Woke up at around 5:15, I finished making breakfast and my morning coffee by 6am, and I managed to get myself rolling by 7. Unfortunately, I had used up most of my remaining water for cooking, so my priority was to find more sooner than later. It was a cool and overcast morning, which helped me make my water last. Not even an hour into my ride, though, I was approaching the end of my final bottle, my sips were getting smaller just to save that little bit for the next time.

After about 2-3 hours in, I began questioning where the next town was, my route was planned to make sure I didn’t venture too far from civilization in those mountains. After finally getting a proper gps lock, I realized that I was something like 20 miles past and south from my planned town. My phone was able to tell me of this town named Gunter from it’s cached map tiles, it certainly looked like nothing was there, but without any phone signal, I knew nothing beyond that it exists and was the only thing within 15 miles in any direction that had the possibility of a general store or something, and it was only moderately out of the way.

When I eventually arrived at Gunter, there was just nothing except for this small cemetery, the size of a studio apartment, with 10-20 old worn graves in it. I tried taking a photo, but I couldn’t get my camera to turn on, so I kept going. Not long after, I was beginning to feel dehydration setting in, so I had to start committing to stopping at every water source I had access to and take a water break with my purifier. Using the purifier is typically not fun, it takes 15-20 minutes of effort to get about 8 ounces of water to drink. That’s sorta the downside of having such a portable unit. Around 1pm, and 4 or 5 rivers later, I decided I needed to eat something, so the next river I saw, I boiled down some river water, and used it to cook myself some lunch.

There was a downside with risking a ride to Gunter, because not only did I gain nothing from it, the new path put me on about 40 miles of logger’s roads through the mountains. I spent most of the remaining day just climbing mountain after mountain, slowly cross the ridge lines towards the coast. I eventually made it to the Umpqua river, I was pretty fried at this point, I had barely any energy left, and I was experiencing dizziness from lack of water. Some local fire patrol saw me resting on the side of the road while I cooled down, they pulled over and gave me a gallon of water from their truck and a packet of gummies to munch on, which was great! At this point, I was only 5 or 6 miles away from a town where I could restock and eat a proper meal, but without that gallon, it would’ve been hell just to get there. After slowly drinking through half of it while I continued to cool down, I continued along the river towards Scottsburg where I stocked up and ate some breakfast for dinner from this local place. Once I was all done eating, I got ready to follow the river the rest of the way to Reedsport at the coast, which was still another 17 miles away.

The ride along the river was nice, relatively flat and had a good shoulder on the road most of the time. I passed this elk viewing area right around dusk alongside the road, there were tons of elk hanging around and my bike totally spooked them, so they decided to run away from me ...alongside the road. So I had a quarter mile stretch where these elk were just running next to and in front of me trying, and failing, to get out of my way. Finally made it in Reedsport about a half hour after dark, after this long day, I got a room at a motel and intend to sleep well tonight.

Unfortunately, the picnic area had multiple family groups occupying it. After working on my bike, I slung up my hammock off to the side and took a nap for an hour or so. The parties left at around 6:30, so I started preparing dinner before setting up camp, however, as I was finishing up cooking, a few new groups arrived with canoes for the river. I didn’t want people knowing that I intended to sleep there, so I ended up leaving to scope the road ahead for more remote suitable alternatives, I had a couple choices scoped out by the time I got back to see if the picnic area was empty, luckily, it was. So I set up my hammock again and napped until sundown. Once the sun started to set, I setup my tent and went to bed for real.

Additionally, I couldn't get my camera running all day, so no pictures.

I got a bit lost in Woonsocket because the route to 126 wasn't very well marked heading north into Mass. Once I found it though, it was smooth riding all the way to route 16 near Holliston; almost, I had one flat tire. Once I was in Natick, I ditched my map and took a bit of a roundabout way home so I could ride through some familiar neighborhoods! I ended up hopping on 27 through into wayland, and after eating at Five Guys, I followed route 30 home to Waltham!

I got home at around 6:30 or so. My dog was out back, so I walked around into the backyard. She completely didn't recognize me with all my gear on and was completely freaking out! Once I spoke and took off my helmet though, it was a 180 reaction and she freaked out again, this time recognizing me.

It's been a fantastic trip though! I have some pics that I'll post when I get a chance off my disposable camera. But, that's it!

In reality, this is a bit late, I've been home for days now. But I've been pretty busy and had a lot on my mind, oh well, it's done now. It's definitely been a bit hard to adjust, I've got a feeling of boredom staying in one place, and now that I feel grounded again I don't really have the same sense of freedom in my ability to up and go ride somewhere far. It's not the same knowing I have to come right back at the end of the day. That's not to say I'm not gonna be doing any riding though. I guess it's just a bit hard to accept that the adventure is simply over for now.

Whelp, time to go be part of the real world again.

Anyways though! I got out of the hotel at around noon (would've been sooner but my god that restaurant). The ride overall wasn't as bad as I anticipated. I stopped for lunch and relaxed for an hour, and at another point there was a big field off the state highway so I took a nap. Half way there, there was one pretty big hill that just seemed to go up for miles. But once I finally reached the top it was mostly cruising downhill for some 8-10 miles! I met up with my relative at her house in the evening after I finally arrived. I hung out with her and her son, and I eventually went to bed.

