June 2022Delmarva Tour

This morning I woke up at 4 for my 5am alarm, so as to be out the door by 5:30 to bike down to the Amtrak station in downtown DC in time to catch the 732 Northeast Region Amtrak to Philly at 7:06. Crazy, yes, but it was necessary in order to meet the guys at a reasonable time outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art at 9:30.

I met John and Bill on my first big organized tour going down the pacific coast from Canada to Mexico back in 2008. I've done more than ten rides with them since. We met Charlie and Henry on a ride in eastern Canada about five years ago. Henry and I did a beautiful ride in Alaska last year.

So this year, w/ a couple of the guys aging out, we decided we need to get in at least one more ride, and coincidentally Rosana had just pointed out that the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA), had just put new maps describing a ride from Philadelphia past Virginia Beach. Absolutely flat once we get on the peninsula, in reach of Rosana in a couple hours if someone gets into trouble, and accessible by Amtrak.

This explains why I was up so early (after watching my Warriors collapse against the Celtics last night). They were all already in Philly, I just had to join and we were off.

This kind of tour is fun, because we basically follow the ACA's maps, but make all decisions about lodging, and how far to go by ourselves.

Today's ride started w/ a sprint out of the train to meet the guys at the Art Museum, and then we headed south. South meant south Philly, which can be a bit, uh, rough. In the midst of this rough patch on a gray day in a city we know pretty much just through reputation, some guys driving past honked and gave us the thumbs up. A bit later another old guy stopped near us at a convenience store and we talked w/ him for ten minutes about what it is like to bike tour.

The packed bikes, carrying everything up to and including camping gear are a real curiosity to a lot of people, serving as easy conversation starters even in areas where you might roll your window up if driving through. Later another guy stopped and averred that he'd give anything to be able to just get on his bike and go, but "I can't because I need to take care of them", motioning towards his kids in the back seat. "Leave ‘em behind," suggests Henry.

After South Philly, the riding became more rural, and more hilly. This is supposed to be a flat ride, but that's only once we get onto the peninsula, some time tomorrow.

Towards the end we rode a series of beautiful bike paths and long boardwalks through marshes, arriving in New Castle DE somewhere around 4. Rather than go directly to the hotel, about which we had read horrible reviews, we went into New Castle proper, which has a cobblestoned historic town center, complete with a tall ship moored to the wharf.

We then stumbled upon the only brew pub in the town and had a fitting dinner, complete w/ a couple good beers (except for Henry, who had Bud Light).

And about that hotel, it's fine. The rooms are spacious and clean, and no more worries about bedbugs.

All in all, a very good first day.

Very cool bike paths that Delaware has put together. We started w/ a jaunt down the coast (another view of Three Mile Island, after we saw this on another tour years ago), followed by a detour (and retreat from) a construction zone. We didn't believe when RideWithGPS was routing us to a highway, should have listened before we laboriously lifted our bikes over the barricade. Luckily, we were able to get back to the route w/o doing the barricade again. The path ended w/ traversing one of the highest bridges I've biked over. Luckily there was a nice wide bike lane.

The next 35 miles was marshland seguing into farmland. The temps were in the low 70s, but the sun is hot. We were very happy to get to the hotel at a few minutes before three. A nap might be in order..

In no particular order, today's pictures are of the crew leaving the quality inn (again, not bad, though they were expensive), a sign apparently unfriendly hostile to cyclists, Henry explaining how to make breakfast sandwiches to the proprietor of a cute little cafe (cappuccino and blueberry muffin, wonderful) a "DELMARVA" train (first time we saw the name) and some beautiful backroads, followed by three iterations of trying to put up pete's tent without any pole, which I left at home.

The last iteration is using paired marshmallow sticks, duck-taped together w/ pointy ends covered, suspended over a rope between two trees. The rods are zip-tied to the line, so hopefully they won't shift. Worst problem is the rain fly, which has to go OVER the line, but then can't be fastened to the proper slots. Real hack solution, but hopefully it won't blow away in the night. It's all part of the adventure.

And I just watched the second half of game 2 of the nba finals... On my phone in my tent. We live in a wonderful age.

Today was in some respects a travel day: the day we would finally get to the beach, but before that we had some good lonely country roads, a good burger in Dewes, during which most of the guys were on their phones, heads down, just like a bunch of teenagers.

Getting to5he beach was great, Rehobeth is as I remembered: crowded, sun-drenched and beautiful, and I was not at all sad to leave after 15 minutes. Perhaps the most fun was being on these beautiful bike paths, culminating in a path that seemed like remote single-track that nonetheless popped us up in the middle of rehobeth beach, traffic jams and all (despite this being Monday early in June).

