Days #84-#90 - 6/5/2011 - 6/12/2011 - winding down and coming home

Lani and I spent the night at a motel near the airport and were then off to Boston...we'd be back in Gainesville in another week.  In between, we would go to Boston, Manhattan, New Jersey and Philadelphia before returning home.  Here are just a few highlights.

This was my first time to Boston...it was awesome.  American colonial history permeates the city, beginning the the Freedom Trail.

We had a great dinner in Boston's Little Italy.

 Walking around Boston, you see scores of people with carry-out boxes from Mike's Pastry.

Throngs of people gather near the entrance, vying for position.

Mike's is famous for their cannolo.

Worthy of the hype.

 The sense of history in Boston is everywhere palpable.

The Freedom Trail  takes you to the Granary Burying Ground, containing the burial site of the victims of the Boston Massacre.  Ben Franklin and Paul Revere are also buried here.  Wow.

 The USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned war ship afloat, and it's floating in the harbor for you to visit.

The Constitution is most famous for her actions during the War of 1812 against Great Britain, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane and Levant.  It was way cool.

I met a friend from college!

Gale Toale lives in New Hampshire, but drove to Boston to meet me.  Gale meets virtually every would-be presidential candidate as they all spend time in New Hampshire, meeting people in small groups.  Gale is there.  Thanks, Gale, for coming to meet me.

The Bunker Hill Monument is not on Bunker Hill but instead on Breed's Hill, where most of the fighting in the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill actually took place.  Russell and I went there.

American colonial history is everywhere in Boston.   The Bunker Hill Monument was one of the first monuments built in the United States. 

 We spent a lot of time walking around the Boston downtown.  What a great walking city.

Cool skyline.

After Lani found an apartment in Boston biking distance to Boston University, we drove to Manhattan.

If you can plan far enough ahead, Book of Mormon is awesome: hilarious, musical,  irreverent.  We were blown away.

 I'm not much of a spectator (Go Gators!  Tim Tebow!), but I've been a Yankee fan since childhood.  (I was born up that way.)

The Yankees lost, but it was still cool.

 Both my parents passed young.  My only connection to them are surviving uncles.

Henry is my dad's brother and was an important part of my childhood, always coming to the elaborate Thanksgiving dinner my mom would put together.  The residua of a jaw cancer from his youth has not stopped him from still working full-time into his late 70s.  It was great to see him.

 We stayed in a Marriott right on Times Square.

The excitement present 24/7 in Times Square is palpable, just like the history that permeates Boston.

While Venice Beach is a great place for people-watching, Times Square holds its own.

The Naked Cowgirl competes with the Naked Cowboy.  It hurt to photograph this.

It was cool to simply walk around Times Square after dark.

Does it ever sleep?

It's a short boat ride to the Statue of Liberty.

Even though I was born in NY and returned regularly for year to visits relatives, I had never visited Ms. Liberty.

There are only limited openings to take the tour inside the statue.  Plan it in advance...we didn't and were only able to walk around the outside, which was still pretty awesome.

Iconic.  Thank you, France.  (BTW, Alexander Gustave Eiffel, who designed  the eponymously named tower in Paris, helped design Ms. Liberty.)

The same boat that takes you to Ms. Liberty also takes you to nearby Ellis Island, the gateway for millions of immigrants.

The National Park Service, as usual, has their act together and  the displays inside tell the story of this monument of America's attraction to the world.

 We dined out.

Dinner at Daniel's.  Classy.

 From Manhattan, we drove to Egg Harbor, NJ to hang out with my brother and his wife.  The next morning, we drove to Philadelphia.

Sometimes its fun when your grown children still act as children.

The Franklin Institute - a museum - was an integral part of my childhood.  My love of museums comes from the FI.

The Franklin Institute includes a much-larger-than-life heart that you can walk through, following the path of blood as it traverses the valves, going chamber-to-chamber.  As a child, I loved it.  

One of the greatest meals I've ever had was at Le Bec-Fin, one of the country's great restaurants, back in 11/1998.  It no longer has the stature in the restaurant community it once enjoyed, but we returned with excitement.

My brother, Richard, and his wife, Steff, joined us for another unforgettable meal.

The next morning, we all returned to Gainesville, Florida.

90 days and 9000+ miles later (2387 biking, 6948 by car), Lani and I were home. 

