No, they do not all speak English in France, especially in the rural areas,
so yes, I spoke French to get around, and to have conversations with the locals.
I prepared by reading L'Estranger (The Stranger) in the original French and
studying a French dictionary like mad. Sounds crazy, but it worked!
Trip 9: This was my trip through New Zealand, May 2004. I took seventeen
days, with a day or two additional on each end to gear up and wind down, and
travelled about 650 miles from Queenstown, at the southern end of the South Island,
to Wellington, and from Palmerston North to Napier, on the North Island. It was
late fall in the southern hemisphere, and cold--on the South Island, temperatures
rarely rose above fifty degrees. It also got dark early, about 5:30 pm, since
New Zealand is so far south. I took a "city bike" with fatter tires this
time, and these are slower, so I had to use daylight efficiently to get in the
miles I needed to cover.
There were no language barriers in New Zealand, of course, but it is still a
very different culture. The most difficult part, they all drive on the left :)
Trip 10: This was my trip around the Big Island of Hawai'i, July 2008.
I took ten days, and travelled about 250 miles in a giant loop beginning, and
ending, in Hilo. You are basically circumnavigating a set of giant volcanoes,
navigating between beach and desert, sea level and the clouds, resort towns and
rural villages. The windward (NE) section of the island is lush rain forest; the
leeward (SW) desolate lava fields bordering on fantastic beaches. Connecting
the two, on the east of the island, is the active volcano Kiluaea, which you
climb up (for twenty miles) and down.
That last trip made it all fifty states (though not all by bicycle).
Trip 11: This 100 mile trip went around Prince Edward Island with my son Sheridan, then 16, for 3 days in July 2009. PEI isn't that large, and it is pretty remote and bucolic, so it was a great place for a father-son trip. We got to take in almost all of the island--north and south, east and west. My wife and daughter had some special time together while we biked and picked us up afterwards, and we continued our family tour of the northeast.
Trip 12: This trip went from Boise, Idaho, to Boudler,
Colorado, 1000 miles over 23 days in July and August of 2012. Leaving Boise on an uncommonly windy way, I
segued across hot, dry, sagebrush-laden southern Idaho, stopping for a day at
Craters of the Moon National Monument, where ancient lava is everywhere. I then worked
my way through the southeastern corner of Idaho, northwestern corner of Utah, and
southwestern corner of Wyoming, working my way through the remote and beautiful
Uintah Mountains. One time in Wyoming, a pronghorn antelope raced me along a fence
for several hundred yards before darting off.
From Vernal, UT, I then headed east more or less all the way to Boulder, a lot of
high scrub in western Colorado, giving way to mountains as you get toward the middle
of the state. I stopped in Dinosaur National Monument and Steamboat Springs for a day
each, and ended up at the south entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park at the appointed
time. The plan was for my family, which was driving up to the park, to pick me up and carry
me across the continental divide, but they were running a day late. So on my last day I crossed
the divide, at 12,300 ft., and had a *very fast* downhill more or less all the way to Boulder!
It was a remote and rigorous trip, but the rugged scenery and light traffic made it especially pleasant.
I learned a lot about Mormonism, which is prevalent in the parts of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming that I went
through, and being in high scrub and high desert and lonely small towns in the far West. Mid-summer is fair
season up there, and I visited fairs in Idaho and Utah on both weekends en route, which was also a lot of fun.
Trip 13: This trip, from Baltimore to Burlington, Vermont, took 11 days, covered 550 miles, as part of a working vacation in June, 2016. I flew into Baltimore and immediately headed towards Philadelphia, almost becoming derailed by a major problem with my freewheel right off the bat. I managed to keep going on the freewheel until I finally made it to a bike shop near Philadelphia, and got it fixed. Then, in Philadelphia, I attended a professional conference (!) for three days before heading out again to the northeast.
From there I travelled along the towpaths bordering an old canal along the Delaware River; in the 1800s, mules would
tow rafts laden with goods along these paths. I then worked my way through northwestern New Jersey--very rural--and
comfortably around New York City to Poughkeepsie, where I crossed the Hudson River on a giant pedestrian bridge. Working
my way to the eastern edge of New York State, I headed more or less directly north until I arrived in Burlington, where
I camped for a week and worked on the book I was writing.
Bicycling in the mid-Atlantic is a very different kind of biking: much more traffic, narrow shoulders, poorer roads, towns
at more frequent intervals. It is more convenient, in the sense that you are rarely far from food or services, but also
not nearly as peaceful. I have done so many bicycle trips in the West and Midwest because the South and Northeast just
are not as conducive to bike travel. Still, having done this trip, I have travelled through all major regions of the
country, which was definitely worth doing.
Trip 14: This trip, from Louisville to Pittsburgh, took 16 days and covered 600 miles. I delayed it from my usual four-year interval because of Covid. My timing was fortunate. Covid was light in this area when I traveled through it, but then began raging just a few weeks later.
My route largely followed the Ohio River upstream, cutting across Northern Kentucky to save some distance. I hadn't realized it going into the trip, but the Ohio River valley has huge bluffs typically on one side or the other, which is pretty but makes biking more complicated! Sometimes one heavily traveled route is all you have. The terrain was often hilly but rarely very hilly, except for the bluffs near the river. Things started to get really hilly when I got into Pennsylvania, but fortunately there were two long trails along railroad grades, and a third along the river, that took me from West Virginia right into downtown Pittsburgh with hardly any climbing at all.
This part of the country had been ravaged by the opioid epidemic. You could see evidence of that and, in some places, of a bitterness I hadn't seen elsewhere. At the same time, I met people in Portsmouth, OH (opioid ground zero) that were working hard to resurrect their town after the worst had passed. They were doing what it took to meet the moment.
This was the theme of the trip. At the beginning of my trip, I saw the building of the Women's Club of Louisville, which was organized in 1890 to "confront some of the social challenges" of that time, such as women's rights, improved schools, and public health. Then, towards the end of my trip, I saw the building that became first West Virginia's first state capital in 1863. Both were monuments to courage and principle.
Trip 15: This trip began in Providence, RI and would its way north and west to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It took 21 days, though the point to point travel was completed in 17, and covered 600 miles.
I could feel my age on this trip. I had a few days that exceeded 50 miles, by a little, but none that went much further. It was a striking contrast to three years earlier on similar terrain. Fortunately, I built in a more leisurely schedule, with a long weekend in Newport, RI at the start of the trip for some beach and Jazz Festival, and then several 25-30 mile half days that gave me time to enjoy my surroundings. I experienced three types of terrain: Rhode Island, where you could always smell (and often see) the ocean, Appalachian foothills and the like in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and the varied, glacially-impacted countryside of Quebec, where there would be miles of flat farmland punctuated by a giant random hill deposited by glaciers millennia ago. By following the Connecticut River north, I trimmed a lot of hills from the central portion of the trip.
Bikers are viewed differently in this part of the world. In a number of places they are merely tolerated. In New Hampshire and Vermont they are accepted; in Massachusetts and Rhode Island they are supported; in Quebec they are celebrated. Most of my Quebec mileage, in fact, was on bicycle trails designed for cyclists. My main antagonist, so to speak, was the weather: there were a number of rainy days, and even though the northeast rarely has downpours like (say) Texas does, it is still something to contend with. To compensate, the temperatures were wonderful, the drivers considerate, and the scenery gorgeous.