Reports from Jamie's latest tour

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Latest Next

day 60

a day in the top ten

Actual Date: 2007-07-03
Uploaded: wed, 4 jul 2007 12:37:47 -0700
Distance: 140.00 km

Manton, Michigan to Petoskey, Michigan.

(snip)

Dear Restless Spirit of Mechanical Equipment Failure,

I have recieved your gifts of continuing equipment problems with great interest. Unlike in previous years where my tours suffered from a total lack of your attention this time you have decided to bestow your overwhelming gifts both before and during this tour.

In addition to yesterday's rear rack failure, today you decided to bless the tour with another pulled out tube valve and the development of a gushing waterfall in my brand new hydration bladder. As you know I always purchase tried and true products with a primary focus on reliability, user reviews and whenever possible my own experience over any other factors including cost.

I can't help but feel that you are striving to make up for past neglect. Relax for there are no hard feelings on my part. Your apology has been accepted and I release you to bestow your gifts on other, more deserving tourers.

Respectfully and with admiration,

~Jamie

(end snip)

In truth this letter is a bit of a lark. Sure I've had a few interesting times but nothing too bad. It's all quite amusing to me. Given a choice I would
rather have the problems now then later in more remote areas. Both tire valves have pulled in exactly the same way at least a day or two after the addition of air. I suspect a bad batch of tubes. Pulled valves are in many ways the worst because they can't really be fixed with a tire repair kit.

Those minor issues aside today ranks as one of my top ten touring days. Hours of rolling hills with lots more descents then ascents. A strong enough tailwind to assist on the few uphills without making you roast in the process and a beautiful set of climbs right at the end of the day.

At lunch I met a fascinating family with three very young kids. During the course of an interesting conversation all the typical touring questions were answered but I also had the opportunity to learn a lot about them and their community. I love meeting people like this.

Construction zones are like the surprise bag of bicycle touring. Sometimes you get a bad treat like a missing bridge but most of the time you get controlled/low traffic or fresh pavement. Today I received both good gifts plus a beautiful tailwind that had me averaging 36 km per hour on perfectly smooth pavement and with no cars! Ah, bliss!

I also met four offroad tourers today. All were on day four of a five day tour, riding mountain bikes wearing backpacks and complaining of extremely sore butts. Each carried about 13 pounds of gear since they were basically staying in motels at night and mainly eating in restaurants. They were a fascinating group of guys who quickly left me behind (twice) on their lightly loaded bikes. I did manage to catch and pass all of them on a very long and fast downhill before they dropped me again. My top descending speed is now 53 km/hour and I have a plan to improve it further!

Today I looked upon the waters of Lake Michigan making this the first great lake of this tour. As I rolled into the local state park I met a young man who has visited both crazyguyonabike and Bicycle Touring 101. He sets off on the southern tier route across the US in august. I am looking forward to reading his journal.

Thanks for signing my guestbook Brian. I can't recall if there are rules around composing limericks. If you can let me know then I'll see what I can come up with. Hopefully I can find the time in my busy touring day! (grin)

Today was another great day in the life of a touring cyclist!

~Jamie N

Interested in bicycle touring? www.bicycletouring101.com

------------------------------
Get your service for FREE when you refer friends and family to PocketMail!

Tour Statistics

(Based on riding days only)

Number of Riding Days: 34
Overall total so far: 3840.10 km
Daily Average: 112.94 km
Shortest: 53.00 km
Longest: 163.00 km

Click here to send me a fun, inspiring, motivational and private email!

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Latest Next

These daily log messages come from my latest bicycle touring adventure. I usually update new entries daily although in more remote areas the upload may not occur for a period of time. Rest assured that the missing entires will ultimately appear here.

Clicking on 'Latest' will always take you to the latest entry. To read from the beginning select the number one from the log entry list.

RSS Readers allow you to receive notification whenever a new log entry arrives. If you use a RSS Reader a RSS feed is available for this bicycle touring journal at http://www.bicycletouring101.com/RSS/BT101TourReports.xml. The FireFox web browser actually has the ability to provide live bookmarks from a RSS feed like this one. If you are using Firefox to view this page then single clicking on the small orange icon at the lower right corner of the browser will allow you to subscribe to the feed.