Biking Dude Blog

But I'm leaving on a bike, not a jet plane. Today, I begin the great American bicycle adventure. My first stop is in Princeton, MA with the parents of an old friend. The distance will be about 40-50 miles. I did a test pack yesterday and rode my bike around for some final trouble shooting. After raising the seat post and making some minor adjustments to the brake pads and derailleur cables, I am all ready to go. I will undoubtedly continue to make adjustments as my trip progresses, but I am now as ready as I can possibly be to start.

At 8:05 pm on May 12, 2016, I officially began my bicycle trip across the country when I wetted my wheels (and my feet) in the Atlantic ocean. I don't start in earnest until Monday and have a few things to take care of before then, but the timing worked out for me to go to the ocean tonight. It will make things easier on Monday when I don't have to bike into and out of Boston at the beginning of the day. This picture was taken by Skip, a really nice guy that I met when I was walking down the rocky beach to the water. We talked a bit about my trip, and he told me about taking a motorcycle in a loop around the country for his honeymoon. I've started contacting people on warmshowers.org to stay with for my first week of biking, and I have things pretty well planned out all the way to Ithaca. Olin college graduation is on Sunday, and I'm going tree climbing with some friends on Saturday to retrieve a weather balloon, so it should be a fun weekend.

I wanted to write a little bit about where I bought my bike. It's a rebuilt Fuji touring bike that I found at Cambridge Used Bicycles. Spiros, the gentleman on the right side of this picture, recently bought the business from the previous owner, Vinny. Spiros was a huge help in the past week and a half, from putting a priority on getting new parts on my bike to waging all out war on a stuck seat post and tinkering with the derailleurs to getting the shifting just right.
Spiros, thank you for everything, I'll send you a post card from California. I wish you the best of luck until we meet again.
For anyone in the Boston area that is looking for a bike, I would highly recommend stopping by Cambridge Used Bicycles, which is located at 201 Monsignor O'Brien Highway, in the basement of the antiques market.

It's not a bicycle built for two, but it is going to get me to California. After much waiting and some adventures with a stuck seatpost, I now have a bike equal to the challenge of crossing the country. In other news, the ORO live album sound great, many thanks to those guys for putting on a great show and giving me such a fun project to work on while my bike was being built. I've been stay with friends in Boston since my last post, but I was back at Olin yesterday and today for expo and SCOPE expo. I saw some very cool projects that the Olin students have done this past year. Tomorrow I will get bike shoes and start collecting the last few items that I need for my trip. Five days now until I leave, I'm very excited.

The Olin Powerchords (my old a cappella group) and ORO (the Olin Rock Orchestra) both had great concerts on Saturday night. Sunday, I went to a May day party with some friends in Somerville, where I played an excellent spy themed game, which I think was called 'code words'. Yesterday and today, I am hanging out in the Olin recording studio, helping ORO mix the audio from their concert into a live album. It's fun to be back in the studio, I haven't done this since my AHS capstone three years ago. I found a good bike for my trip. The shop is waiting for a few parts to come in tomorrow, but it should be ready to go on Thursday.

My flight yesterday was made more enjoyable by my chatty (in a good way) neighbor Liz (I think, it was hard to hear because I couldn't pop my ears). She gave me this Bernie Sanders birdie sticker, it's definitely going on my bike, the first of many. I went into Somerville with some friends for breakfast, then walked to a few bike shops to find a trusty stead for my great adventure. Several good candidates, though it will probably be a few days before I pick a winner. Power Chords concert tonight, I am very excited about that. Oh, I also found a safety triangle to put on the rear of my pack.