Category: Travel

I started with a fancy and free breakfast buffet at my fancy hotel. After a little computer work I grabbed my bike and pedaled away for some sight seeing in Amsterdam. My hotel is in one of the nicest districts of a city that I have ever been in. Not nice in a fancy car…

I pedaled out of Rotterdam early on Sunday morning. It was the first time I’d seen the downtown area quiet. On the edge of town the bike paths suddenly filled up with two oddly paired groups of cyclists; Swarms of road bikers in full kits that hummed along on their carbon wheels, and families dressed…

I have to remind myself occasionally that I’m not on vacation. The traveling around and staying in hotels feels like vacation but this is currently my life and I still have to work to be able to eat. Today I’m camped out in the hotel lounge drinking complimentary baby sized cokes, eating chocolate (thanks work),…

I don’t much think about birthdays but I guess this one is hard to ignore. 50! I woke up and didn’t feel any different, went for a bike ride and felt the same. I had vague notions of riding 50 miles to celebrate but instead decided to just get lost. I turned down whatever bike…

London’s streets in the darkness of 4:45 am were surreal. It seemed like it should be very busy all around me but it was silent. Under the orange glow of a street light a fox was standing in the middle of the road staring at me. I could feel the echos of the hustle and…

Woke up at Ian’s house and he took me on a ride of his daily morning routine. We rolled down to the not yet awake beach front and to his favorite coffee shop. As per my usual I had hot chocolate with oat milk. The good conversations from the day before continued easily. A short…

I woke up to some pretty hard rain in Brighton. I fiddled around with my computer and had a slow breakfast hoping the weather would change. Just about at checkout time the rain just about stopped and so I started pedaling. The roads ahead looked busy so I rode along the beachfront. Very slow going…

I rode alternately marveling at and then forgetting I was pedaling in England. It was a strange morning as I was one of the first people off the ship and out on to the early morning streets of Southampton. It felt like one minute I was pedaling through Brooklyn, took a break in a hotel…

Well, for the next 7 days I’ll be on this boat going across the Atlantic. I was able to wheel my bike right into my room.  If it seems weird to you that I’m taking a cruise across the ocean it seems weird to me too! When dreaming up this trip I liked the idea…

The hotel room I woke up in was absurdly big. They’d upgraded me to a bigger room and it was larger than some houses I’ve lived in with a desk, a bar, another sink near the front door and separate bedroom. My bike sat over against the far wall and outside the window it was…

I woke up at 6:30am and went down to the hotel lobby to draw. The Comfort Inn was filled with road construction guys who were staying there while working on a project nearby. The lobby was packed as they swarmed the breakfast bar. I sat in the middle of them and listened to their thick…

I pedaled out of Kingston this morning just after a hard nighttime rain let up. It let up but never really let go and it was one of those days where there was a light spray in the air at all times. Sometimes it would rain just enough that maybe you’d flip your wipers on…

Today was a day for getting lost and confused. It started when I rolled down the hill from my hotel in Albany towards the big ol’ Hudson River and the tangle of highways that converge there. The bike route across was closed for construction and there was a detour. I followed that, got confused, circled…

We looked at each other smashed into opposite corners of the tiny elevator and someone probably needed to say something. We turned our eyes down at my bike which was taking up most of the floor space. “Dat dare is ah giddy up on ah bicycle.” I had lived in Texas long enough to know…

If you try to plan ahead for every little detail you’ll find it hard to ever get started, but if you don’t plan enough you’ll end up with one of those stories where you went to sleep hungry and almost froze to death sleeping outside in a thunder storm on top of a tick nest.…

Yesterday’s ride was excellent. They say it is hard to make the good times into interesting reading but as I am still grinning about what a great ride I had so I’ll give it a try. On the way out of Syracuse I stopped by Melo Velo bike shop . What a cool shop and…