We left  our house this morning right on schedule, just before 9. Our last minute freak out was that we couldn’t find a key to bring with us, so we just locked ourselves out and hit the road. Here is our first town line crossing. Don’t worry, we won’t do every town. But we will take pictures of state line crossings.

We have met a few people today who saw the panniers and asked where we are going, but when we tell them we’re going to Key West, it just feels lame.

Them: “Wow! Key West?  Cool!  How far have you gone so far?”

Us: “10 miles.”

Them: “Oh.”

The first thing Dana realized today is that our average speed would be higher if he had bifocal sunglasses so he could read the map without stopping and changing glasses constantly. And the reading glasses over the sunglasses thing isn’t really working for him.

We stopped at Sally Fuller’s house in Harvard, at mile 12.5, for delicious lemonade with mint from her garden and cranberry loaf. We enjoyed her bluebirds and other woodland creatures, but we forgot to take a picture. We will have to work on taking more pictures. Meanwhile, imagine a picture of us, with Sally, in her backyard, right here in the blog.

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Sally had printed out the cue sheets for the first few days of our ride and had driven part or the route. The printed cue sheets are very helpful – Dana can almost read them without glasses. Plus, comparing the different directions between the ACA maps and the google cue sheet helps fill in some gaps. We had not printed them ourselves because there would be way too much paper, but we realized that we could use printers at hotels to print them up as we go.

Speaking of too much paper… it seems we brought too much of everything. Dana has been muttering about his wheels not being able to handle the weight. When we weighed our stuff this week, I was at 13.5 lb and he was at 20. I’m not sure what happened, but now we’re at 16.5 and 25. WTF?!?!

Meanwhile, Sally warned us about a big hill, so when we went up a hill a while later we thought “that wasn’t so bad”, but then we got to Sawyer’s Hill Rd and realized “Oh, THAT wasn’t THE hill. THIS is THE hill!” And I crossed the intersection, saw the hill, tried to drop into my granny, and my chain fell off. And Dana was still on the other side of the main road, because his chain had fallen off. I can recognize a bad omen when I see one – we walked up Sawyer’s Hill, which brought us to some amazing scenery, but was just proof of why I worry about roads with “Hill” in their names.

At mile 21 we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts/Pizza Primo/Sub Express. Had Italian subs and Gatorade. It was a wonderful meal, although I managed to spill oil on my biking shirt. I am SUCH A SLOB! Nice how Dana got a picture of the oil spot, huh?

Speaking of the biking shirt, the whole day was surprisingly cool, but I’m sure we will miss this weather in a few weeks. We saw a sushi and burrito restaurant in Westboro, which for some reason I found fascinating, but we didn’t stop there. The rest of the ride was uneventful, although ridiculously hilly. Ruggles St. in Westboro really should be renamed Ruggles Hill St. We walked up some of it. Dana knows better than to call me a wimp if I walk hills. Walking beats falling over because the bike doesn’t work when you are going 0 MPH.

We both started to whine around mile 35 – my butt and Dana’s foot. 35 isn’t bad, and I think we will both toughen up fast.

Got to Whitinsville around 3:30, checked into the B&B, which is just beautiful. But they don’t serve breakfast, so it’s really just a B, but that’s OK. I tried emptying my Camelbak in the bathroom and poured water everywhere. Note to self – empty the Camelbak outside. In fact, I don’t even need it now, it isn’t that hot. Perhaps I will forgo the extra weight of the water, and take some of the load off Dana. Or maybe not, since he’s the one who really got us into this mess in the first place.

We are now sitting in a bar snacking and drinking responsibly. We met some people at the bar and they asked where we’re from, and the coversation went from there. But we had to remind them – don’t be impressed, we haven’t done it yet.

On to Day 2

I took a moment to look at our plan for the ride and thought I’d share this so everyone would understand our expectations.

We’re leaving Saturday 5/31 and the goal for me to return to work is Monday 8/4, that’s a total of 65 days.

