State Lines a plenty

By the time you read this I’ll have crossed into the 3rd different state since I last wrote, New York. I’m not quite there yet, but I would imagine I’m not far away from the state line, perhaps 2-3 hours riding hiding out in Silver Sands State Park, a quiet retreat from the massive amounts of people, busy streets, and broken glass everywhere. It’s amazing how 1 kilometre out of the concrete jungle can bring you into a peaceful wildlife habitat, where in fact I just spent the last 20 minutes staring down a deer maybe 50 feet away from me who was obviously curious to see what I was up to. The birds have started in their nightly songs, and I continuously hear heavy swooping sounds of wings, and what later sounds like a gobble from a turkey – I probably should get a few bird sounds downloaded so I can actually tell what I’m listening to. Regardless, it’s soothing and hypnotic, and I’m forcing myself to not let it take me into a deep sleep until I get this writing done.

Great news, my computer actually shuts down now and battery life is back to normal. I had to recover back from an old backup of January 2011, before I sent my laptop away for service. I guess when it came back I should have restored then, but figured why not spend the time while I had it to rebuild it nicely. To get it back to the way it was took a good chunk of my day in Boston, which was OK as I was a bit drained, and the weather was pissy out. I’ve seen the benefits already as I’ve managed to get alot of writing done in my off time, meeting my 1hr a day quota. Yup – I’m writing, but not on this website. There are  few projects that I’m working on, and rather than let all the details out I’ll just say it’s not what you think it is. In fact nothing may ever come out of it, but it is good practice and I am learning on how to put ideas to paper in an effective manner should I decide to proceed with things.  I’ve also nailed the problem with my GPS where it was thinking it was plugged into a wall – The original Garmin cable doesn’t exhibit this problem, however it is being used to charge the device while riding – so I’ll just have to go to the dollar store to buy a replacement and swap things around. I might want to get some glue as well as I managed to rub off the protective waterproof rubber casing from the buttons today leaning my bike against a telephone pole. I can’t see myself buying a big bottle of glue just for that though – hey there’s always another application of Shoe Goo that could be applied to my boots. 16 months in and they are starting to disintegrate in ways I never imagined, in fact they now have ventilation as the pieces of leather in between the seams are starting to erode, and the back support is now completely floppy. I wonder if I should take the time to stop into Timberland when in New York and show them the shoes and convince them to give me replacements. Might make for good PR – Crazy Guy on a Bike wears shoes that are not meant for cycling, but wears them across the country and then some! It could work, no?

I was staying in the Boston area with another cyclist, Colin, who happened to work at Harris Cyclery, yup, the one where Bike Legend Sheldon Brown used to work at (If you haven’t checked out Sheldon’s Site, I recommend you do so, it’s a goldmine for info!). There was also a girl named Ingrid from Montpellier France staying with us as well for the 2 days on a mission to see North America, but by bus. Colin was great, had some awesome stories about cycle touring on his own from Eugene, Oregon down to the south of the USA and finally stopping in Boston because it felt right. it gave me some ideas on further plans. I left Boston in the morning on a cloudy but supposed to be clear and sunny day, wanting to steer clear of the downtown core as it’s always a clusterfuck trying to weave in and out of traffic, arrogant taxis drivers, car doors opening at the last second, people jaywalking, and not to mention the exhaust fumes. I followed my intuition on how to get out of the city passing by respected post secondary school such as MIT, Cambridge, and Harvard University. I didn’t bother stopping inside as I didn’t want to leave my bike outside and wander for hours, besides, I’ve been in 2 of the 3, virtually on their networks in the ‘90s. Close enough. It seems my intuition isn’t so intuitive and I landed myself smack dab in the city doing a circle and quite enjoyed checking out the architecture, plaques, and windy roads. Finally I gave in and plugged in another city into the GPS, but it took nearly 10 minutes to calculate the route so I continued going the wrong direction. Since I couldn’t see the sun navigation was difficult and I eventually pulled out my phone and loaded up the online Google Maps application from someone’s open wireless network to at least point me in the direction. I’ve since fixed this issue from ever happening in the future by means of dragging out my compass and leaving it an accessible spot – it doesn’t do me good when its well packed away.

I ended up in a rough urban area of town and stopped for a bit and was swarmed by a bunch of vibrant souls, putting me on guard for a bit – it turned out they were quite friendly and while it certainly put me out of my comfort zone it showed that I should get over my fears of being in ultra low income urban centers. People are good. I’d also say the Downtown East Side of Vancouver is way rougher than anything I’ve seen of the USA so far. They sent me on my way out of the city and I was headed down to Newport Rhode Island, before it started to sprinkle a bit, turning into an all out downpour. I had little to no food as I missed a grocery store along the way and stopped into a small convenience store to grab a sandwich and coffee and waited patiently for the rain to persist. 1 hour later it was all good and done for and I was making my way south again, but this time due to timing and realizing that it didn’t look like there would be a way out of where I wanted to go I opted for Providence. It’s only 60 some odd kilometres away from Boston, and it turned out to be a great ride through Massachusetts, nice houses, trees lining the streets and little shops along the way. Shoulders came and went, but I’m adept at dealing with these situations, and the bike is more than capable of dealing with some off roading. In fact, its really started to shine when having to go off pavement and stick to the ground. I continue to bond with the 53 lb hunk of steel and wheels.

