The Beginning

We made it through our first 3 days with very sore thighs and help from our wonderful couchsurfing hosts.

Our first day was rough.  We left on Monday morning in the pouring rain, walking our unstable bikes up Amsterdam avenue.  We had not done any practice rides with our bags loaded on our bikes, and we had a long day ahead of us.  A 55 mile day turned into a 60 mile day as the campsite ended up being farther away than google maps indicated.  The last 10 or so miles were hills, and we got to camp just as it became night.  I set up our tent in the dark, and finding no low hanging branches on the trees, put our "bear bag" in the women's room behind a trash can.

Us getting ready to head out!

I had forgotten all of the gritty things about touring- the exhausting hills, the sweat, the bad smelling clothes, the discomfort of not being home, the dreaded feeling of being lost and in unfamiliar territory, the threat of cars, the exhaustion, the soreness.  All these things came back to me very quickly as we were biking up a mountain road in a state park looking for our campsite at 8pm.  Looking back, it was brutal, but we got through it!  And we are that much stronger because we persevered.

Biking over the George Washington Bridge from NYC to New Jersey

A sweet bike path in New Jersey

Our second day was better.  We covered about 55 miles, and spent most of the day in beautiful rural New Jersey.  One particular route, 121, was memorable.  It was rolling hills through farmland, meadows and small towns.  The last part of our day was a stunning ride through the Delaware River Water Gap into Stroudsburg, PA.  One couple who we asked to take our photograph on a pedestrian bridge over the Delaware drove up to a scenic overlook point farther down our route and clapped for us as we rode by.  That made my day!

The view form the top of a hill in NJ

That night we stayed with Billy M., a person we met through couchsurfing.  He met us in downtown Stroudsburg and we rode to his house where we met his girlfriend, Kat, roommate Renee and her daughter Anemone.  He was organizing a small house show where he invited a few local bands to play.  It was great live music!  The woman hosting it, Amber, let us use her laptop to go over our route and print our maps for the next day.  It turns out we had an 80 mile day planned over the Poconos, mostly on small hilly roads.  Its a good thing we had constant input from locals to help us revise and find smart routes.  Our revised route was 70 miles and stuck to the main roads a bit more, but Zoey and I were still concerned that the Poconos were going to be defeating.  Luckily Billy offered to drive us a large part of our route to give us a head start, so at 8:30 we loaded 2 bikes, 6 panniers, 2 sleeping bags, 1 tent and 2 sleeping pads into his hatchback and set off.

Today was a beautiful day and flat for the first part after we started riding.  And then we traversed the Poconos, hill after hill after hill.  It was hard, and only after we got to the top did we realize that Zoey could not shift down to her lowest gear.  Oops.  It was a quick fix, but it would have been much better had we found it earlier.  Meanwhile, my bike was having problems of its own.  Back on our first day my front panniers had fallen off somehow while going up a short steep hill and they had gone into the wheel and misaligned it.  I had been riding on it ever since, widening my brakes each day to stop the wheel from rubbing.  Midway through today I had to unhitch the front brake completely.  It wasn't a problem until our decent into Wilkes-Barre, which was a extremely long and steep downhill on a highway like road with rocks in the shoulder.  I was clutching my rear brake the whole time, unable to fully enjoy the mountain we had spent practically all day ascending. The road, 115, actually turned into a highway at the bottom of the hill.  We knew this would happen, and took this route anyway because the alternative went over another mountain even though it was a smaller road.  We have learned that sacrifices must be made to avoid hills.

In Stroudsburg we found a bikeshop that trued my wheel, greased my brakes, and gave us a stoop to eat on.  We also bought some tools we had forgot to pick up before we left.  They were awesome and after we told them about our trip didn't charge us for truing the wheel.  The man who helped me out was saying that Pennsylvania will be the hardest biking we do the whole trip, because the hills are short and steep versus long and gradual out west.  If so, this will be a hard week, but we will become so strong!

Tonight we are staying with Thaddeus S. and his wife Mellissa, a young couple that own a local restaurant and live on a lake in Hunlock Creek.  Thaddeus picked us up at the bottom of his road, saving us a 6 mile 1000 ft accent.  Their home is right on the lake, and we ate a delicious meal on their porch overlooking the water.  It was their first pickup for their CSA today so we had a big salad, which was perfect after 3 days of no vegetables : )

Zoey by the lake

I would just like to say a few things about hospitality.  People are so incredibly amazing.  We have only couchsurfed twice so far but both times I have been blown away with the graciousness of our hosts.  Its always the little things, the meals, the offers of showers, the beds, the rides that make a world of difference to us.  I hope we continue to find wonderful people along our journey because that is what will make this trip extraordinary.

Tomorrow we are going through the Northern Appalachians, or the endless mountains as Thaddeus calls them.  However, it is a shorter day of only 48 miles so we should do just fine.  We are stopping at a post office to send back some stuff we aren't using that is just adding extra weight, so tomorrow morning we will have to dump out our panniers and sort everything.  I think it will make a difference.