Brooklyn, was a preferable situation to Dana’s college in Boston, about 2000 miles from his home in Florida.

“You know,” he said, “whenever I went home to see my mom, I wanted to ride my bike but I never did.  I took the bus a few times, or the train.  Once I got a ride with someone.  But I never rode my bike down to Florida, and I really wish I had.”

And then the wine replied “So why don’t we do it now?”

And that was that.  It was settled.  I came up with the 57 idea, I came up with waiting until Katie’s sophomore year, by which time we assumed Bill would be out of college.  Which he won’t be, but that’s another story.  And Dana took the idea and ran with it.  Or pedaled with it, or whatever.  I have created a monster.  A pannier packing, camera weighing monster.