Lads on tour… on bikes. Holmes, Dowds & Reid cycle across the USA.

Day 64 – We’re in bloody Oregon!

We haven’t updated much lately. Part of the reason for this is that we were passing through Wyoming and Montana – not much WiFi through places like Yellowstone. Lots of bears though.

About a week ago we met up with some other westbound riders and are travelling together to the coast. They are:

Matt from the UK – a fireman from Manchester. The first time we met him, his parents were with him carrying his gear for a few days. In the style of a true Mancunian his mum kicked off on the restaurant owner in Jeffery City, WY.

Lady Chris & Man Chris from Massachussets. We now have three Chris’s so we are using the nicknames that Callum has given us. Lady Chris works for the Department of Defense strapping dynamite to dolphins, Man Chris counts drugs and was born a farmboy in the UK. We found it amusing that he probably used some of Callum’s dad’s latex products when he was involved with the extraction of genetic material from sheep.

Sarada and Aaron from New York City. These two are brother and sister but somehow they get along well enough to ride across the USA – mental. They are a bit different though and it’s quite funny. Aaron spent six months hiking the length of the USA on the Appalachian Trail, fending off bear attacks with a penknife and living in caves; Sarada… didn’t. But she once went an entire day in Brookyln with a dead battery in her iPod.

We’re all gonna head to Eugene, OR before they all split off up to Astoria and we start heading down the coast to San Francisco. They’re trying to make us go up the coast with them and do a longer ride down the coast but we are politely telling them to “jog on”.

TATA

Day 37 – PUEBBBBBLO (~115 miles)

Usually we try to get some miles under our belt before stopping for breakfast but sometimes there are no breakfast stops within a reasonable distance, so we just have it first thing. Callum ordered breakfast in his usual way:

“Hi there, can I get the 2 eggs and hash browns but instead of hash browns can I get toast?”

The waitress usually relents because of the Reidy charm.

“OK thankyou and can I get two extra orders of toast please?”

On the ride we passed the Arkansas State Penitentiary, so we stopped to take a picture of Dowds, his chav tattoo, and the place he would be living if he had been born in the USA:

Today’s ride was quite hot. There was one point where a headwind came out of nowhere which felt exactly like sticking your head above an open oven-door. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was HOT. Dowds figured out that he drunk 8 litres of water and only…visited the bathroom/peed on the side of the road…once.

We weren’t sure where we would stop today, a headwind or a tailwind can completely change your plans, but we ended up having some reasonable winds, so we headed to Pueblo. As we headed out on the last stretch from the last service stop to Pueblo, a ridiculous side-wind started to pick up. I found it quite funny but there were some scary moments. One thing we’ve noticed is that to the unprepared British eye, every type of weather over here seems like it could be a tornado – but the photo below looks a bit…tornado-ish doesn’t it?

It wasn’t, and the weather wasn’t too bad, but when we arrived in Pueblo we were told that a week or so ago they had a hailstorm with hailstones the size of golf balls, breaking car windows and concussing bears.

Dowds got a puncture on the road into Pueblo so while I wore the high-vis jacket and hurled abuse, Cal headed off to find a motel for the night. Dowds swapped his inner tube out for one which had a dodgy valve so we had no idea if it would hold up for the 3 miles or so to Pueblo. We met back up with Callum, who hadn’t found anything yet, and as we got closer to the centre, Dowds had to keep re-inflating his tyre so often that he told us to go ahead while he walked it to the bike shop. Me and Cal spread out to find the cheapest motel and Cal found one for $39 inc. tax. Bargain. I was a bit apprehensive at first because while Cal was booking the room I saw a shirtless guy with a massive tattoo of a naked lady all the way up his back and a 70-year old jibbering incomprehensible man attempted to talk to me – I did the old smile ‘n’ nod. It turned out to be an awesome place. Quite a few of the people we met lived in the motel; they were all really nice, and helped us find a good all-you-can-eat buffet a couple of miles north of our motel. It was bloody fantastic.

