[This is the last entry in a series about a bicycle ride across Florida with my wife Sarah. You can start the series here] Are they Famous? This is how cheap, I mean frugal, my wife and I can be. Even though we had already ridden 61 stressful miles to reach the Minneola Inn, we … Continue reading Biking Across Florida – The End Comes Early
[This is Part 2 of a series about my bicycle ride across Florida with my wife Sarah. You can read Part 1 here] The Ride Begins – aka Let’s Get Out of Jacksonville In a word, our route out of Jacksonville was “gritty.” Broken glass, missing sidewalk sections, boarded up buildings, decrepit warehouses. Trash and … Continue reading Biking Across Florida – The Middle
"Hello again," the Lyft driver says to me as I slide open his mini-van door outside of the REI store in Jacksonville, Florida. It's the same guy that had dropped me off at the store not 10 minutes earlier. Camping fuel in hand, I hop back into his van and we head back to the … Continue reading Biking Across Florida – The Start
[This is the fourth and final entry about my biking trip down the East Coast with my wife Sarah] We heard from Adela. Her plan to hitch-hike from Surf City to Raleigh, North Carolina, did not go well. Actually, it didn’t go at all. To return to my Steve Martin movie reference, Adela didn’t even … Continue reading Biking the Atlantic Coast – The End
[This is Part 3 of a series on my bicycle ride down the East Coast with my wife Sarah] “It’s called dispersed camping.” Sarah and I just bumped into a long-distance bicycle rider—our first of the trip. Her name is Adela Wagner. Like us, she’s traveling south. Unlike us, she is camping every night. For … Continue reading Biking the Atlantic Coast – Part Three
"It feels like there are alligators here," I think as I try to sneak out of the tent in the early morning darkness. Despite my best efforts, I’m super loud. Sarah rolls over and tries to go back to sleep. Ten minutes later, warm cup of coffee in my hands, the dawn sky starts to … Continue reading Biking the Atlantic Coast – Part Two
"What did you get me into?," Sarah says as my head hits the pillow. It's a cold Sunday night in Minneapolis. We are leaving at 5AM tomorrow morning for Virginia in our rented minivan and the start of a 5 week, self-supported cycling adventure down the Atlantic Coast. I'm nervous too. My mind is racing. … Continue reading Biking the Atlantic Coast – Part One
"What should we do this fall?," I asked Sarah recently. Our youngest had just left for college. I'm at a break in my career. I was itching to do something big and not squander this unique window of time. But what? Travel, to put it mildly, is difficult right now. Most of the things we … Continue reading We’re Biking the Atlantic Coast
In August, our youngest child Jimmy left for UW-Madison. After a quarter of a century of being full time parents with kids at home, my wife Sarah and I are now empty nesters. We have no fall sporting events to attend. The house is eerily quiet, the dishwasher takes three days for us to fill … Continue reading Empty Nest Adventures – Part One
It takes me around 5 hours to drive the 295 miles between our home in Minneapolis and our cottage outside of Watersmeet, Michigan. I’ve driven the route countless times. It’s a chore. The Drive For years I’ve thought about making the trip in a different way. In a way that would turn that chore into … Continue reading Biking Home
wander and wonder 