Hey Fan Club!

I'm back from my big bike trip - from Syracuse, NY to Portland, Maine all by my lonesome, via the Adirondacks, much Vermont, a hot second of Canada, eye-poppingly gorgeous New Hampshire mountain passes, and the awesomest Maine tidal beach ever. It was a great, great trip.

The whole day-by-day story is up here on crazyguyonabike.

The full set of pics are up here on picasa.

I texted friends & fam from the road. That seems like that little bit belongs here, so here it is. The links on the dates go to the full travelog page.

July 4 (Syracuse, NY)
Hey fan club! I'm in blah n rainy Syracuse. Airport hotels are like another world. Start riding tomorrow at the brick of dawn. Love, d

July 5 (White Lake, NY)
Hey there fan club. Safe n warm in White Lake ny just inside the park. 85 miles today n i feel good. Host fam had a cookout and raspberry pie!

July 7 (Keene Valley, NY)
Hi. Made it to keene valley and ate delicious pie! I'm kinda sore but pretty ok. Camped last night @ Forked Lake. Ridiculously beautiful all day, rain and all!

July 8 (Grand Isle, VT)
Hi again. Poured on me all day but I stayed dry. Yay poncho! Then I hit lake champlain n the sky got gentle. Camping on grand isle tonight. I love icy hot!

July 9 (Enosburg Falls, VT)
Hey kids. I'm in Enosburg falls vt almost in canada. Stormed on me all day today. Still hoping to see some stars tonight. ate 1/2 a blueberry pie for lunch!

July 10 (Lyndonville, VT)
Hi fan club. I'm in lyndonville vt almost to nh. No rain today! Fog then 90 deg. 85 miles of hot n stinky. More storms coming tonight. I want stars!

July 11 (Twin Mountain, VT)
Hey Fan club! I'm in twin mtn NH. Set up camp just before the rain hit. busted my chain this moning n got a hitch to littleton. 100 miles to portland..or more!

July 12 (Sweden, ME)
Hi fc. Maine smells great! Finally a clear sunny day. Crawford notch this morning then pretty pack roads n fluffy clouds. Camping between sweden n norway. Stars!



July 13 (Brunswick, ME)
Hey kids I'm in Brunswick ME. Long hot windy day down the mountains into farmland then sprawl. Ocean tomorrow! Ps I ate an apple pie n a tub of berries 4 lunch!

July 14 (Popham Beach, ME)
I made it! I'm at Popham Beach. Beau T Ful here.

July 15 (Portland, ME)
Hi all. Drying out in ptld. 53 miles today with one hell of a T storm. Rolling thunder, lots of fun. Swam in the ocean this morning. Brrr!

Five Things Game

Marjojo over at My Art Grows Around Me invited me to play the say five things people don't know about you game.

so here's a few before I go on walkabout -

(1) When I met my friend Shana in my first year at college, we were both eating acorns off the ground within five minutes.

(2) The majority of my driving has been in U-Haul trucks. I've moved, or moved friends, cross country 6 times. When I drive a regular car, I find the center mirror totally disorienting.

(3) The best present I ever got was a hazelnut chocolate cake a long-distance gf made and fedexed to me. There was a freakish blizzard that year and I didn't get it until a week late, and I don't really like hazelnuts, but it was delicious all the same.

(4) I have a homemade cookbook mostly comprised of recipes for carrots - carrot soup, carrot cake, carrot souffle...

(5) My desire to feel independent and self-sufficient often goes to rather extreme ends. For example, I'm about to ride 700 miles under my own power on a bike I overhauled myself that's never seen the inside of a bike shop. For another example, I own a headset press.

Want to play, too?

Mercy!

I leave Wednesday for the big trip. Here we go! I've spent countless hours tracing out my hoped-for route (the end of the Northern Tier with a detour around the Green Mountain Loop) across the contour lines of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. I made myself a faboo saddlebag. I've found some friends and friends-of-friends to stay with en route. I've trained and tuned up my bike. I've been 90% packed for more than a week. I'm just about as ready for this as I'm gonna get.

Today I loaded everything up and took Mercy for a test spin down to the beach and the only dirt road I know in NYC outside of Staten Island. The good news: Nothing fell off or even jiggled very much! The other good news: It still felt really good with most of the weight up front now that it's fully loaded (~25 pounds of gear in the front, maybe 10 in the back with 4 full water bottles). The bad news: I think the raincoat material I used for the saddlebag is a bit flimsy and prone to tearing. Not that there's a real danger of it falling apart on the road, but it might wind up a rack-top trunk instead of a saddlebag a few days in.

A few more snaps all loaded up:
The bike is a 70's (I'm guessing) Mercier mixte, with all the parts switched out from when I got it except the headset, brakes, bars, and fenders.
Gear-heads, here's the fine print:

Stronglight 99 triple cranks
Eggbeater pedals
Original mafac racer brakes & levers
Original stronglight headset
SRAM long-cage plastic rear derailleur
Shimano ??? front derailleur
Shimano bar-end friction shifters
XT 9-speed cassette, of which 8 are usable due to wacky mixte geometry (the middle stays get in the way, so I set the r/d limit screws as if the smallest cog wasn't there)
Vittoria Rando 700 x 32 tires
Brooks Pro saddle (borrowed from my commuter)
The front rack is an Old Man Mountain that mounts using a special skewer. The up-side for me: it's super easy to install ( the front rack won't fit in my bike box so I'll need to re-assemble it in my hotel room) The down-side: you have to pull the skewer the whole way out to change a front flat.

Finally, here it is all boxed up! I got a fancy aircaddy box that lets me put the bike on the plane without disassembling it -- the back wheel is still on -- I just had to pull the seat and front wheel and turn the bars backwards.

