Every tour is a little different. Of course, most of the key elements of touring don't change except for where you are touring. However, it was the small things and misjudgments on my part that I really noticed after not touring for 9 years.
Going into this tour, I knew that I was 9 years older and that I had more physical changes from injuries and surgeries during that time. I would be lying if I told you I didn't have any concerns about my abilities to do this tour. While 9 years isn't a long time in the grand scheme of things, it is much longer when you are over the age of 50! I worked and trained hard to get ready for the tour, but the key thing I neglected was the importance of good hill training.
I have no valid excuse other than there are no decent hills to train on closer than an hour (or more) away, and I just didn't want to make the additional time commitment with so many other things needing attention and time. Hills are something that additional riding on the flats cannot overcome. Only riding more hills will help you in the hills! This lack of training came back to bite me in the ass when we hit the hills of the Adirondacks the most, although I suffered in the hills along Lake Michigan during the first week as well.
Fortunately, I am stubborn and suffering on the bike is something I can do. I won't tell you it was fun (it definitely wasn't!) but I did enjoy the downhills after the hard climbs! I also wasn't under the illusion that every part of the tour would be great. That's something that doesn't always get written about when I'm trying to share snippets of the day here. There are some days that everything goes right and it is a great day. There are other days that have some dark moments but the overall day is a good day and that is mostly what comes through. Then there are days that are just hard where everything feels off. Fortunately, these are very few or else I wouldn't enjoy touring so much. I tried to be honest here when I had a bad day (I only remember one day that was just not a good day), but the majority of the days had something not great (hills!) that was offset by meeting good people, beautiful scenery and the free feeling of riding my bike.
I was a bit ambitious with the estimates of the mileage I would be comfortable with during the first week. I obviously channeled my younger self when I was planning as I tend to forget that time keeps marching on. I knew that days 3 and 4 are usually the hardest and compensated a bit for those, but I should have planned for lower mileage days (a max of 50 miles or even a little less) for that first week to allow my body to adjust to the rigors of riding every day. I wasn't smart enough to do that so I had some longer days that first week. The upside is that I probably "rode myself into shape" a little quicker than I otherwise would have. Again, being stubborn is an asset in these situations. 😁
I feel like I savored the time on my bike and out of the rat race of normal life more this time than in the past. That may just be wishful thinking, since we are more connected to everything in the world now through technology than the last time I did a tour. I do know that I didn't spend much time on my phone other than for finding and booking places to stay, or seeing what food and convenience stores were available in the next little town. From that aspect, the technology was a welcome and necessary part of logistics during the trip.
The one thing that was the same is the struggle to re-enter my life after the tour is over. It seems like it should be easy to just pick up where I left off when the tour began. But it is hard to get back into the routine of waking to an alarm, and it took a few days until I was able to focus for periods of time as I resumed my regular work schedule. Even harder is the lack of activity that naturally occurred as I transitioned back to my "regular" routine. My knees became creaky after a couple of days without riding and it took my back about a week to adjust to my sedentary job. It is amazing how much better my body feels when the majority of my day is spent physically moving instead of only my brain working.
Overall, it was an amazing trip and I'm happy to know I can still handle the rigors of touring. My love of touring is alive and well - and I'm now thinking of my next trip. I have some ideas rattling around in my brain and now I need to see which ones I can convince Dave to do with me...
Here are the best quotes from the trip:
"Anyone can do this when the sun is shining." - Jon
"I don't have to ever ride that hill again!" - Rhonda
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