DADVENTURE

Batavia, NY to Johnson, VT - 410 miles Walmart parking lot camping worked out just fine. It poured all night long which may have helped me sleep. The rain let up around 5am so I made breakfast and was on the road by 6. Having been to NYC a few times before I did not have high expectations for the rest of the state, so the drive today was eye opening - definitely a book by the covers misjudgment. The fall colors through upstate NY and into VT are exactly like the screen savers, but better in person. With rivers and waterfalls everywhere, its hard to keep both eyes on the road. Mileage was actually 409 on the road and 1 by ferry which was an unexpected bonus crossing Lake Champlain.  Settled into my site now, tucked away at the bottom of the campground where I can hear a river running by, too cold to sleep with the door open but nice with an evening beer. Got to see Nat for a couple minutes when I dropped some stuff off with her, but due to covid rules I'm not...

Davenport, IA to Batavia, NY - 750 miles Today turned into an unplanned marathon, woke up super early and couldn't fall back asleep so I just got on the road. Made it through Chicago before the morning commute and cruised into Indiana. Found a really cool little bike park in Amish country for a break from the road. Balanced work calls all day between stops and pulled into Erie, PA for an early dinner from a BBQ joint that was on a TV show last year. Took the food down to the shores of Lake Erie and enjoyed the scenery with some great food. With a couple hours of daylight and a few calls left I pushed on and made a detour to Niagara Falls just after sunset. Got back in the truck just before the rain started pouring down so I pushed on a little farther and found a Walmart parking lot to bunk down for the night.

Sidney, NE to Davenport, IA - 670 miles The Cabela's campground last night worked out great, the main sites were full but I was able to squeeze into a tent site. Clean bathroom and a hot shower, awesome. Cooking breakfast outside in 37 degrees though, should have thought that one through a little better! Nebraska and Iowa were surprisingly interesting, even though mostly flat there were a lot of trees and random towns to see. Just after passing through Omaha and crossing the Missouri River i stopped in Council Bluffs for a quick bike ride. Nice little town that is very new. Had some heavy rain through Des Moines which I wasn't expecting, but after strong winds all day it felt like just part of the passage. Made it to the Iowa 80, the largest truck stop in the world. Cool to see but very loud and hardly anyone wearing a mask so it didn't feel right to stay given how far I've gone to avoid exposure to people who aren't taking covid ...

 Day 2 - Bonneville Salt Flats to Sidney, Nebraska - 658 miles The second day of the trip was a day of highs and lows.  I had a hard time sleeping last night, only got 5 hours of sleep if that.  The bonus was being up to watch the sunrise over the salt flats, so awesome.  Took a bunch of aerial shots with the drone, but for some reason they didn't save to the memory card.  Thankfully one video clip ended up on my phone, phew. A couple hours on the road and I had to stop for gas just outside of Salt Lake City.  I looked up nearby trails and picked one right off the freeway no knowing it was the park that hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, win!  Fantastic trails there, had a blast exploring and seeing all the summertime activities they had setup including an alpine slide, extreme zipline and summer bobsled.  Definitely want to come back to this place. The rest of Utah was very scenic, but as many already know, Wyoming is pretty boring from I-80. The w...

 San Jose to Wendover, Utah - 670 miles I'd call this day a success, it was a long one after starting late, didn't get on the road until almost 10am and had several pockets of traffic making my way across California.  Once I hit the mountains it was smooth sailing though.  Managed to stop just outside Reno to hop on the bike, kind of a boring loop being straight up and back down but the terrain was a challenge, lots of loose rocks and sand and not an ounce of shade anywhere. Made a couple of stops along the way but was successful in being socially distant from anyone.  I was hoping to hit a rest stop for dinner at sunset but found it was closed, I'm guessing because of covid but who know.  I pushed on and ended up making dinner outside a truckstop in Battle Mountain, NV.  Saw lots of mining operations along the way, billboards targeted at people who are depressed, and prisons.  Biggest surprise for me was how hilly Nevada is, I always thoug...

