Getting Ready

Ray here... This site is our attempt to keep friends and family up to date on our foursome's bicycle trip from Oregon to Maine.  Terri, Margie (my sister), Mike (Shayna's father-in-law) and I will each probably make posts to the site as the adventure gets underway. 

Terri and I have been talking about this trip for the last couple of years.  Margie and Mike thought, hopefully not erroneously, that it would be fun, so they got bikes and started pedaling the local roads in order to join us.

For the last few months, I've been working on the route, spending hours on Google Street View, trying to locate decent roads with not too much traffic -- not always possible.  I've also searched out campgrounds (the intent is to tent camp, with every third or fourth night in a motel to refresh -- unless Margie decides she really does like to camp after all!), bicycle shops, and tourist sites along the way.  The latter includes three days in Yellowstone (where we will meet up with a number of family members), the Spotted Horse bar in Wyoming, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, the USS Badger ferry across Lake Michigan, Niagara Falls, and a day's ride alongside the Erie Canal. 

When?  Terri, Mike and I leave from San Diego with our pickup truck on May 30 (when I calculated the cost of outfitting the bikes with panniers, shipping equipment and bikes back home, and flying ourselves back at the end of the trip, it worked out to be less expensive (and easier!) to bring the truck with us).  We'll spend the night with family in Los Angeles, before heading to Modesto to spend the night at Margie's.  On June 1, after spending some time at the graduation party for twins Michael and Lindsay (Margie's grandchildren) who will have just graduated from high school, we head by truck toward Florence, Oregon, arriving on June 2. 

We will link up with brother, Larry, who will bicycle with us for the Oregon part of the trip.  Our good friend, Steve Brochu of San Diego, is flying up to drive the pickup for the first three days, before stopping in Bend, Oregon to visit a friend.  We are still searching for someone else who would like to take a little vacation across the states and drive our truck the rest of the way!  Otherwise, we will have to take turns in the truck.  Terri and Margie have already reserved the driving for those days when the mountains are too steep (e.g., the 9,033' Granite Pass heading over the Bighorn Mountains into Sheridan, WY) or the rain is too fierce (fortunately, I put in an order for a summer of no rain or high winds)!

Bright and early on the morning of June 3, the plan calls for dunking our rear tires in the Pacific Ocean and then heading east.  Sixty-nine days later, more or less, we should be dipping the front tires in the Atlantic Ocean outside Saco, Maine, where the first Ridlon arrived in this country, from Scotland, in 1717. We will probably then bike down to Boston to visit more family and friends, before driving back home, with stops in Chicago, St. Louis and who knows where else to see other family and friends).

If I can figure out how to do so (not the most computer-savvy person in the world), I will post the itinerary here somewhere so you can see where we are approximately supposed to be each day of the trip.  Otherwise, just check in with the blog once in awhile, and see how we are doing!