I'm obviously writing this long after the bike trip ended, more than 8 months later.  There is a lot I can say about the trip.  I think about it daily...I think about Texas, the small towns, the view of America, the time with my daughter who remains one of my most favorite people.  Hardly a week goes by that I don't read about some place in the news where we visited on the trip.


There is a lot more to say, but I think I'll end the blog here and leave the rest for a book.


For any of you who have followed, my thanks.

Day #83 - 6/4/2011 - a final day in Glencoe

An unusual form of disaster struck last night.  I still can't believe it.


I had been down in the basement, working on a blog post on my netbook.  The netbook  had survived 2+ months of travel, much of it in a pannier, several times falling to the ground within a tumbling bicycle.  I left the netbook open on the sofa where I had been typing.  At this one moment, Bill and I were standing next to the sofa.  Bill reached up to a shelf to retrieve something and a small object fell from the shelf onto the netbook.  The netbook promptly blue-screened.  


And that was it.  3000+ high-resolution digital images - and a handful of high-def video clips - from the Great Bike Trip: gone.  I had been shooting medium resolution JPGs and high-resolution Canon RAW files and moving them all regularly to the netbook.  At the same time, I was backing everything up to Google's Picasaweb.


But, it turns out that Picasa was converting the hi-resolution RAW files (18 megapixel) to medium-resolution JPGs.  The hi-resolution images were gone.


There are specialized companies that deal with data recovery from damaged drives, but their services are expensive.  It would have to wait until I returned to Florida.


Oh well...could be worse.

We went out for dinner - again - meeting Howie Parnes, another  classmate from medical school.  Howie, who I had not seen since medical school was the chief of the Prostate and Urologic Cancer Research Group at the NIH.  He was in Chicago for a meeting.
 

Tomorrow: to Boston to catch up with my wife and son and to find an apartment for Lani.

Day #83 - 6/3/2011 - another day in Glencoe, IL

Bill took some time off from work and we hung out together. We took off to the Illinois Holocaust Museum  in Skokie.

Photography is prohibited at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie.   The displays at the museum are as powerful as they are understated.  Being pretty knowledgeable about the Holocaust, I was quick to realize that I really didn't need to be there.

Bill was an avid would-be golfer and suggested we could play at the local par-3.  I had taken lessons for a bit, but had not swung a club in probably two years...and I wasn't that good when I stopped.  We hit some balls and I practiced the drills that had been at the core of my lessons, a technique known as Gravity Golf.   We had a good time and I managed to hit some decent shots without completely embarrassing myself.

As my wife and kids are the best things about me, so is the same with  Bill.    Alexandra and Bill, two of my favorite people,  took me out for dinner.

One more day in Glencoe before Lani and I fly to Boston.

Day #82 - 6/2/2011 - Glencoe, IL - packing up

If there was any question as to the completion of the trip, it ended when I had to pack the bikes for shipping back to Florida.


In case you ever need to ship a bike, try a local bike shop and see if they have any bike boxes.  Dissassembly will be required.

Bikes in bike boxes, panniers and their contents suitably packed, I headed to the Fedex store.

What next?  Is that all there is?

Day #81 - 6/1/2011 - Racine, Wisconsin to Glencoe, Illinois - 45 miles

We biked 25 traffic-challenged miles to Waukegan, followed by 20 miles on the Metra.  This is how we went, not including all the dead ends trying to find a quiet path.

Our motel room featured a full-sized refrigerator, a cabinet
and a utility sink positioned over  metal shelving.  Why?
Bizarre.

I took a few minutes to survey our last quirky motel, this one being quirkier than most.

We were sorta able to pull our bikes into the closet.  Adjacent was a door to the next motel room, convincingly sealed with duct tape.  The temptation to rip off the tape and violate the next room was overwhelming...you have no idea.  Or, do you?

The furniture ensemble was clearly assembled with care to ensure that no two pieces matched.

Breakfast of Champions: Oatmeal and Diet Coke

We were up at 4am, ready for an early start without traffic. Murphy's Law inserted itself when I saw that my front tire had gone completely flat over night.  One last time, Lani brought to bear her crazy cycle skills and patched the leak.

Lani got to be really, really good at this.

Tire patched, panniers loaded, we were anxious to bike yet wistful about the trip coming to an end.

Florida tourists at Racine's Seeker Motel.

It was now 5:30am and the sun was now above the the horizon and above Lake Michigan meaning even if I found the lake, the sunrise was history. We turned South and biked on a generally level road with a crosswind. It turned out that we were never going to get close enough to Lake Michigan to even see it.

