Saturday, June 20, 2009
Days 4 and 5: Resting in Frederick
Our plan was to take Friday the 19th off and then meet my parents the next morning for the ride to Bedford, PA. We had always planned to have a day off in order to change our gear and spend a little more time route planning. However, we hadn't realized just how badly we needed it.
One of our major problems was space. We had been packing our yellow BOB bag as full as we possibly could. Then we were strapping a backpack to the top of it to store food. Unfortunately, this meant that every time we stopped for Jillian to take a picture with her nice camera we had to take all our gear apart and dig her camera out. Similarly, our tools and rain gear were totally inaccessible. And there wasn't even really enough space for our food.
One of our first stops was Wheelbase, a local cycling shop within walking distance in Frederick (remember - we had no car). We bought a trunk rack as well as a Trek Interchange. Though it was the most expensive trunk we could buy, it was by far the largest and attached perfectly to both the rack and the bike. We wouldn't even need to mess with velcro straps. Our new plan is to put the camera, GPS, food and tools in the trunk where we can easily get to them. We also picked up a set of really dorky looking velcro straps that I can put on my calves to keep my rainpants from getting caught in the gears and chain.
While we were at Wheelbase we investigated the pain in Jillian's feet. The Achilles pain seems like it's caused by the sandal, so we're going to bring her regular mountain shoes with us. The knee pain is probably just overuse, and the hotspots don't seem to have much of a solution.
We also gave Emily a call and got her to drive us to Sports Authority for Jillian to pick up some clothes. We also thought about water. I was getting a little bit of back pain from the Camelbak. I was thinking about using a Camelbak Unbottle and simply strapping it to Jillian's seat. Unfortunately all the Unbottles they had were either damaged or discolored.
While we were out we also stopped at Target to get a bright orange duffel bag with a ton of exterior pockets. We're hoping this gives us a lot more packing options for our stuff.
I also stopped by the Trail House, the local outfitter downtown. We bought a cube, which is perfect for packing our maps, electronic gear, and travel towel. I also added a few mesh bags for the rain gear.
Unfortunately, it was looking like rain for Saturday. My parents had no intention of driving all the way to Frederick just to ride in the rain all day. We also didn't want to start the rest of our trip on a rain day. So we pushed everything back. This also meant we'd be able to hang out with a bunch of our friends that night, instead of going to bed early to prepare for a long ride.
We started with an awesome cookout with David's burgers, then rapidly moved on to scooter racing.
Then it was indoors, to lots of rock band.
Most of Saturday was spent doing some more last minute packing/shopping. To be honest, it's been a few weeks, so Jillian says we went to Target and Sports Authority this day instead of on Friday. It all kind of runs together. We also uploaded some photos on worked on the website some. It felt really good to rest. We also had a brief conversation about if we really were going to do the rest of this trip.
Then we were off to bed, since Sunday's ride would start very early. My parents would not be joining us, since they both had to be back at work on Monday. We were a little worried too, since tomorrow's ride features the first big hills we've seen.
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| posted at: 22:00 |
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