Day 36 – Hot Day (79 miles)

Sometimes we are slightly…dishonest in the number of people who we say are staying in a motel room. This gets slightly confusing and worrying to the motel owner when the three of us all rock up to the complimentary breakfast at the same time. It got quite awkward this morning as the guy tried to stealthily check the numbers on our check-in form while making polite conversation. We managed to avoid getting charged the extra cash by being super-nice and talkative, something which doesn’t come naturally to any of us. The guy had an interest in electrical engineering so I fielded some questions as part of our whole being nice thing, while at the same time managing to trip a fuse by running the toaster and the microwave at the same time.

Outside we met some really nice people from Portland, OR. who were just passing through. One of the guys asked us about what we think of when we are riding. I asked the boys this ages ago and this is what we’ve generally been thinking about while riding:
Dowds – Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He just switches his brain off and watches his pedals go round.
Me – Singing little songs in my head – really random music.
Callum – Cal had been using the time wisely by thinking about what he was going to do for a job when he finished the ride – pondering his future. When I asked this question we were about a week into the ride, so I asked him what he’d come up with. Here’s the strange thing: he wasn’t actually thinking about what he was going to do, he was just thinking this: “I need to start thinking about what I’m going to do”. Callum Reid’s mind – a very very mysterious place.

The chap from Portland looked at us strangely.

Off we went, back onto the 96.

Today we had a stretch of road with no services for 58 miles. We stocked up on water at Tribune, KS and headed off to the Colorado border. On the way we met some younger eastbound cyclists who were doing a supervised trip across the USA. One of the laws of the tour so far is that whenever there are kids to laugh, one of us will fall off our bikes. As we stopped, Callum crashed into the back of my bike and fell slowly into the ditch. We all have our ways of coping with the flatness and dullness of Kansas – audiobooks and stuff like that- but Cal told us that he has been actively trying to hypnotize himself by staring at the gears of mine or Dowd’s bikes. As I said… a unique and mysterious mind. The eastbounders were asking if he was alright as we cycled up to meet them seemingly ignoring Cal in the ditch, but we weren’t worried cos we know the sounds that Cal makes and “oh…oh no” means he’s just done something silly but he’s fine.

We eventually got to Eads where there was a nice pool where we reckon they must have had a surplus of blue paint:

Day 35 – AMERICA Day (81 miles)

Yesterday we turned onto State Route 96. The maps that we bought come in sections; 12 in all for the Transamerica Trail, plus two more for final cheeky nip down the coast. Each section lasts about 300 miles, but it depends on how much they can fit on the maps. Section 7, from Alexander, KS. to Pueblo, CO. is 292.6 miles and it is all on ONE road – the 96. One of the things which has kept me sane so far on this trip is needing to keep an eye on the maps and not get us lost or miss a turn. For the next 300 miles there is only one direction – west on SR 96. Despite this, I’ve lost count of the times that Reidy has asked which way to turn after we stop for some food. Callum is truly brilliant at some things, but sometimes he…lacks awareness, bless him.

So, we headed west on 96, stopping in Dighton for breakfast at the only restaurant that was open – a bowling alley – and continued on to our planned stop for the night at Scott City. We got a call from Blake on the way, who had found out that there was a rodeo in the next town, Leoti. It was only 20 miles away so we decided to continue on.

We were glad we did. After the baseball yesterday we didn’t think we’d experience anything more stereotypically American, but the rodeo was… incredible.

The only restaurant in town was packed so we were forced to eat food from the stalls at the fair. I was trying everything, no matter how disgusting and ridiculous it looked. In fact I was deliberately choosing the most strange stuff – corn dogs, funnel cakes, whatever.

Funnel cake

The announcer requested silence for the Cowboys’ prayer, which was immediately followed by a tragically tone-deaf girl singing the national anthem.

Then loads of people in big hats fell off horses, threw cows around and, when the crowd was fully warmed up, fell off some big bulls as a finale. It was pretty much every American stereotype thrown into one big display. It was spectacular.

