Leaving Home

Oh, it’s hard to leave Whidbey Island on a perfect spring day. Clear blue sky, everything green and in bloom, birds singing…. I can’t imagine anywhere more beautiful.  But here I am at Seatac with a three hour wait before my flight.

I am flying through Denver, and will get into Orlando about 10:30 tonight. Cousin Kris will pick me up and I will spend a couple of days with her. On Tuesday she and her husband will drive me to Fort Lauderdale in time for a 1pm orientation. I’ll pick up my bike from the bike shop nearby, and then meet cousins Mike and Mary who are driving over from across the state to attend the send-off banquet that evening. And then early the next morning, off I ride towards Maine!

There are somewhere around 30 women riding on this tour. The touring company is WomanTours, and this will be my 8^th tour with them. I know at least a half-dozen of the women from previous tours. All of our luggage gets transported in a big trailer, and in the back of this trailer is a kitchen from which most of our meals will appear. Also in this trailer will be the beer cooler and a plentiful supply of wine. We’re not roughing it. We’ll be staying at nice hotels and I’ll have a room to myself 2/3 of the time.

We’ll ride anywhere from 38 to 97 miles per day, averaging somewhere around 60… thankfully the 97-mile day doesn’t come until about halfway through the trip. Our SAG vehicle, Bo-Peep, will be waiting for us every 20 miles or so with snacks and water, and is always on-call for a pick up, mechanical help, etc.  We’ll get rest days about once a week, and if all goes well, we’ll ride into Bar Harbor, Maine on June 11^th.

Although we all start riding close to the same time, riders get pretty spread out during the day, and I’ll probably ride by myself most of the time. I prefer it that way, as I enjoy the scenery more that way. Also, I’m slow. On one of my previous tours, I thought I had really improved, as one day I found myself riding with one of the fastest riders. Then another one of the fast ones showed up and she said “OK, let’s go!”, and the two of them left me like I was standing still.

From Maine I will fly on to Michigan to visit my dad for a couple of weeks, and then on to Seattle on June 27^th. I won’t actually get home until the next day as my flight gets in too late to get the shuttle back to the island.