As soon as I figured that I had it about right, I needed to test it. I told myself that I would try out an overnight trip: something manageable, not to far, but enough to make me sweat. I went about 1.5 hours ride north from lowly Belmar along the coast, through cute little beach towns like Long Branch and Asbury Park. I ended up in Atlantic Highlands and took a detour along Gateway National Recreation Area and Sandy Hook Point, home to Fort Hamilton and New Jersey's last nude beach (thankfully; goodness knows Snooky and friends shouldn't be allowed out of Jersey City with clothes on). I camped in Hartshorne Woods where (apparently) camping isn't allowed. Nobody told me.
I loaded my bike with waaaaaay too much stuff for a sub-24-hour camping trip. I packed it front to back with books and clothes and food. I brought enough water to get me through Death Valley alongside a vegan minimalist and his overloaded trailer to boot (though I heard he had his share of water soaked well into every single one of his belongings in his recent escapades).
I was over-prepared to say the least, which is kind of a good metaphor for this whole experience of getting ready for a long bike trip 3 months away. I was also severely under-prepared, which fits quite well with the same bike touring metaphor, I think. With all the stuff I was toting, I was going super slow and could barely fit around the cars on the overly trafficked roads I took.
On the other hand, with all my over-packing, I realize that I wasn't paying attention to the more important things that I should have been paying attention to. I spent a good half hour before I left thinking about whether my laptop was sufficiently charged to let me play quaint, pseudo-antique, acoustic folk music in the middle of the woods, but I didn't give half a thought to the kind of natural majesty I might encounter:
Talk about natural majesty, the Sandy Hook nude beach is just to the left of this picture.
Yes, thats the New York City skyline and a treasured state park in one shot.
Twin Lights is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard, and a bitchin' climb from sea level.
The fact that I am calling the Twin Lights climb of 246 vertical feet "bitchin'" lets you know how unprepared I am for a cross country bike trip through the the Rockies. Some potential climbs that Ross and I face are more than 50 times as high.
Anyway, I had a good time.
Another cool thing happened recently. I went to a good old fashioned Phish concert for some hippy dancing and "really special moments" with some bro's I've never met before (thats not the cool part, bear with me here). I insisted on biking to my ride's house, against all logistical logic, considering I'd be biking back in the wee hours of the morning with nothing to fuel my body but cheap beer and bad covers of already bad songs. But on my way back, I found, in the trash, a lightly used, hitchless, In-Step Trailer:
Some impatient soul had discarded it on the mere premise that that they couldn't tow it behind their bike "right now." I, being the resourceful fellow that I am, undid my trusty rope-belt/emergency-tow-line and dragged the thing back to my house.
Now, there is a reason why these things have hitches, and a reason why an emergency-tow-line/rope-belt is to be used only in emergencies: stopping is difficult, if not impossible, to do when the bike can't push back on the trailer. Needless to say, I was lucky it was 2am, or else my new bike/trailer combo might have been in need of more than just a new hitch. I took it slow and had to bail into the curb a few times to avoid the local DUI crowd, but I got it back, gosh darn it.
It took me but a few days to turn that silly "child portager" into an all-purpose, cargo hauling beast.
Behold "Pull McCartney," the baby-faced, bass-playing, back beat to "John Leggin';" together, the songwriting dynamic duo of the Belmar bike scene:
I have yet to haul much cargo on it yet, but, as the saying goes, "if I get the parts out of the trash and spend too much time on a project that I don't really need to be working on in the first place, it will come."
For now, it'll have to be the trash generated from stripping down the previous trailer incarnation and some unwieldy cardboard.
Thats all for now. Remember to keep up with Ross, the Bingle-meister himself, lost and moist somewhere in the mountain time zone. If you have any spare gold bars, he is a licensed Spare Gold Bar Acceptor and will take them free of guilt. He might even dedicate a sarcastic comment to you.
Until September, happy preparations.
