Plans

Waxing Gibbous Moon

After months of rehabbing my rickety trickster of a right knee, I will once again make an attempt at redemption, resurrection, and re-creation. I have an itch that needs a scratch and sitting still just won't do - I need to move. For me, bicycling is much more forgiving than hiking in the mountains with a pack, so most of this effort will be on the sturdy two wheels of my almost-famous workhorse, the Dream Machine.

Initially, I was going to string together a three-month trip with interspersed bus and train rides, eventually to wind up in Tejas for P.S. I Love You's flexibly scheduled birthday celebration. That shindig, from my understanding, occurs on her actual birth date plus or minus a few weeks - sort of a casual, rolling party that kills time in between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. This is a very reasonable approach to what otherwise can be a flash-in-the-pan, one-day ice cream fest. I like it.

However, given the unpredictability of my last couple of adventures, one of which ended with two fractured ribs and the other with a deep bone bruise and a damaged patella tendon, I decided to split things up into parts and see how things will go. So Part A will begin July 30 with a train ride to Chemult, Oregon. From there, I will cruise my bike over to Crater Lake and circumnavigate the Rim Road. I drove around the lake on my first visit in 1985-ish and hiked the west rim on my Pacific Crest Trail trek through Oregon in 2007. But never have I bicycled the rim, something I always intended to do. As we all know, intentions are powerful.

From there, I will try to follow the Sierra Cascades bicycle route between Crater Lake and Truckee, CA. This route parallels (as closely as is practical) the Pacific Crest Trail on roads through southern Oregon and northern California. In addition to testing and improving my conditioning, I will collect data for a writing project for the coming winter - something to keep some of my brain from rotting. Wish me supernaturally good luck, idyllic weather, flat-free safe travels, and no (none, nil, nada) fall-down-and-go-booms.

That will take six weeks or so, by which time I will have figured out how to launch Part B. Suffice to say it will definitely include some form of Tejas-style whoopty-do birthday bash, if not outright California-inspired heathen skulduggery.

Peace, Love, and Planning,
Jim