We departed from the highway as often as we could, looking for a quieter route and often being rewarded with some special local sites.

Built by the federal government in 1866, the Kenosha Lighthouse provided the first navigational illumination a mariner would see upon entering Wisconsin from the Chicago area. The lighhouse originally contained a fourth order Fresnel lens, fueled by kerosene with a fixed-white light which varied by flashes. Officially discontinued in 1906 the lighthouse has been restored and holds an automated electric light.

Bike paths appeared, then disappeared, taking us through parks and nice neighborhoods, then returning us to the highway.  It was all good until we reached the Illinois border.

Our final state border crossing.  No, I'm not crying on the inside.  (Note the generous bike lane.)

We reached the border and the “Welcome to Illinois” sign with anticipation.  We took our final border crossing photo and moved on, facing worsening traffic.  I was anticipating the bike trail along Lake Michigan, but it was still miles away.  

We'd find scenic detours like this through area parks, but they would always dead-end, returning us to the highway.

There was no shoulder and the morning rush hour traffic intensified.  Cars would often have to stop behind us until they could pass on the inside lane.  

A nearby McDonald's offered free Wi-Fi.  We pulled in and pulled out the netbook to plan a stategery out of the worsening traffic.

We felt unsafe and considered options...we had passed a U-Haul and Enterprise Car Rental, but there was also a Metra station 3 miles a head that was departing in 25 minutes...we took off for the Waukesha Metra Station.   The ticket line was short and moved quickly until the women before us stepped up and proceeded to order multiple multi-day passes.  By the time we had our tickets, it was a minute to the train departure.  Lani and I hauled our bikes and panniers onto the train as a pair of conductors berated us for being late.

Standing, looking at our bikes and realizing that the trip was ending,  I didn't know what to think.

The train left for the final 15 miles to Glencoe.  Lani and I reflected on the past 2.5 months and the end of the adventure.

We reloaded our bikes in Glencoe to ride to a friend's house.  I'd be staying there and Lani with friends elsewhere.

Waiting in Glencoe were Alexandra and Bill Watkin.  Bill and I shared a house together in medical school for three years and have been friends for over 30 years. They have a guest room in their basement where they had hosted me 12 years earlier. I was looking forward to seeing them and their daughters, now teenagers instead of children.


Within minutes, we were there...and we were done.


Tomorrow: shipping the bikes back to Florida.

Day #80 - 5/31/2011 - Lake Mills, WI to Dousman to Racine - 92 miles

We biked 28 miles to Dousman, then drove 64 miles to the plush Seeker Motel in Racine.

It was sad leaving the Doubletree…definitely the nicest room, most comfortable bed, heftiest shower towels I’ve enjoyed since Pensacola Beach.  And - if you've ever stayed at one - y'know those large, warm cookies they give you when you check in?  They gave me all that I wanted and more than I needed.


Becky using a “Community Car” program truck and accompanied by Lani, picked me up from the Doubletree.

Getting two bicycles into anything short of a panel truck is a challenge.
Nothing like a good bicycle rack.  Or a truck.

The plan was to drop us off about 20 miles out of town, leaving us with a reasonable 70 mile day of biking  We headed towards one of the access points of the Glacial Drumlin State Trail.  Developed in 1986, the Glacial Drumlin State Trail is one of Wisconsin’s best bicycle trails.  Starting in Cottage Grove, the trail goes east for 52 miles where it connects with other trails in the Fox River Sanctuary in Waukesha.

We unloaded our gear and Lani and Becky parted ways until  next time.

Planning this part of the trip, from Madison to Racine and then to Chicago, I finally noticed (duh) that Google Maps could help you identify bike trails.  Bike trails criss-crossed large portions of Wisconsin though connecting between trails was problematic.  Clearly, my interest in bike trails was several orders of magnitude different than it was on day #1 of the trip.  If you run a Google search on "bike trails", you'll get over 4.4 million hits.

Florida natives at the Lake Mills entrance to the Glacial-Drumlin bike trail.

The Glacial-Drumlin bike trail has a $20 annual fee or a $4 daily fee.  There was a drop-box for the fee next to the trail map.

You are admonished that if a ranger finds you on the trail without proof of fee payment, you'll be tased, bro, as well as penalized $5.

So, it turns out that most of the the Glacial-Drumlin trail is just that: a trail, an unpaved trail of fine gravel on sand.  

There were many obstacles on the trail, some more obvious than others.  Can you spot the obstacle here?