I wasn’t too far away from the state line, but couldn’t tell on my maps as the content was far too dense, so stopped into a gas station to ask the attendant where it was. Unfortunately he couldn’t tell me, in miles, by car, or even the direction – so I asked 2 more people, and even they couldn’t answer me, proclaiming they were bad with miles, or didn’t pay attention to these things. C’mon now – are we really getting to the point where we just care about point A and point B where nothing matters in between? Obviously. I rode further down the road (it was 3 miles) into Rhode Island, which is actually not an island whatsoever, but is known for being the smallest state in the United States. It went quick to be honest, and if I didn’t break it up by stopping for a nights sleep I would have been through it in less than 2.5 hours. It was nice to see the state buildings before heading out onto less travelled paths, full from a dinner that I purchased from a restaurant, as I wanted to skip the 30 minutes of prep/eat/clean time that generally occurs when I am cooking my own food and instead use that time to get out of the populated busy city centre so I could find a safe place to sleep for the night. Wal-Mart came through, where a staff member showed me a place across the road with a wooded area where “No ones gunna botha ya theya”. I laughed over and sure enough it was wooded, secluded and looked like noone had ever been there – except for the fact there was a big screen TV there that someone had dumped at some point in time. I could pickup the McDonalds Wifi from my tent so finished up the last article on cloud computing and fired it off.

I was out riding by 8am after dealing with breakfast and major coffee infusion riding through some very scenic areas of the state, across a huge length of bridge where a power generation dam exists with easy climbs and lots of shade, as the temperature was starting to rise. I gave in and put some suntan lotion on as while I’m getting tanned I still have a sheen of red to me and I want to make sure I’m not going to burn again. It helped that I knew I had a place to stay as well at night which also meant I could get a shower to wash the icky slime off at the end of the day rather than hopping in a sleeping bag and creating a little greased Dave in  Blanket Croissant. Once I crossed into Connecticut (and this time I knew, as it has been the only state to actually show a welcome sign to me so far in the east) the entire landscape changed. Lush greenery, organic farms, and wonderful windy roads where I could get 70km/h descending, with little effort to climb the next hill that was coming. I passed through many old towns which had been formed in the last 1600’s, each with plaques detailing their history, and also some graveyards that could be explored. Countryside and woods changed in a matter of seconds as I entered into the Norwich, CT city limits, where old buildings took the place of the large trees and many people littered the streets. It’s a small downtown area with a harbour and a Supreme Court which seemed to be where all the people were hiding out at. It was 1pm and I wasn’t to meet my host until 6:15pm so I tried to find a coffee shop with no success on my own and opted to search for one using the GPS. I’ve been carrying a Starbucks card with me since Christmas (Thanks NC!) and figured it would be a perfect time to use it so headed in the direction where my GPS system told me. It wasn’t long until I saw an absolutely HUGE glass skyscraper poking out the trees – and I thought I had found the real city center. It wasn’t that at all, I had crossed into Native American reservation territory and this was a casino – putting any of the buildings I’ve ever seen in Las Vegas to shame. They certainly weren’t bike friendly and I had to weave my way in and out of busy highways to get to the building, and became frustrated when the valet parking, and security couldn’t answer my question of where I could put my bike. I took off and just found a spot to place it and went into the Casino. Thousands of people were glued to the slot machines, and you could just smell the death of peoples souls in this environment. It took nearly 20 minutes to get to the area where the coffee shop was and I sat and people watched, while becoming impressed at the entertainment they were bringing in on a nightly basis. It was starting to get to me being in a dark environment after spending the day in the hot sun so I left and headed back to where I was supposed to be – dealing with some hairy moments on express ways going the wrong way just to get back to a safe area to ride.

I arrived at my hosts house as planned for 6:15, and it turned out to be a great experience. Chris has been living in the area for 10 years and works at a Non Profit organization while doing her masters degree in sociology. She’s also a huge horror nut and part of her studies revolve around how we have been trained in North America to only focus on the spooky and the weird in one part of the year, and that we continuously watch scary movies to introduce fear in a safe manner to us, as opposed to going through situations where there is no end. She was a super interesting talkative girl and we shared many of our stories as we ate dinner in a graveyard. Her house is all decorated all spooky too, which made for a nice treat and finally, had a great cat who took a liking to me, I woke up spooning the thing in the morning which put a great smile on my face. Riding was more of the same, hills with beautiful trees and wooded areas, although it was a bit hot for my liking. 20 degrees is getting up there for me after freezing my ass off all winter and I need to work my way up to hotter temperatures. Best now before the summer hits and it going up to 100degrees depending on where I decide to go. I’ve been tossing around ideas and timelines and will continue to put effort into it. As I made my way towards my destination – Bridgeport I found a shortcut which actually worked for me! It was a ferry that has been running for 250 years over to the little town of Chester, taking about 4 minutes to cross the Connecticut River and cost a big fat dollar. I like boats so this was a welcome surprise for me. I took many breaks however and didn’t reach Bridgeport, as I was also stuck in one of the dirtiest cities I’ve ever visited, New Haven.  It was rush hour when I passed through which made for frustrating riding conditions, and I whizzed past the Ivy League school of Yale.  Bridgeport is only 6km down the road from here, but come 7pm I was done with riding and searching frantically for a spot. I rode around for a while off the busy roads trying to find nooks by the High School I passed with no such success before finally turning around and ending up where I am. I’m a bit concerned about ticks and their ability to give ones Lyme Disease, so I’ll have to watch out and do my best to prevent from getting bit by the buggers. For now I’m good.