Riding Bikes

We participated in an organized bike ride called the FCTE (Flattest Century in the East) which left from the University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth and made a loop through Rhode Island before returning to the start. We rode the 52 mile course (there were options for 25, 52, 67, and 100 miles) and it was extremely scenic.

 Word to the wise however - if you haven't ridden a bike in over three months consider doing some shorter rides before tackling 50+ at one time! Even though there wasn't much elevation change our legs were starting to cramp with about 10 miles left and I'm not sure when we'll be able to walk, climb stairs, or sit down correctly again.

This picture is only included because we are riding bikes, to ride 50 miles we required road bikes, helmets, and bike shorts but of course we didn't get any pictures of that!

New England

 We are all packed up and ready for a year +/- on the road.  I can't believe we are actually doing this.  We managed to squeeze everything into our backpacks, and I'm sure we have brought way more than we will need, but we will figure that out as we go.  Luckily my bag will get a little bit smaller once we leave the East coast and all of our bike stuff behind.

 We have settled in nicely to life on the east coast the last couple of days.  We've spent the days helping to clean up the farm and get the yard work done and then been rewarded in the evenings with lobster dinner and the beach with boogie boarding.  The waves were great today thanks to hurricane Michael.

Adan's first time in the Atlantic

An of course our trip wouldn't be complete without some crazy medical issue....luckily this time it wasn't Adam or me.  My brother took one for the team and face planted into a rock full of barnacles.  Barnacles 1 - Tyler 0.  Of course he did it when we had been at the beach for a whopping 30 minutes and the waves were amazing for riding....beach time cut short!  His eye should be awesome in the morning!

Packing...

Packing for a year is so much harder than I thought (not that I've given a whole lot of time to how much it would suck).  We've spent the better part of 3 days sorting through our stuff from the Colorado Trail, picking what we might want to take with us and leaving the rest behind.  Then we had to search through all of our boxes from our house (which now overflow my parents basement) to find the one and two items that seemed to have magically jumped boxes.  The saddest part is when we packed up the house I thought I had everything sorted out.  Oh well, we have managed to find everything we can think of for now.

This weekend we made our final REI run (thank god for that store) to tie up all the loose ends and get Adam a new backpack since the chipmunks on the CT seemed to find his last one particularly tasty.  Then we got to spend time with a bunch of college friends we don't see nearly enough.

As we shoved all of our clothes into our new pack cubes it seemed like we had way too much (which I'm sure we do) but then again I would like to change my clothes most days.  Our final pack list looks something like this:

6 shirts
2 pants
2 shorts
2 skirts (for me)
4 pairs of underwear
4 pairs of socks
Patagonia R1
Puffy jacket
Puffy vest
Workout gear (in an effort not to gain back all our weight)
Rain gear, sure to be our favorite items
Gloves
Hat
Boots
Flip-flops
Crocks (don't judge they are awesome camp and shower shoes)
Toiletries

Electronics: macbook air, ipad, video camera, cameras, GPS, nooks

Then we had to throw in all of our biking gear so we can attempt to ride 50 miles this weekend, I don't think there is any way we could make the whole century.

I'm sure tomorrow morning will fly by and before we know it we will be boarding our plane to Providence, the first leg of this epic adventure.

I've updated our travel itinerary to match what we have so far....just incase anyone wants to join in :)