Buck Earnheardt Jr. shows us how it’s done

Intermission – redneck clown

This guy fell off

Day 34 – Windy Day

Today was a pretty normal day. Dowds ate breakfast:

Callum looked strange:

We cycled about 10 miles west, followed by about 19 miles north. In the second section we had a tailwind and managed to average 22.5 mph, which was fun. By the time we got to Rush Center, our planned stop for breakfast/lunch, we had done about 30 miles and averaged 19.4 mph for the day so far… which was nice. Our stop at Rush Center wasn’t quite as useful as we had hoped because it turned out that the town has ample provision for those who want to get hammered, but nothing for anyone who wants a bit of food. In this town there are three liquor stores and zero restaurants or grocery stores. Here is Callum asking if any paperwork is required for him to move there after we finish:

There were no shops for the next 30 miles so we started munching down chocolate bars and gettingready to go until a guy showed up in his truck with a plastic bag full of bread, meat and veg for us to make some sandwiches with. He had been in the liquor store when Cal was asking where to get food and had nipped home, sorted us out a packed lunch and drove back. We were very grateful and we can add him our mental list of exceptionally kind people we have met so far. Cheers.

Got back on the road and got hit with a pretty horrible side-wind/head-wind. It wasn’t particularly nice but we just stuck headphones on and plowed through it.

Freaking out pilots – bloody mischievous; those religious lot.

Arrived in Ness City, KS. in pretty good time despite the winds, but we were slightly worried about camping with some of the freaky weather that was coming in:

There was lightning over to the north, but it didn’t look like rainclouds. We asked around and found out that the city was on “storm watch”.
“What does that mean exactly? What sort of weather would you class as a storm?”
“High winds, driving rain, hail the size of golf balls… that sorta thing”
“Oh. We’re planning on camping – is that a good idea?”
“…Probably not.”

We cycled down to the place we’d be camping (a city park) and found that we probably wouldn’t get much sleep regardless of weather because there was a little-league baseball tournament in progress.

Callum also managed to pick up a puncture so me and Dowds amused ourselves by switching between watching the baseball game and Callum’s puncture repair techniques.

The baseball tournament ended up finishing early due to the storm which was moving in. I asked around some of the locals to get their opinion on whether we would be safe camping or not and eventually, after some conferring which involved the words “tornado” and “nearest storm shelter”, the consensus seemed to be that we should get a motel. By the time I’d talked this over with them, Callum had already pitched his tent and really didn’t want to move. When I walked out of the tree cover, all I could see at this time was lightning casting a silhouette of a very big, black cloud. Oh well. We decided to pitch our tents but be ready to very quickly pack up and leave if everything got a little bit too windy and rainy and scary. Callum’s tent collapsed after a gust of wind ripped out some pegs which we insisted he should secure properly on this particular night… so Dowds’ had the pleasure of receiving a rain-soaked Callum Reid as a guest in his tent. The next morning I snapped this photo of the happy couple:

During the storm we talked over walkie-talkie about the chances that we might be able to win an award for being the stupidest people to cycle across the USA. I think we’d have a pretty good chance.

Day 31 – Bad day (35 miles)

Woke up and tried to get moving but there wasn’t much motivation because:
1) It was a short day;
2) The next day would be a rest day;
3) 10 pitchers of beer and a few splashes of whisky the night before.

Got moving eventually, but not before Callum and Dowds beat me to the continental breakfast and Cal managed to eat everything except for a couple of packets of butter.

We chose to take a more direct route into Hutchinson, because it was 6 miles off-route anyway. We’d asked some of the locals if they had any idea how suitable US-50 would be for cyclists; we got conflicting responses ranging from “it’s fine” to “you’ll die”, but they did all agree that it had decent-sized shoulders and Google street view looked OK.

