The dates on the Travel Journal posts refer to the day(s) that the post describe, not to the date that the post was published. You may notice there is often a significant gap between the two; riding a bicycle all day can frequently get in the way of writing about riding a bicycle all day. This page is a place to check in on what may have happened in the gap between the most-recently-posted journal entry and the present day.
Latest: 2024-09-02
Status:
We arrived in New Haven, Connecticut on August 30th for a two-week break. This comes after two months of visiting with family in Chicago, Skaneateles, and Chappaqua. We’re incredibly grateful to have the welcome and the time to reforge (or build new!) important bonds in our lives, but it left us feeling a need for time “off” with just the two of us and no distractions, so we can catch up on backlogs and better-prepare for our route forward.
Plans:
As part of an excuse to pick up the remaining three New England states (CT, RI, MA), we’re heading (likely via island-hopping) to Cape Cod, then ferrying to the east end of Long Island, returning to NYC, and finally heading south along the Atlantic Coast to Florida(?) as summer turns to fall. From there we’ll likely head west to New Orleans, and then further west or south (across the border(s)) depending on what the seasons and our spirits are telling us.
Previously…
2023-10-26
Status:
We’re in New Zealand! It’s springtime here! We arrived October 20th, and will be staying in Auckland until November 20th. At that point we’ll set off on our bikes again to…somewhere? That’s part of what we’ll spend this time in the city figuring out. We’re legally allowed to stay in New Zealand to July of 2024, and we’ll see if the land keeps us here that long.
2023-06-25:
Plans:
We are heading into Glacier National Park, from the east side, after wrapping around and up from Missoula. We expect to spend at least a couple weeks there, mostly out-of-service.
2023-05-02:
Status:
At the end of April, we left our short-term furnished rental in Seattle, and moved 40 miles out into the countryside, to the town of Monroe, WA. We weren’t quite ready to hit the road full-time, but also found that for long-distance training rides (necessary to get us back in shape for hitting the road full-time!), starting and ending in the the center of Seattle was not ideal (though impressively doable for the 15th-largest MSA in the country!) In Monroe we can be on some of the best biking roads in the country within a mile of leaving our front door, so the idea is to spend a month intensively training.
Plans:
The day after Memorial Day, we set out eastward across Washington. From there, we may continue east toward Chicago, or simply spend the summer exploring the Mountain West and return to Seattle in October, at which point we still expect to fly to New Zealand.
2023-01-19:
Status:
In early October 2022, we decided to take a six-month break from riding for the “winter”. We spent October and November with Rett’s dad in upstate New York, then December with Neil’s parents near Chicago, and since the New Year we have been in a short-term furnished rental in Seattle.
Plans:
Our lease in Seattle continues until early April 2023. We plan to restart riding at that point. Our main target continues to be New Zealand for “winter” of 2023/2024 (their summer), and we’re spending our current time off deciding where we want to go between April and (northern hemisphere) autumn.