Today’s ride

The weather for today looks pretty dismal.  We’ve been expecting this and watching the forecasts for several days.  Today’s has always looked awful with thunderstorms forecast for the whole day.  One can always hope though, so we check the forecast when we wake up.  It looks dry for the next two hours, but at 9 the forecast is for ‘heavy thunderstorms’, with a prediction of heavy rain during that hour.  We’ve seen heavy thunderstorms recently, so the prediction conjures up vivid memories.  We don’t really want to get nailed halfway to Buffalo and then suffer through ongoing storms the rest of the way there.  

Then we remember: it’s our anniversary!  We very seldom get gifts for each other (and where would we put them anyway, since we’re homeless?), preferring to give each other experiences instead.  Today though we make an exception - I give Rocky a $6.20 bus ticket to Buffalo, and she gives me one back.  We bike six blocks to the bus stop, throw our bikes in the hold of the Coach USA bus, and shuffle off to Buffalo.  We arrive at about 11, are lucky to be able to check in to our room early, and fifteen minutes later the storm rolls in.

33 years!  Once again Rocky has defied expectations and put up with me for a other long 365 days.  I’m a very lucky man.  So, congratulations to us!  And congratulations to Racpat, who coincidentally are celebrating their 26th today in Leeds, ND.

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Rachel and Patrick HugensHi,
Looking at this now checking out your route in more detail because we just left Erie and staying in Ripley at Warmshowers host...heading for Buffalo and the Erie Canalway.
Thanks for the congratulations on our mutual Anniversaries.
We should be celebrating Rachel's 71st B-day at Niagara Falls.
Racpat
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Ride stats today: 1 mile, zero feet.

Looking ahead

 We’re at another cusp on the journey, at the start of the third and final leg for this journal.  This one carries us on a loopy detour through the Finger Lakes District, then circle the Adirondacks by biking north along Lake Ontario and the Saint Lawrence Seaway before turning south through New England.  It will take us exactly a month, and end in the middle of nowhere in western Connecticut where we’ll relax at the lakeside home of Vance (Elizabeth’s oldest son) and his wife Laurie before taking public transportation to the Newark airport.

Here’s the plan for the coming month:

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Looking further ahead

So that gets us to Newark, and the end of this journal.  We’re prone to looking farther ahead though, and have some updates to report.  Most immediately, we’re excited to have found the cycling endpoint for the European half of this trip.  We’re flying back from Fiumicino (the Rome airport), but we don’t plan to bike all the way to Rome or its airport.  Instead, we’ll stop in Viterbo, a town in Lazio about fifty miles to the north of Rome and on the train line.  We found an Airbnb host there who has agreed to hold our suitcases for three months after we ship them forward from Amsterdam.

The larger news though is that we have settled on our plan for next year.  In spite of all the back and forth discussions we’ve had, we’ve decided against applying for a long-stay visa for a year in France.  For now, that is - it’s still out there as a possibility for some future time though.

Instead, we’ve decided to experiment with the ‘Schengen Shuffle’: we’ll visit France for three months next spring, ending in Brittany; then take the ferry to the British Isles and spend three months there; and then ferry back to France for another three months in the fall before finally returning to Portland again.

So, in the spirit of laying down markers so we can look back someday to see how close our plans matched the reality, here’s a thumbnail outline of the plan for the next year and a half, rounded to whole months:

• July: Buffalo to Newark
• August through October: Amsterdam to Rome
• November: Portland
• December: California
• January, 2022: Hawaii
• February: Portland 
• March through May: France
• June through August: British Isles
• September through November: France
• December: Portland.