It wasn’t too bad. Not the nicest of roads, but the traffic wasn’t particularly heavy and the shoulder was OK. Callum had snapped his chain the day before by managing to avoid oiling his chain for pretty much the entire trip. As a result Cal’s bike sounded like he was cycling over a chalkboard with wheels made of nails – not the best thing for a hangover, especially for Dowds who wasn’t using his MP3 player.We stopped at around the halfway point for food and couldn’t help but laugh at Dowds who didn’t look too healthy. None of us felt amazing and we just wanted to get to Hutchinson. This ended up taking a little while longer than expected as Blake got a puncture a few miles down the road. Sorted it out and headed to the bike shop in Hutchinson who hold the keys for a free hostel for bikers at a nearby church. We found the hostel (v. nice), ditched our stuff and dropped the bikes in for some essential maintenance. Callum bought a new chain, I got them to sort out my gears, Dowds didn’t need anything but left his bike in there anyway and Blake… is a bike shop’s dream. New chain, new tyre – both were fine but he is an American so he is indoctrinated with the idea of regular servicing and we couldn’t convince him otherwise. Crazy yank.

Ate some food at a big mexican buffet place and slept like babies with the knowledge that tomorrow we had to do 0 miles.

Day 30 – Silly day (73 miles)

Callum wasn’t too happy towards the end of last night when we told him that the actual mileage for today would be around 75 – not the 60 that Dowds’ had roughly worked out before the extended ride to Eureka. Like a true Lad on Tour, he manned up and accepted it.

At some point we’ll stick up a post explaining just who or what ‘Blake’ is but for now let’s just call him our American pet – he follows along whenever he manages not to fall off his bike, makes lots of noise and barks outside the door at 4am when he’s scared of the coyotes outside.

On our Walmart walkie-talkies we’d been picking up interference from a fast food place or somewhere like that from around 6pm onwards. At the time we were looking for a restaurant so Callum asked the mystery people on the radio and they shut up after that. We left the radio on and at around 4am we got some really weird voice coming in over the radio. None of us were really sure if we were still dreaming – it was freaky – but eventually I woke up a bit and realised it sounded a lot like Blake. It turns out he’d made the 20 mile ride into town after seeing coyotes sniffing around his panniers. He couldn’t get back to sleep and decided to ride in the pitch black of night to our motel where we’d told him there was a bed waiting if he continued on to Eureka. My comment (over the radio): “Are you f**king insane???”. Blake got a few hours kip but not before having to wake up Reidy who was (understandably) absolutely petrified and woke up staring at him with his fist cocked ready to smack him one.

Set off for Newton around 9pm since Dowds had to wait around for the post office to open. He lost his camera charger before the holiday, tried to get one via express delivery just before we left but ended up having to get his mum to send it to a post office in the middle of the USA. After all that hassle, his camera didn’t work because he had accidentally filled it with rainwater a few weeks back.

We had a pretty normal ride, with one 38 mile stretch at the end with absolutely no services… which was nice. Just to prove that you will find Yorkshiremen bloody everywhere we met an Eastbound older chap called Paul Davenport who had cycled pretty much all over the world (including Africa, South America and the Andes in winter) and had just gotten around to doing the USA. Dad and Uncle Rick: sorry, forgot to ask if he was a Wednesday or United fan, but he did like Henderson’s.
Paul Davenport – “World touring cyclist and gentleman of leisure”

We met a cool American couple just down the road and did the standard exchange of info on what’s ahead etc.

We made pretty good time into Newton, with a short sprint towards the end just for fun. As usual the first thing we did was find food, and afterwards we went back to a bar we’d seen on Main Street.

After…a few…I snapped this photo which probably says it best:

Oh Dowds…

You can’t get the real American experience until you’ve gotten intoxicated with the locals in an ill-lit bar in Kansas… right? That’s our justification anyway.

We had planned to camp that night, but managed to find out which motel Blake had gone to and, in a reverse of last night, knocked on his door around 2am asking for a place to stay.

Lads on tour…occasionally on bikes.

Day 29 – Long Day (120 miles)

Just a quick note to explain why after being in Tappahannock, VA we somehow teleported into Missouri… We have been ever so slightly lax with the posting over the last 20 days or so. It’s not the thing you want to do most after a day on the bike – tap out a post on an iPod. We’re trying to keep up with the regular posting and we’ll fill in the older ones as we get the time.