Thanks, everyone for your well-wishes! My next bike-y post will have the mountains in the background instead of my porch! There will be stars, it'll be cold at night, and I'll eat lots of pie. Hooray!

A Saddlebag Like no other

Here's some snaps of the gigantical saddlebag I made for the big trip. I already have a handlebar bag and a pair of Ortlieb panniers for the front where I'll carry my heavy stuff - I'll carry my clothes on the back under my bum in the bag.

It's held in place under the seat with a wooden dowel I sharpened with a pencil sharpener - it fits exactly into a groove I made in the top of the bag. Then it's bungeed to my back rack so it won't bounce around too much. I have a re-purposed leather belt that I'm planning to shorten and poke extra holes in to put where the bandana is now.

Materials: an old yellow raincoat, an old curtain, a zipper, 2 bungee cords, 1 bandana, a strip of reflective tape off my fireman coat, and of course, 6 feet of pink bias tape and some white squiggly stuff.

The bag is pretty huge - it's got all my clothes for the trip in it - two pairs of spandex, 2 jerseys, socks, undies, a wool hat, a jacket, a towel, the works! And spots for 4 water bottles on the sides.

I took my loaded-up rig for a test spin around the park this evening, and it felt really great - all the heavy stuff is up front, which works well with my old french bike's geometry. Also, the big, tall Mercier bike feels totally plush even loaded up. It's like butter, if butter would take you down the backroads at 11 miles an hour... The real test comes in 10 days - cross your fingers for me!

Hey Blogosphere, can I sleep on your couch?

Hey, Blogosphere!

I'm getting ready for my big bike trip - from the 4th to the 16th of July, I'll be riding my bike from Syracuse, NY through the Adirondacks, Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine!

Any chance you or anyone you know lives along the way and would like to put up (floor/couch/back yard) an exhausted, happy, and personable cyclist, who might have some adventures or misadventures to share, namely me? I can repay your kindness with postcards, beer, or fabulous knitwear... Get in touch if you do!

Specifically, I'm headed through the southern Adirondacks (Raquette & Blue Mountain Lakes) to Ticonderoga, then (depending on how things are going) either heading north up the west side of Lake Champlain, across by boat and through the Green Mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire, or more directly through VT/NH via Bread Loaf & Conway, then heading east thru Maine, coming to the coast around Damariscotta, then down the coast to Portland.

Any recommendations on must-sees along the way, or awesome ocean-y beaches on the Maine coast? Let me know! daniel dot yuhas at g mail dot com

Whew! I'm getting butterflies just thinking about it!

My Birthday (observed)

Hey look! It's happy Daniel! THANK YOU, Caro, for throwing me such an awesome party! I'll spare y'all the goofy everybody- at-the-table snaps, but thanks to everybody who made it so special!

Third Century - accidental Metric

It's my 33rd birthday, and I did the Ride for Autism in Jersey today. It got off to a rocky start. I was up at 5 after 4 hours of sleep, with no voice left after screaming my head off for the Bronx Gridlock at rollerderby last night. By 5:30 I was in the car and on my way to New Jersey. I somehow got myself ridiculously lost, taking the wrong bridge from Staten Island.

I have this thing about getting lost in New Jersey. Like one time, E and I tried to pick up our cats from Newark airport using the U-Haul truck we'd just moved to New York in. She got out of the truck to pick them up and I had to circle around the airport grounds and check back every now and then. I nearly slammed the truck into a bridge with low clearance, then somehow got kicked out of the airport altogether and had to turn around and make it back again. Bad news in so many ways.

Or this other time, on my 29th birthday, I blew off work and did a long ride bushwhacking my way south through the 'burbs from the George Washington bridge without a map, figuring I'd wind up in Staten Island eventually, or take the boat from Monmouth if I was making good enough time. I wound up by the Meadowlands stadium and couldn't figure a way homeward that didn't involve walking my bike along the shoulder of the freeway. Eventually I wound up hopping a tipped-over fence, bike in tow, and whacking through some marshy underbrush to get back onto the surface roads. I seem to be doomed to repeat the time in high school when my family got lost on our european vacation, trying to walk into downtown Paris from our hotel - all five of us wound up walking on the shoulder of Autoroute A4. But I digress - back to this morning:

After much fretting and 2 gas stations' worth of directions, I made it down to the community college in Monmouth where the ride started. I pulled my bike out of the car and pumped up my front tire, which promptly exploded with a valve tear. Somebody passed by and said "hey, your day's gotta go uphill from here!" Thanks!

I didn't get going 'til almost 8:00. I'd been planning to be on the course by 7. Oh well. I figured I could cut it short and do the Metric instead if I wasn't feeling it. Which is what happened, but not on purpose - I missed some turns and spent some time following someone who wasn't on the route. About 35 miles in I realized I couldn't figure out where I was on the cue sheet any more, though there were other riders ahead and street was still marked for the route. Finally there was a rest stop and somebody pointed out for me where I was - "I'm not sure what you did, but you're 20 miles from the end now." So I took the last 20 miles of the ride easy, heading into the wind at a leisurely pace, glad that my getting lost worked out all right for me this time.

Highlights of the day: a family of geese crossing the road - mama goose, papa goose, baby goose. Hooray for geese! After the ride: a nap in the back yard. Even when the riding isn't so great, I love the post-ride high, and the few hours of feeling content with not doing anything at all. Also on the drive home: lunch and cheap sunglasses at the Cheesequake Travel Plaza. I don't know why exactly, but I love travel plazas. Bonus: the travel plaza had a penny smasher! Unfortunately, since parkway travel plazas aren't so much destinations in themselves, they were all pretty generic, so my new smashed penny doesn't say Cheesequake on it, but what can you do?