Our 2017 Amended Plans

Our planned tagteam travels for this year were put on hold 15 miles south of Lake of the Woods, Oregon (on the east slope of the Cascade Mountains, due west of Klamath Falls) this past Monday, May 22nd.  

A lot of factors led us to toward this decision.  While Alea's knee is recovering, it is probably best not to continue pushing things, and instead let things heal at their own pace.  And weatherwise, thus far this year we have too often to found ourselves in the wrong place and time.  We've made it past the cold and wet, but we would be faced with a combination of potential flooding on the east slope of the Sierra Nevadas, coupled with the crush of fellow campers over the Memorial Day weekend, all while dreading the upcoming circumnavigation of Reno, NV.  This prompted a need to reflect and to adjust our travel plans.

At the end of last year, our plans were to spend more time in the west and to linger longer at the campsites we visit.  That sort of pace isn't necessarily compatible with tagteam cycling, as it potentially makes it harder to maintain a level of cycling fitness that helps to keep those cycling miles enjoyable.  So we had never quite figured out how to integrate those goals.

Another thing that we have wanted to accomplish in our travels is to attempt to determine where we might ultimately want to live once we reach true retirement age.  Taking time to investigate specific areas of interest to us while tagteaming hasn't been all that easy to do thus far, so we'll plan breaks to give us the time for that purpose.
  
So we have made the decision to no longer tagteam cycle continuously.  Instead, we will plan some enjoyable tagteam routes, interspersed with breaks for other purposes.  As such, we have the following tagteaming plans for this year:

• In August, we are likely to cycle from Glacier National Park, Montana west through Lolo Pass, following the most arduous part of Lewis and Clark's overland journey of 1806.  But whether we opt to ride all the way out to the Pacific Ocean or instead choose a different destination is up in the air right now.
• In September, we hope to rendezvous in the Pacific Northwest for a week or two of cycling with Travis Hodgdon, whom I had met while touring across the country 32 years ago.
• In October, we hope to ride Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway on our migration south for the purpose of spending the winter in Florida.

In between, we have various rendezvous planned, we will visit some places of interest where we may consider relocating in the future, I'll stop to do some genealogical research here and there, and we will look for campgrounds near some long climbs to help keep us in shape while we are "idling" between our tagteam travels.  One benefit of this approach is that it also means we won't continue to force ourselves to ride through congested urban areas, a major source of stress for us.

Our plan is to be in mostly very rural areas as much as possible.  The main impact of this decision is that we are likely to be out of cell coverage more often than not.  So blogging, social media and other internet activities are likely to fall by the wayside.  But we will attempt to post occasional updates on this blog, and repost the blog to Facebook, as we have done in the past.