We started our first full day in Kansas today, hitting the road around 7am. Had a truly effortless first 20-30 miles. No wind, and only the person in front had to put any effort in, which meant we only had to work for it 25% of the time. Nice.

Pizza Hut buffet for an athlete’s lunch before heading out on the next big stretch to our planned stop at Toronto (population 300, as I said they like reusing place names).

Kansas is pretty damned flat and from what we’ve heard and seen, getting flatter. Makes a very nice change to the Appalachians and the Ozarks. The miles just go by without noticing. Towards the end of the day we let Blake go behind with one of our Walmart walkie talkies because we didn’t have far to go and he was struggling to keep pace on the hills with all the pots, pans, stoves, sinks and Christ knows what else he has in those bags. This wouldn’t normally be a problem – we could just slow down a little bit – but Cal had his headphones on and wasn’t really too aware of the pace… or pretty much anything to be honest. Autopilot. We got into the town we were supposed to be staying at and had a bite to eat at a small diner a few miles out of town because everything in town was closed. Me and Dowds were looking at the map trying to figure out what our plans were for the next few days and what started as a joke suggestion to carry on and do a 120 mile day eventually turned into a tempting idea. We knew the sticking point would be Cal but we sweetened the deal by promising to stay in a motel and he was up for it. Now the problem was getting hold of Blake who was just behind us. Out of radio range, left my mobile in the motel yesterday… bit of a nightmare. We ended up calling the camp ground he was staying at and leaving a message asking the ranger person to go tell him our plans. We also managed to leave a voicemail on his cellphone and told the owners of the cafe to tell him to check his voicemail. We managed to get in touch with him later and we’re meeting up with the Bostonian tomorrow morning in Eureka.

It’s 9:30pm now – way past bedtime.

Day 28 – Lazy day (66.8 miles)

Intended to get up really early today, but ended up looking out the window at 5am, seeing a monster of a thunderstorm and going back to sleep. Either way we had Callum on alarm clock duty so we thought it was a pretty safe bet that we’d get a lie in. We almost sacked off the entire day to stay in the lodge again for another night, but it started to clear up and we hit the road.

It was a good thing we didn’t leave too early because we got a knock on the door around 9am from the wife of the guy who runs the ranch, asking for some help. Me and Dowds ran outside and found Bill (the owner) supporting a gun dog which had one of its hind legs stuck in the top of a chain-link fence. Apparently it didn’t like thunder so it tried to jump over. We pulled up on the fence to keep some weight off the dog’s leg until Bill’s wife found the bolt-cutters. I snipped it and we managed to free it. Another strange experience but quite a nice feeling to have helped out.

It turns out that it was pretty good weather for the ride we had. Overcast with just enough rain to cool us down. We had hills for the first 10 miles or so and then it flattened out and Dowds became an absolute monster; leading us at around 20mph for about 15 miles to our breakfast/lunch stop at Golden City. Legend.

Ate burgers and some pie at the famous Cooky’s Cafe in Golden City (very nice) before heading off for the second stretch to Pittsburg. Me and Dowds set off slightly later because we wanted some more pie. I think we’re really getting into the American eating habits. Felt it a bit, but took turns on the front into a slight headwind to catch up to Blake and Cal at some roadworks. Some Eastbounders had told us to just walk the bikes over this bit instead of taking the diversion, but they had encountered it when it was dry. We walked over a few hundred yards of wet clay and spent about an hour cleaning our bikes so they would work again. Not the most fun experience but it was pretty funny hearing Blake losing his composure and effing and blinding across a field of clay and gravel. We met an eastbounder just after the roadworks and advised against walking over it.

Only me and Blake have the maps, so only we know the exact distance to the Kansas border, but that didn’t stop Callum and Dowds racing about 8 miles to the border. We knew this so just sat back and watched them destroy themselves.

Reached Pittsburg and did the standard check for prices at all the motels. We ended up staying in a room booked for two people, and radioed Cal and Dowds when the coast was clear to follow us in.