To get back in time to start work on 8/4, we have to start driving home from Florida (in a rental van) no later than Saturday morning 8/2. (Of course, we’d like to leave earlier to visit places on the way back, but this is the limit in order to meet my goal for getting back to work).

This leaves 9 full weeks for biking or 63 days of riding. Yes, I know that we’re calling it our “57” ride, but we decided to give ourselves more time when we changed the ride from “Going to Florida” to “Going to Key West” – adding 500 miles.

The simple math is:

• If we do 38 miles per day we will finish the ride, but will have no free days at all
• If we do 50 miles per day we have 48 days riding, and 15 free days
• If we do 60 miles per day we have 40 days riding and 23 free days
• If we do 80 miles per day we have 30 riding days and 33 free days

Only the first 600 miles are hilly after that it gets pretty flat. Note that Carolyn does not think that the words “Only” and “600 hilly miles” should ever appear in the same sentence.

If we assume we do 40 miles per day through the hilly part (15 days) and then do 60 miles per day for the rest of the ride (30 days) we have 18 free days.

I expect that on average we will do better than 40/60 miles per day. So conservatively, we can expect to have 15-18 days for tourism, either on the bikes or in the van on the way back.

After we had Billy and Katie, we did a lot of riding with them, starting when Katie was old enough to wear a helmet. Katie even flirted with bike racing for a brief moment.

Of course there were a few painful experiences, like when Billy fell off his bike on the Minuteman rail trail and had his first experience with road rash.

But all in all, biking was a very positive experience for the entire family, as long as there as ice cream involved.

Things had been going so well biking with the kids that we decided to try touring with them. Our second Pennsylvania tour was in 2002, almost a decade after we had done it without the kids. We took Billy and Katie for a week long adventure.

We decided to get a room at a hotel for the entire week – thus eliminating the need to carry panniers and worry about where to stay each day. We thought that searching for rooms and food with two little kids would be way too big an adventure. And the kids loved having a pool to relax in after each day of riding.

Having to ride to the various tourist destinations helped the kids appreciate them. Billy and Katie both enjoyed the model train museum and the pretzel factory. We spoke with another family, with the same aged kids, who went to the same places that same summer, but by car. They reported that their kids thought making pretzels and looking at old trains was lame. Our kids loved all of that – not because they are fundamentally better kids (they’re not) but because ANYTHING was better than sitting on those stupid bikes.

Katie was always just a bit frustrated that we were all faster than her and she was thrilled to discover that she was faster than a horse and buggy.

Of course, it wasn’t all good. Katie was happy to dine in the all-you-can-eat Amish restaurants, but after 3 nights Billy loudly exclaimed that he refused to eat ham, fried chicken, or mashed potatoes ever again, and WANTED TACOS! The chocolate we bought at the Wilbur Chocolate Factory melted and made a huge mess.

But the big downer was when I forgot my wallet on the way to the Strasburg Train Museum, which left Carolyn alone with both kids for most of the journey. She rode behind Katie, and Bill rode behind her, and it all went fine until the very end, riding along a lot of traffic going to the museum, when Carolyn told Katie to turn right into the museum entrance. Katie promptly turned left, directly in front of a moving car! When I got there Katie was unhurt but hysterical, mostly because Carolyn was screaming something about killing her since the car hadn’t. Mommy had to sit in a miniature train station until they both cooled off. But the train ride was nice, and we had ice cream afterwards, which made them both happy again.

By the fifth day, the kids were happy to relax after our last day of riding. Katie really liked the bonnet we bought for her in the gift shop.

And it later that bonnet made a great accessory for her turn-of-the-century schoolgirl outfit she needed for her third grade trip to the turn-of-the-century schoolhouse.

Biking provided us with a popular family activity that we could all do. It was especially nice when we had my older kids over and all seven of us would pile into our minivan with all of the bikes on top and head out to the bike trail for a day together.