Directions 

Excuse me, do you know the way to Boston?” 

I emailed my brother and asked if he wanted to bike from Seattle to Boston. He emailed back – “Sure”. This level of planning doesn’t lead to success, but it was a sufficient commitment. So we dug deeper. I wanted to ride the Trail of the Hiawatha outside Wallace Idaho and see Uncle Dave in Belgrade Montana. Jon wanted to take the ferry across Lake Michigan and work our way to the Erie canal bike path. Now we have a couple of waypoints, but still no route. Ida knew a some stretches of rails to trails we could take across Washington, which we broke up into a misdirected 6 day ride. This was the sum total of our route planning when the trip started. Since one of my mottos is “You know you are on an adventure when you have to make a U-turn”, I was setup for adventure.

 The first day out it became clear we were too dependent on an online mapping program set to cycling routes. Ida works in downtown Seattle, so she deftly navigated us from the sound through downtown and onto a great bike path. Once at the end of that path, it was a series of adventures until we found the start of the next path. Twice the mapping software took us too seriously. We found ourselves on beautiful single track mountain biking paths in the middle of the woods. The first one had switchbacks so steep we had to push our not-mountian-bikes up the hill. The second one was narrow, windy, and full of challenging tree roots and rock outcroppings. Again we pushed our not-mountian-bikes for that ½ mile section. A favorite memory of this trip will be Ida, balancing her bike on the rear tire as she tried to see the recommended directions on her phone that was in her handlebar bag. Ida was the navigator.

 Ida successfully got us through  the 414 mile ride inWashington.  Ida had to leave to head back to work. The very next day, with Jon and I were left to our own navigational devices, we had to make a U-turn within the first ½ hour without Ida.

 With a tailwind, we made 91 miles. On another day, with a 34 MPH gusting headwind, we struggled to ride 39 miles. There is a reason we don’t have a detailed route with all our sleeping locations marked. Some would say the varying conditions prohibit such a plan. I prefer to think of it as lack of proper planning and an inherent belief that it will all work out, as long as you keep the end in mind.

 “Excuse me, do you know the way to Boston?”