After setting up camp we walked to the beach for dinner, very good Mahi tacos in the aptly named "Big Chill" restaurant. We were outside on the roof, and though DarkSkies claimed it was 70, the wind was cold to the extent that we were all shivering (though Bill begged a sweatshirt from the waitress).

Sleep might be interesting tonight because of that cold breeze. I don't have any real cold-weather clothing, but I'm going to bed in wool socks, shorts, tshirt, long-sleeved biking shirt, a pseudo-wool long-sleeved shirt, and my windproof raincoat. In my sleeping bag. To be fair, I can't really put up my rain fly w/ my current tent configuration, though I do have at least one wall covered. See iteration 4 of the poleless tent, with a windbreak!

Today we biked through Bethany Beach and Ocean City and then headed inland. We didn't get to the boardwalk in Bethany Beach, but we did go to the boardwalk in Ocean City. OC was every bit as tacky and dreary as we expected, but the boardwalk and the beach was beautiful. The day was a bit overcast, which probably contributed a bit to the slight letdown I felt, despite knowing full well what the place was probably like.

Nonetheless we had fun. I found a Big Chair, and Bill posed carefully watching Henry's bike. The backstory here was that earlier, on the boardwalk, Henry had asked Bill to watch his bike while he used the restroom. Bill said "Sure," and promptly forgot about it.

So we decide to head out, going through a complicated interchange to get from the barrier island section back to the main peninsula, and eventually realized that Henry wasn't with us. He had come out, noticed his bike, prominently displaying both phone no and wallet, were still there, but Bill was not. He rode up and down the boardwalk looking for us, and finally looked at his phone to see all our messages. The picture was Bill's (after-the-fact, staged) attempt to show Henry that he had taken his task seriously.

About 30 miles in, facing strong headwinds with ebikes not fully charged, we took a shortcut 14 miles down a divided highway with a broad shoulder in order to shave 12 miles off our day. We finished the day at a tavern w/ very good crab-stuffed flounder, but very little selection in beer. Hm.

Our AirBnB is a cute little 180yo house that was clearly built by non-experts, and for short people, but has loads of charm and good air-conditioning.

50 miles / day, carrying our own gear, not bad for a guy who had not ridden more than 22 miles in a single day all year. It's been a really fun tour. The most obvious win is getting Bill and John out one last time (or is it?), seeing Henry and Charlie again, and spending more time w/ Scott, who is an interesting guy and a lot of fun.

Delmarva wasn't beautiful, other than the boardwalks, but we enjoy each other's company and we're pretty well-matched physically (w/ Bill and Charlie on ebikes). Kiptopeke State Park is beautiful. Henry and I went for a swim in the bay. The only down side was that when we arrived there was no water. The main had ruptured and was being repaired. Supposed to be done by 3. 4pm went by, 5pm went by....and we had water again. Also, a ranger had taken pity on us and given us some cold bottles of water, and there we that extremely good lobster roll from the food cart out on the freeway...

After a great sleep w/ no rain fly at Kiptopeke State Park, we took one last look at the beach and headed over to the toll booth for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge / Tunnel, a 17.6 mile bridge that includes two tunnels to let the big ships through.

Bikes aren't allowed on the bridge, so the transit authorities shuttled us across the bridge w/ a van for our bikes and the rest of us in a car. We couldn't convince the driver to take us past the end of the tunnel all the way to the hotel, so we biked 10 quite nasty city/highway miles through Norfolk until we arrived at our posh digs in the Norfolk Courtyard Marriott. It was only noon, so we saw Top Gun while we waited (totally corny, melodramatic, but nailed it so well we all loved it).

After an extremely good "Dr. Gonzo" burger (or two) at Jack Brown's, we spent some time bopping around the Harborfest, before retiring to watch the excellent game 4 in the NBA finals. My warriors won :-).

After a late night watching the finals, I woke up at 4:30 am to make our train back to DC (the others were taking the train all the way back to Philly to get their cars). The train to DC was 4.5 hours, w/ me trapped in a car w/ a baptist choir going to DC for the day. This was alternatingly cool, hilarious, and annoying, but at least not boring. (Edit: I wore a mask the whole time, but nonetheless caught the first cold I'd had in more than two years. Could have been worse.)

From Union Station I needed to bike 9 miles home on the metropolitan branch trail (MBT). A few miles up I found that a new section had been added to connect with Fort Totten metro. I had to hop on the trail as it was beautiful, and vaguely in the right direction. All was good until arriving at the metro, where you are dumped out on sketchy city streets. Google bike routes got me home, but routed me on a "path" that started as nice single-track and ended as a barely visible indentation in the grass. Adventure!