Nipped down the road for a Chinese buffet and met up with a dad and his two kids cycling across. Did the standard exchange of good places/places to avoid and told them about the nightmare of the 80 motel in Hindman, Kentucky (we’ll fill in the missing posts when we can). They told us probably the most bizarre story we’ve heard yet: just before they set off, a random lady showed up to their door with the ashes of her deceased daughter – she had always wanted to do the Transam, but died before having the chance. The end result is that these three guys are travelling with an urn containing the bodily remains of a stranger – told you it was a bizarre story!

Check out their website at www.krem.com (click the link at the top which says “follow the Wild Hare Adventure”).

Walmart stop to pick up some new flip-flops to replace the ones Callum lost while crossing the construction work, and off to bed for an early start tomorrow.

Day 26 – Awakened by tramp-song

Woke up this morning to what sounded like a tramp complaining to his dog about the “mess some bikers have left here, clothes all over the place man”. With all our gear and our personal safety in mind, Callum jumped into action by telephoning Dowds, and the two of them sat in their tents asking each other what to do for a good few minutes. Callum later told me that his plan was “wait until Chris goes out and sorts it out”. Callum’s plan, as ever, went off without a hitch.

After putting on a t-shirt to avoid startling the poor fellow with my bizarre albino/african tan-lines, I went out and told him we’d checked in with the sheriff and apologised for the mess, but we’d be out of there soon. Turns out he wasn’t really that crazy, but he did mention in passing (during a conversation about gun-control) that he shot and killed a burglar when he was 15. He was a nice guy, but he did have a lot of stories, and I was desperately trying to get my stuff packed away while simultaneously keeping up a conversation about all of the following topics mixed together: border control, the benefits of a full-suspension bike and city park ordnances. Callum and Dowds, as useful as they were earlier in the morning, left me to talk with my new friend and pegged it off to a cafe for some WiFi.

Managed to get moving after a while, and headed down the road to the cafe I thought they would be at. I could tell it was the right one because I saw two bikes (Dowds’ and Blake’s) propped neatly against the side and one just thrown on the ground. Callum’s bladder strikes again. The cafe (Moose Cafe) was awesome – they gave all cyclists their first drink free, but because I didn’t want a drink she gave me a chocolate muffin for free. I ended up buying two more so I was still a Good Customer.

Most of the ride was pretty uneventful. Towards the end of the day we ran into some roadworks. They were resurfacing the road, and they do it slightly differently than in the UK. Instead of the works being done by a couple of blokes called Nigel and Dave who dig a 6-foot trench in the road, eat a Pukka-Pie and fill the hole back up again to a level about an inch below the rest of the road, the Americans do it differently and on a much larger scale. Huge trucks filled with gravel and tar; modified road sweepers to brush off the excess gravel; ‘pilot cars’ to guide people through; all resulting in…

7 miles of riding over loose gravel with rock dust clouds kicked up in our faces every time a car drove past.

Welcome to the USA – now get off your bikes and into a car you idiots.

It was actually pretty fun. I turned on my portable speaker and managed to find just enough decent, non-boyband music on Callum’s iPod to get us through it.

Arrived in Marshfield and Dowds promptly fell off his bike outside a gas station. My camera chose this moment to run out of batteries so I’ll have to leave you with a relevant photo of what happens when you decide to ride topless at midday in Missouri with cycling bib-shorts on.

Oh Dowds, you really are a Brit On Holiday. Captions welcome…

Our free city park campsite for the night was right across from the swimming pool so we had a quick dip, grabbed a bite to eat in town and hit the sack at around 9pm like the hard-core party animals we are.

Day 24 – Centerville, MO

Lots of rain. Stayed in a cafe overnight.

Day 23 – Ozora

(No write-up was posted for this day.)

Day 22 – Carbondale

Dowds slashed his own tyre while fitting a speedo.

Day 21 – Goreville

Ferne Clyffe State Park Campground. Callum pissing Chicken Korma out of his arse. Perfect night’s sleep for me – birds stopped tweeting promptly at around 10:30pm etc.

