Stumbles Tumbles and a couple days into the ride

I still find it the funniest damn thing in the world that me and Stumbles' first day 'riding our bikes across America' was a zero day. A zero day being a day where we do zero miles for one reason or another. And that one reason or another for us happened to be that we partied a little too hard the night before to be going on such an endeavor the next day. But that tends to happen every once in a while and now we are actually kind of on our way. Let me see, we've probably only done about 140 miles at this point and right now we're in Breezewood Pennsylvania... umm.. I just really don't know what to write about this sort of adventure you know? Do y'all want to know how we're doing it? Why? Should I write about miles and specifics? Or just romanticize the idea of the whole adventure on a whim sort of thing? The 'my body has no limits I don't tell it' sort of thing? I don't really know? It's really just me and Stumbles riding our bikes across America and all. Nothing fancy, and the funniest thing is how utterly and ridiculously unprepared we are. I'll just give a little outline with a little details of how on all this silliness we've been about, that sounds good.

Day !: That was the zero day, y'all know that. Stumbles maintains that we didn't really start until the day after, but I like to say we started out with a 0.

Day @: I made it out of the parking lot in the cute little park at the edge of Havre de Grace, Maryland. Well, maybe made it to the edge of the parking lot before I had to pump up my back tire for the first time. We made it another few blocks before I had to stop to pump it up again, because it was just looking really low ye know? After that I gave up and we went on for a few miles before, for the final f'n time, I decided to figure out what was wrong with my back wheel. While I stopped to examine it Stumbles had her first adorable tumble because she wasn't quite practiced at unclipping yet. Hell, we've all been there when we first get clip in pedals, it's a strange and foreign concept! Having your feet attached to your pedals like that! I only laughed at her a bit, and then discovered that my back rim was bent. My wheel was going whomp-a-whomping, nearly rubbing the frame with every rotation, and, if you don't know, that's not a good thing. Don't know how it happened, but I have my theories (I'm looking at you AMTRAK). This means that I couldn't use my rear break at all because the whomp-a-whomping simply would not allow. Grand. Nothing I could do about so I decided to keep on riding and ignore the fact that my back wheel looked drunk.

Ride a bit, get to a stop light, and down goes Stumbles, right in front of all the cars. Clip-ins take practice. Stumbles being Stumbles, she takes it like a champ and we get about 10 miles more before her pedal comes detached from her bike, still lodged in her shoe. And then she falls over. Well we rigged that as best we could, and that about does it for mishaps on the first day. Oh wait, except that Stumbles has never done a bike ride over 15 miles before and I hadn't ridden my bike in about a year and a half.... We had a painful lull around mile 40, where all the hills were. Regardless, we rode 78 miles to Gettysburg on day one and at one point we came to a road upon a lake where I had a serious sense of deja vu (where are accents on a computer?!). I realized I had hitched down that same road last year when I was doing my little hitching thing around America! It got me super excited. I love realizing I've been everywhere. Compared to our first day, the zero, we kind of had an infinite increase in mileage production. 

I'm sure people are going to be curious about how we eat and where we stay and all. For some reason people are always interested in specifics like that. On that first day we just ate at little country shops we found along the way. We stayed at my friend Phys Eds house in Gettysburg. Phys Ed is one of the coolest guys I know. I met him hiking the Appalachian trail and he does so much for trail that it's inspiring. It seems like he is always up at the museum giving a talk about trail or trying to figure out some cool way to do trail magic. Plus he welcomes my smelly self in whenever I role around on whatever random adventure I've been participating in at the time (AKA hitching/bike rides). Him and his wife both are some of the most generous and genuinely interesting people I've ever met. His excitement about things is unparalleled. When me and Stumbles finally got to Gettysburg there is no doubt we were a little beat (especially my ass). Phys Ed was hosting a fancifulish gathering at his house so we kind of got snuck into the upstairs where we showered up and got ready to hit the town. We'd meant to go to the bike store but it was too late by the time we were there. We just went out and met up with Lost'n'found, who we both know from trail as well. It was just one of those really good trail reunion nights where we can all really let loose all that held up trail talk we'd been waiting to get out. Phys Ed met up with us later that night and we all just had fun talking about trail. Couldn't get too wild though because we were dang beat from the 78 miles. But whatevs, it was all good!

Day #: To be continued....


I understand this is a reaaaaally boring blog. But this bike riding thing is pretty hard, at least while we're still fresh into it AND in the middle of the mountainish country. I am darn exhausted by the end of the day. Real writing takes time and energy, neither of which I have at the moment. Wait a bit and I promise they'll get better. This was as much as I could catch y'all up on for now!

Be happy,

Beacon