I arrived in New London, CT. And I puttered about for almost an hour looking for somewhere I could sit down and use the internet. Finally a gas station was nice enough to let me use their private wifi to google maps my area. I remembered that I have a family member near Providence, and I decided I should make that my next stop. It's about 50 miles away, and the elevation chart wasn't making me too happy. The land doesn't climb very high, but it's up and down the whole way. Considering how I had done 75 miles yesterday, I wasn't too keen on clocking another 75-80 miles today. So instead of heading over there, I decided to grab a hotel here in New London, take today as an easy day to let my legs recover for the final stretch, and head over to the Providence area tomorrow.

After hanging out and me mapping my route for the day, Kristine and I went our seperate ways! Leaving Pennsylvania, I was naively convinced that it'd be flat. Not quite the case, early in the day I hit one little mountain called Point Mountain. It wasn't that big, but it was a very steep climb straight up to the top, I underestimated it a lot, and it took a toll on my legs for not pacing myself properly which made the rest of the day reasonably painful with the rolling hills.

I contacted a couple on Warmshowers in Morristown to spend the night. Despite short notice they were very nice and invited me over. I finally made it to Morristown, a cool guy named Paul saw me fumbling with my maps to try to find the street I was looking for. He was very interested in my trip and, being a bicyclist himself, offered me a bicycling map and guide to Manhattan!

After chatting with Paul for a while, I was put on the right track to Steven's (from warmshowers). Turns out, they were preparing for another cycling guest that night who cancelled on them. Funny enough, I found out later that night that it happened to be Kristine before she decided to not go to Morristown tonight. We went out for burritos, and they let me sleep on their futon for the night. A fun side note, they showed me their storage shed full of bikes, they have not one, but two Windsor Tourists like mine!

I called a local fire station, and spoke with the fire chief. He gave us permission to camp on the fire station's back lawn. We eventually got there and the volunteer fire fighters hung out with us for an hour before they eventually left for the night. They gave us T-shirts before they left with their fire station printed on it. Some kind of volunteer shirt. I ended up going to a local pub for a beer and some dinner, while Kristine just went to bed.

We parted ways eventually, but by then there wasn't really much time left to spare, so we left without riding the highway and headed to Locust Lake State Park. We arrived shortly before dark, and we hung out and dunked our feet in the pond while we waited for nightfall. We had originally planned to camp in the camping area, but there were a lot of kids so at the last minute we decided to duck out into the woods in a secluded spot where we could camp for free, and away from noisy kids.

Kristine was awesome to wait for me while I sorted this out. We finally hit the road at around 2:30-3:00pm. We had a good ride to Lewisburg. Just under 10 miles out on a rails to trals bike path. We rode up along Mary and Scott who struck up conversation as we rode. Finding out we were planning on camping somewhere, Mary offered her place just off the bike path! We rode over with them, and Mary served us dinner which was fantastic! And we chatted and hung out for a while, until Kristine and I crashed in their back porch.

Later we got through Amish country and was back in the forests. At one point we saw a black bear cub hanging out on the side of the road. We immediately stopped and started scanning for the mother in case we were about to ride inbetween them (that would've been pretty bad). The cub saw us after a minute and ran off to it's mom, and we ended up scaring the both of them off by riding by screaming stuff like "MASSACHUSETTS, YEAAAAHHHH".

We were about to hop on to a rails to trails path, which began in this small town, when I got another flat tire! While changing it, some guy on a motorcycle stopped and kinda kept me company and chatted while I worked (I'll call him motorcycle dude). I finally changed it, but in the process, I realized what was giving me all those flats. The bead of the tire (The lip that kinda hooks against the inside of the rim) was tearing, stripping and the wire center was exposed in some places. I changed it, knowing it wasn't gonna last much longer. I loaded up my bike, and the moment I sat on it, the bead broke and my tire exploded out the side of the wheel. Unfortunately, it's done. Like, done done. This happend around 5pm and we were about 3 hours from our destination in Philipsburg. Kristine and I thought for a minute, because hitchhiking is statistically more successful with a girl in the party, but having two bikes would severly limit who has the capacity to pick us up. So we decided that I should hitchhike alone and take my chances, and she needs to get to Philipsburg by herself while she has the day to do it.

There were some local kids, two brothers, who lived nearby, and they stuck around with me which was nice. They even brought me some water bottles! I appreciated their company while I made a big sign out of cardboard. After about an hour and a half, and a few guys who kinda lingered as the peanut gallery (not really helping to be honest), motorcycle dude rode by and saw me still hanging about, and he stood with me for a few minutes, before he saw a young couple he knew and flagged them down. We explained what happened, and they agreed to give me a ride to Philipsburg! We took a picture of us holding my sign with my bike on their phone, they texted it to me, but until I get my phone working I won't have it. We cruised into Philipsburg before Kristine arrived, and as we were pulling into a stripmall to drop me of, I spotted Billy's bike parked outside a KFC. So we unloaded, I thanked them, and I went and hung out with Billy while we waited for Kristine.

Kristine arrived about a half hour later, and we just rolled behind some store in the strip mall and set up our tents next to some railroad tracks. I couldn't go far with my bike as it was, so it was the best we could do. Tomorrow, I need to hitchhike once more to get to State College, where Tuesday my new tires will be waiting for me at the post office.