(Another blog sent after I got home)

I’m writing from the plane since I have a great deal of time on my hands (with two 12+ hour flights). I’ve watched a few movies, worked on setting up my new Garmin, cleaned up my phone so hey, why not write a post?

In part, I am writing this post to thank everyone who has supported my decision to do this ride and helped me prepare. It’s crazy how much preparation it takes (at least for me) especially at this age.

Training. Jim and the puppies put up with me disappearing for hours at a time to try to prepare my legs. I never feel like I have done enough and I sort of fell of the training wagon the last few weeks. But Jim graciously went camping several weekends in northern Washington State so I could ride up and down Flowery Trails Pass, the closest pass climb to our home in Spokane. I rode the pass in all kinds of weather: cold, hot, windy and rainy. Jim made runs to the local bakery, walked with the puppies, and generally made the excursions fun.

Training rides nearer to home in the Palouse were often challenging due to our unusually hot, dry, and windy weather. One day I had to turn around and alter my route due to a wildfire that was heading towards the road on which I was riding.

Packing. Since my memory is not as good as it once was, I rely on lists to keep track of my packing. One bag, nearly three months. Bike clothes for whatever weather we run into, street clothes for rest days and hiking, favorite toiletries to avoid needing to shop, electronics to keep track of the miles etc, etc all need to fit into one duffle bag.

Navigation. We also need to prepare the routes so we have them to follow each day. The riders don’t ride together in a peloton. Everyone rides at his or her own pace and I fully expect to be the slowest rider in the group. We are expected to have the routes loaded onto an electronic device on our bicycle that we can follow. I hope to use my Garmin but loading the routes has been problematic 🙄. In fact I need to stop writing soon and try again to upload the routes. Frustrating! But I have the route cue sheets all printed out as well in case of a technology failure.

Guess I better get busy loading those routes!! Hopefully soon I will have more interesting things to talk about.

See you down the road…B