Day 20 – Cave-in-rock, IL

Dog following Callum. I felt like shit and followed Dowds all day. Stayed at Cave-in-rock SP CG.

Day 19 – Sebree, KY

(No write-up was posted for this day.)

Day 18 – Rough River Dam, KY

Ate in the fancy place with the v v comfortable chairs. I cycled back afterwards in the pitch black, Cal and Dowds got a lift from a divorcee.

Day 17 – Bardstown, KY

Dowds lost speedo, got to breakfast and went for a walk. I ate massive breakfast. Reidy – knackered.

Sacked it off and did a whisky distillery tour – Maker’s Mark.

Day 16 – Lincoln Homestead State Park

Dowds goes to Danville

Day 15 – Berea, KY

(No write-up was posted for this day.)

Day 14 – Booneville, KY

Met two guys going other way. Stayed at the church place. Massive thunderstorm.

Day 7 – 3 Brits in a military town on Independence Day

(No write-up was posted for this day.)

Day 6 – Hills, Hangovers and Cookies (27 miles)

(No write-up was posted for this day.)

Day 5 – Charlottesville or bust (102 miles)

(No write-up was posted for this day.)

Day 4 – The Disadvantages and Advantages of Laziness (58 miles)

Disadvantage: waking up late when the sun is at it’s highest, most ridiculously scorching hot position and starting a 60 mile ride as trees, people, road surfaces and the whole world seems to begin to melt around us. Add in a slight hangover and you can probably guess this wasn’t so much a bike ride as a dehydrated crawl through Satan’s arse. We vowed never to leave so late again.

Advantage: arrived in Ashland, the point where we meet up with the Transamerica Trail which takes us across the USA, at around 4pm. Tired and thirsty, we couldn’t be bothered cycling the extra 3 miles or so to the (overpriced) campground, so after an all-you-can-eat buffet at Ponderosa’s we hunted around for a cheap motel. After checking out a few places we finally settled on one for $43.50 with a pool, close proximity to a gas station and a disturbingly high police presence. On a completely unrelated note, not at all relevant to the price we paid, if anyone asks, we are not three adults, we are in fact two Old Age Pensioners. We didn’t lie but the front desk clerk may have cut us a deal out of pity. It’s around this point we’ve realised that “sending in the Reidy” is the best thing to do in these situations – people just love to take care of him and mother him. If Callum had been captured as a POW in WW2, Adolf and Eva would have sent him on his way with a shower, some clean clothes and a packed lunch before they knew what was happening. That boy has powers.

Day 2 – Across the Chesapeake Bay

Here are your options for crossing the Chesapeake bay when you’ve decided to start a bike tour on a peninsula:

The Bay Bridge
We drove over this from DC. Cycling over it would be illegal and a fairly bad idea for anyone who doesn’t want to become a hood ornament for an 18-wheeler.

Bay Tunnel
Right down to the south of the Delmarva peninsula there is a tunnel. A big tunnel. A very big tunnel. Unlike the bay bridge above, there would be no sides to fall off of, but there would be a significant lack of visibility and manouverability.

Ferry from Crisfield, MD to Reedville, VA
A relaxed ferry cruise setting off late enough in the day that you can have some breakfast first, changing over to another ferry at Tangier Island in the middle of the bay. Not only that, but Callum absolutely loved the fact that 1) the ferry did exist (read day 1) and 2) it went from Chris-field to Reid-ville. When I first told dowds about this ferry I hadn’t noticed and he thought I was joking because of the names.

So, based on the names of the ports, the existence of the ferry and the convenient fact that we were in Crisfield to catch a ferry… we caught the ferry. $45 each with bikes which we thought was v reasonable.