The GDBT starts off as a dirt path with small gravel, surrounded by forests, fields, water and/or farms.  There were rabbits, muskrats, hummingbirds, wild flowers with air perfumed with honeysuckle and grass.  It was one of the most relaxing parts of the trip.  The winds were a combination of cross and tail and it was pleasantly warm.  Unfortunately, the dirt/gravel really slowed us down, dropping our speed to less then 9mph. 

Best as I could tell, this was the Crawfish River which ultimately feeds into Lake Koshkonong.  The Lake is a popular year-round destination for boating, ice-fishing and snowmobiling.  

Shortly after we started, Lani began having worsening abdominal pain, sufficiently severe that even with the scenery, warmth, sun and generally favorable winds, she had to stop.  

Resorting to the our most-used iPhone app, Google maps, we looked for somewhere to re-group.   We pulled in to Dousman, stopping at a gas station to pick up some Pepto-Bismol tablets.    

The Glacial-Drumlin bike trail had now turned to a paved surface, making it the best biking conditions we had enjoyed for a long time.  We  continued…for a few miles and then, no mas.   

We called for back-up and within an hour were in an Enterprise Rental Car (“We’ll pick you up!”), heading towards Racine, WI.  It was just as well as after only a few minutes in the car, there was a major rainstorm.

 We pulled into  Racine and Lani identified what had to be the cheapest motel in town, the Seeker Motel.  It looked pretty funky from the outside but the rooms were unusually spacious and clean enough, even if the the bath mat was just a sheet of oval paper; at $45 with free WiFi, it was a noble place for our last night on the road. 

The motel looks at lot better on the website.  

Yelp indicated that Wells Brothers Restaurant had the best pizza around…we dropped in for lunch.  WBR has been family run for 90 years…the neighborhood had certainly changed, but the fact that there were two large parking lots designated WBR-only said something. 

The Wells Brothers Restaurant has received numerous awards.  In the restaurant, they have  a food review book with WBR receiving a #6 national ranking for its pizza.

Inside, the décor was warm, homey with a family and local touch.  Our server, Amy, was a Racine local with that special Wisconsin accent; I kept asking her questions just to keep her talking.

At 2pm on a weekday afternoon, we were promptly seated.  Amy, our server, told us the evening and weekend wait for a table can be more than 2 hours.

The Caesar salad was excellent and the pizza, in a thin crust style, rates as #3 in my memory (Pizza Baffeto in Rome as #1, pizza by Bob as #2 and then WBR.)  

After we had pizza in Rome at Pizza Baffeto, I became obsessed with thin-crust pizza.  For  the six months preceding the bike trip, I was making pizza 5x/week, trying to get it right.  Ultimately, like most things, it's easy once you learn how.  One trick: indestructible Fibrament pizza in the gas grill that I've insulated with fiberglass, producing temperatures of 600-800°F.  The pizza cooks in about 2 minutes giving a nice char to the crust.

Overall, lunch at Wells Brothers Pizza was both excellent and memorable.

In that special local accent, Amy advised us “There isn’t crap to say about Racine, but we’re good at food” and shared with us a book that ranked WBR as the #6 best pizza in the country.   It was great chatting with Amy.

Racine, population 82196, was first visited by the French in 1699, but was ultimately settled by Yankees from upstate New York.  There is a large Danish influence, reflected in the oldest Danish Lutheran Church in North America, founded on August 22, 1851 and the local obsession with Danish pastries, especially the kringle.

Amy, our server from Wells Brothers Pizza, recommended the highly regarded OH Danish Bakery as the place to go for kringles.  They were good...but...Bob is not strong on flaky/fruity, preferring, say, a good brownie or chocolate chip cookie.

Amy recommended the O&H Bakery for dessert,  famous for their kringles: a layer of filling (rhubarb when we arrived) sandwiched between two pancake/waffle layers.  It was okay, but a distant second to a good brownie.  We passed on buying anything and opted for a “Skinny Cow” ice cream sandwich for dessert.  (BTW, on-the-road, the gas station/C-store has a wide array of budget dessert options.  My favorite: coffee and a brownie, or a small pack of Oreo cookies.)

We returned to our plush motel room and relaxed for the remainder of the day.  

This was the final day of the bike portion of our adventure.  I could not believe it was all going to come to an end.  Ambivalent over the past few days, now I was just feeling the impending let down: no more daily adventures, no more hours in the out doors, no more days with my daughter, no more inquiring locals wondering what we were doing.  It was all a metaphor for life.