Trip Overview / Shipping Day

In a couple of weeks, we'll be heading out on a perhaps-foolhardy bike trip. This post serves as an overview of what we're planning, and as a test of the blogging setup we plan to use to share our progress as we go. We'll hopefully be posting lots of pictures along the way (and some words, too).

If you'd like to follow along, you can check back at this webpage periodically. If you've got an RSS reader, you can subscribe to the RSS feed at the link above. I'll also be posting links/pics regularly on Bluesky. I still haven't left Instagram or Facebook, and I'll be posting there as well.

This will be a two-month trip from Wisconsin to Massachusetts. We've planned out the rides so that we start very very easily, and then work up to longer mileages and more challenging terrain as we go. Hopefully, we'll have pedaled ourselves into shape by the time we get to the mountains!

We're not taking a direct route. We're sorta meandering a bit around Michigan and Ontario to let us visit some interesting places, rather than trying to minimize time/mileage. We'll be taking plenty of days off to explore and do chores, and to let our legs rest.

We won't be leaving for another 2 weeks, but our bikes are leaving today. We're shipping them to Marna's brother in Madison. Our first to-do when we get there will be to reassemble the bikes.

"Why this route?" you might be asking...

Most summers, we go on a much-less-ambitious bike trip together, usually one week or so. And, we'd been talking for a while about doing a long-distance trek like this.

The two most common long-distance routes that Americans seem to do is to go all the way across the country, or to do one entire coast.

All the way across has two big problems. First, it just seems too far for us. But, more importantly, there is a vast area between the Sierra Mountains and the Mississippi River where there are only a handful of interesting places spread very far apart. Would I like to visit Denver or the Grand Canyon or Carhenge? Yes. Would I like to pedal through cornfields for 15 consecutive days? Absolutely not.

The West Coast would probably be nice, but there are a couple of issues. The first is that the entire west coast is extremely hilly. The second is there's a long mostly-empty area in northern California and southern Oregon. This area is beautiful, and so this is way better than Nebraska cornfields... but still: I need ice cream stands and art movie theaters, you know?

The East Coast has a different set of problems. The main one is that the road infrastructure south of Richmond is largely terrible except for in and around big cities. Pedaling on high-speed roads with no shoulders for 4 weeks doesn't really sound like a good vacation. So, why not just do the Richmond-to-Maine part? Because we've actually already done 80% of this on previous trips.

Wisconsin-to-Boston is kinda the sweet spot for us. We stay in the north, where there's decent bike infrastructure, and we stay east of the Mississippi, where the interesting places are packed much closer together.

The trip is broken up into 7 legs, each roughly a week (give or take):

Madison-Milwaukee-Chicago

This leg is going to be mostly off-road on dedicated cycle paths. Very low mileages on most days, as this will actually be our first time riding our road bikes since last fall. We'll get to visit with family and friends on both ends of this leg. Stops along the way include Waukesha, Racine, and Kenosha.

Chicago-Muskegon

After Chicago, we loop around Lake Michigan through Indiana, then head up the west coast of Michigan. Unlike the first leg, this will involve will be lots of on-road riding. Stops include Indiana Dunes National Park, South Haven, and Holland. Almost all of this ride will be in places I've never been.

Muskegon-Grand Rapids-Detroit

We cut diagonally across Michigan, through Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Ann Arbor on the way to Detroit. This will be our most varied leg, including city commuter bikeways, unpaved rural roads in the middle of nowhere, and everything in between. We've been to Detroit, and we've spend a few hours in Ann Arbor, but other than that, this will be all new for us.

Detroit-Toronto

This leg is a question mark right now, as the new bridge between Detroit and Windsor has not yet opened (perhaps due to the whims of a malevolent child-rapist with dementia the president). We'll for sure head through London, Kitchener and Guelph. If the bridge is not open when we get there, we'll have to cross into Canada via ferry north of Lake St. Clair. Otherwise, we'll go via Windsor and Chatham. Either way, this stretch will have the longest rides of the trip, and will go through the most remote areas.

Toronto-Buffalo

This is a short leg, almost exclusively on lakeside bike paths through Hamilton, St. Catherine's and Niagara Falls. We'll likely be making a lot of beach stops.

Buffalo-Rochester-Troy

We'll be cutting all the way across upstate New York using the Empire State Trail. This will be 95% on off-road trails, much of it alongside the old Erie Canal. We've actually done most of this section already, in the other direction. So, if we get behind schedule along the way, we might recover time by skipping a day or two here by hopping on a train. Lots of great stuff to see on this leg!

Troy-Boston

The trip will have been pancake-flat up to this point, but now we have 2 days of mountain riding through the Taconics and Berkshires. Even the last day into Boston will be hillier than anything west of Troy. This leg will be all on-road except for the very last stretch between Concord and Boston. We'll get to visit some friends in North Adams.