 " East bound and down, loaded up and truckin',  Oh, we gonna do what they say can't be done.  We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there,  I'm east bound, just watch ol' Bandit run" -Jerry Reed Dinner out with the fam last night (side note, Betto's in Morgan Hill setup a pretty cool outdoor seating area), took the kids for donuts on the way to pick up the trailer, packed up my computers and all the chargers, clothes, etc. Here we go!

 I lead into this a little in the last post, but I tend to be an over-packer, like 20% more underwear than days in a trip - something I learned from my dad.  I started a Google sheet early in the process to plan out my stops & daily mileage, keep track of important links and the bike trails to look for along the way.  The trailer I'm taking is quite small, so most of my gear will have to go in the truck, but I want to save enough space to squeeze my bike under the tonneau cover if I end up staying anywhere that might feel questionable. Anyway, so I made a list of what to bring from home, did I mention the trailer has nothing? - so I have to bring everything.  I remember renting a motorhome some years ago and it took several hours to move in and back out, never again!  Also made a grocery list so I can avoid stops (remember that covid thing that made me decide to drive in the first place) and also eat somewhat healthy.  The last thing I want to do is suc...

With a week to go before I hit the road there are a number of things to prepare.  Got the truck serviced this week, going to pick up a selection of travel-size essentials, double checking that the places I plan to stop for the night are actually open and looking at the weather across the country now that the trip is within the 10-day forecast.  I even picked up an EZ-Pass for the toll roads when I get to the eastern states.  Since the current pandemic was one of the main reasons to make this a road trip, I also need to look at the travel guidelines for each of the states I'll be passing through, 13 in total. One interesting nugget - I could purchase insurance through Outdoorsy.com that would cover the trailer for the trip for an additional $69.  Not bad, but adding an endorsement on my car insurance to cover the trailer - $0.60 per day for better coverage.  I checked with the owner and he was totally cool with that. Now for the early packing - digging out campin...

 Ok, enough about feelings.  For a couple weeks now I've been detecting something not quite right with my truck, narrowing it down to what felt like a miss or a slip.  I have an appointment at the dealer to get it serviced next week so I'm ready for the trip, but the other night driving home as I went to pass someone on a country road the check engine light came on and the truck started vibrating.  Crap, well better to have something happen now than when I hit the road. I happened to be on the phone with my best friend at the time who said he'd bring over his scanner so I could pull the code from the computer and at least know ahead of time what to tell the mechanic to look at.  P-0304 - a misfire in the number 4 cylinder, likely due to a bad spark plug.  I'm from a generation that still took auto shop in high school, so I felt like this was something to investigate further myself rather than just be at the mercy of a dealer.  Getting under...

 If you've persisted to read this far then I should probably introduce myself a little better, and for anyone reading this that hasn't known me for a long time, I've never been a very public person.  In my 8th grade yearbook I was voted "Most Shy".  At the start of high school I had shaggy hair parted down the middle, glasses and wore sweats everyday - a look I've tried to forget but somehow my high school buddies find a way to resurface photos or video every couple years, thanks guys.  Social media has changed me a little, but going through a fitness journey the last couple years has really given me a lot more confidence in myself than I've ever had. Doing the research for this trip has caused some inflection as well, seeing as many people already out there doing it (whatever IT might be) as there are people sitting at home wondering if they can also do it.  The last decade I've certainly learned a lot about myself, some of which came through the scho...

As the trip draws closer I am starting to realize just how much I don’t know about the weather outside of California. The woman I spoke with at the campground in Vermont had commented that the weekend I booked would be their last weekend of the year, perhaps an indication that things start to get cold. I'm so used to CA and our awesome fall weather in the 70s, but as I've grown older I have friends that have moved other places and thanks to social media I see everything record heat, torrential rains, snow and hurricanes. So just what am I going to face in a few weeks? What's it going to be like to camp and will I get to ride my bike as planned?