On the way there we spoke to a guy about our trip and he told us some stuff about Tangier Island. Apparently a load of mercenaries from Somerset, UK were brought there back in the civil war. They were stranded on the island and the commander decided he had no contractual obligation to pick them up again, so he didn’t. Contract law – screwing people over in a very clean, neat way for centuries. Apparently if you speak to he old people on the island they still have a slight West Country accent. Since I don’t think we gave him the website, I think it’s worth noting that the guy sounded like Big Bird from Sesame Street which made his anecdotes all the more interesting. Callum loved the sound of this and decided that during the changeover he would find an American Bristolian.

Instead, he boarded the second ferry, laid down and fell asleep. Priorities.

Arrived in Reedville expecting a town full of Callum Reid’s where the mayor is a dog and the water towers are filled with cider but it ended up being one of the poshest places we’d seen. Boat captain said that at one point it had the highest income per capita in all the USA.

We planned to do a short ride to a campground in Sunnybank but the boat captain very kindly let us stay on the yard behind the boathouse which had a shower and restrooms and everything like that. This saved he a bit of cash so we thank him greatly. For anyone else in the area, it’s a very nice trip on some nice boats with good tour guide info. The first boat was called the Steven Thomas and the second was the Chesapeake Bay Breeze.

Nipped out to the shops before setting up camp and met some retired couples boating around the coast. It seems that a popular pastime for well-off retired people over here is to just boat around and drink lots of wine each night. Sounds like a hard life.

Day 1 – Across the Delmarva (77.7 miles)

Took the wheel dip photo this morning which was more difficult than expected; fully loaded bikes aren’t the easiest things to carry down a sand bank. Ended up with a couple of good photos and it had to be done really.

Started off on the first ride of tour and headed off down some very long, straight roads for Crisfield, MD. A few miles after Indiantown (really just an intersection) Cal stopped to ask for water from a guy out gardening. We ended up with the whole family out there and they sorted us out with cold water and bananas. Result. Bloody nice folks.

Made v good time to Crisfield although me and Reidy were flagging towards the end. Kind of a different climate to the UK; they have sunshine over here – it’s… unfamiliar. Hopefully it won’t take too long to acclimatize. If we get used to doing this sort of pace we can get the miles out of the way in the morning and just lounge around in the afternoon.

Stopped in at a little restaurant at the end and absolutely destroyed some ribs, chicken and Pepsi. The soft drink refill idea isn’t good business sense when you’ve got three guys who just cycled 70 miles in sweltering heat.

Headed over to Janes Island state park to find a camp site and they sorted us one out straight away for a good price. Nice place, and there was a nice breeze which kept all the mozzies away.

We set up tents and headed out into town to find some wifi and some… beer and found a nice place called Racks. Asked the owner and some of the regulars about the ferry service across the bay and they said they didn’t think there was one! Callum was worried but I wasn’t because if you can’t trust Google’s opinion that there was a boat across, who can you trust?

Callum has taken laziness to a new level. He doesn’t even get out of his tent to have a piss, he simply opens the side door, kneels down with cock in hand and pisses. The fact that he also likes to keep his blindfold on means I now pitch my tent a few feet away.

Day 0 – Assateague Island

Trying to keep the website updated is pretty difficult when you’re scrounging WiFi from random places with an iPod touch. When we next get to a PC we can catch up on all the posts but for the moment we’ll just say that we haven’t been shot at yet and Reidy hasn’t been arrested either – unbelievable yes, but everything is going good. First night after driving out to Ocean City was spent at Assateague Island where we got destroyed by the mozzies and flies. There wasn’t actually space at the campground but they obviously took pity on us and sorted us out with a site for the night. A few hours later after we had shown Cal how to pitch a tent without it collapsing in the middle, we were on the beach chilling out by a campfire with an American family (originally from Iceland) on vacation. We couldn’t have imagined a better first night to start our trip – free beer, really cool people, smores (fantastic), the sound of the waves crashing on thd beach and the sort of night sky you wouldn’t get in the UK unless you were out somewhere in the middle of absolutely nowhere, like Yarm I guess.

After that, had a pretty rubbish nights sleep and got up fairly early to do the cliché wheel dip and set off for Crisfield, MD.

Go time.

4.15pm today we will depart Blighty. Arrive around 7.30pm in US of A.