Tour de USA | Stage 49 Boston/Revere Beach | EFI

Well what a trip!!  It ended today on a great note and a beautiful short ride to the beach.  49 days later I have crossed the US from Los Angeles to Boston, truly an amazing trip.  It’s late, and I will try to share some of the pictures from today and some thoughts.  

Above is me after dipping my front wheel into the Atlantic, we dipped the rear tire in the Pacific in Los Angeles.  It is amazing to me how fast the trip went, and how the terrain changed everyday, even in the desert to the Midwest, to the northeast, no 2 days were the same.  

There were so many different challenges that needed to be overcome, and so many amazing things to be seen.  It’s fascinating how much more you can see from the seat of a bicycle. 

Below is Cathy and me rolling out one last morning to head to the beach for the tire dip.
 

The clock at Revere Beach


L-R: Pete, me, Barry, Cathy


L-R: Mark, Pete, me, Barry, Cathy


Upon arriving at the beach I was immediately greeted by family and friends, some I had no idea that they were coming, such a great surprise.  I loved every minute of it!!

Below are L-R: Lisa (my sister), Lesley (my mother), Franny (hugging me my aunt)


L-R: Lisa, Lesley ( my mother hugging me)

I am surprised to see my son, I had no idea that he was coming to Boston.

Grant ( my son in the black t shirt )


My family L-R Charlie B. (My brother in law ), Lynn, me, Franny ( my aunt ), Alan ( my uncle), Grant, my mother

Lisa, my sister

And then another BIG Surprise was 3 of my high school class mates from BGA showed up!!  Great to see them. L-R: Grimes Baird, me, Bill Melley, Matt Johnson.

L-R: Bill M., me, Matt J., Grimes B.

Another one for good measure 

This is our group that made it the whole way.

After all of the ceremony we were hungry, so we walked down the beach to the local Lobster shack, Kelly’s and had a lobster roll, yum!


Here is the map from today’s ride.

It’s never to late to donate!

Thank you for following along with me on this journey, and if you can please make a donation to the Children's Hospital below.  100% of your funds go to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

https://vanderbilt.ejoinme.org/bikeacrosstheusa

As a non-profit institution, the Children's Hospital provides care to the children who come through its' doors regardless of the family's ability to pay.  Caring support from the community allows this level of service to continue.

Tour de USA | Stage 48 Burlington, MA 100 miles in the rain

What a great day!!!  You may say, “Bruce your title says 100 miles in the rain?”  And that is correct, so how does one have a great day in 100 miles of rain?, you may ask?  Well it is really quite a simple answer, and one that my friend Jerry F. Helped me see last night when I was texting back and forth with him.  I knew this, but he helped bring it to light, and that is, “Life is what you make of it”. If you chose to dwell on the negative, such as 100% chance of rain all day than you are going to have a bad day.  Instead I decided it was going to be a great day.  I am at the end of a fantastic journey, and I want it to end on a high note!

So if I were at home and I looked at the weather and saw 100% chance of rain with periods of HEAVY rain, there would be 0% chance that I would have ridden today at home, but I am not at home.  With those weather conditions, I decided to ride, and to make it a great ride, and a big ride of 93 miles wasn’t big enough for me and my friend Mark P. From Wales. We decided to add 7 more miles to make it a complete century (100 miles). Let me ask you bikers out there, have you ever done a century in the rain?  Me either, so I decided to make my last “real” riding day a great century in the rain.  Now my 1 and only century in the rain is the 2nd to last day on my amazing journey across the US!!  Thanks Jerry for helping me see the positive, and I made it mine!

This is what I saw when we were having the morning route rap at the front door of the hotel under cover.  Yup, a wet one for sure.


After a couple of miles we were into New Hampshire, I didn’t realize that we were that close to another state our second to last one last night. Below is Cathy and me.


And then about 40 miles later we were in Massachusetts. Because of the rain we were focused on the road, and traffic, and we almost missed the sign, actually we did by a few feet and had to turn around.  In the picture below are Pete from Scotland in the yellow, behind him hidden is Mark from Wales, and me.  We also had Peyton the New Kid with us, and Barry took the picture.




Because of the rain, the pictures were only on a “necessary to take our phones out of our zip lock baggies basis”, so no more pics from the ride today, which is unfortunate because there was a lot of beautiful stuff to see from lakes, rivers, ponds, big beautiful homes, parks, and golf courses.  All was very green, when you see ferns growing on the side of the road wild, you know they get a lot of rain up here.  Hence the  reason they call Vermont, The Green Mountain State.  Or is it because of Bruce Green?

The other thing of note is the roads in Massachusetts are terrible, on a scale of bad they are just a little worse than New York roads, and New York roads were the worst until we got here.  And believe it or not the Massachusetts drivers are the absolute worst and intolerant drivers of all the states that we went through.  New York was the second worst, but still not even close to Massachusetts.  They were not happy about us riding in the rain today and slowing them down.

Here is a picture of my new friend Mark.  What a great guy, and this is at the end of the 100 mile in the rain ride today.
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And my friend, Peyton, the “New Kid”, and bike mechanic, and just a great guy.

We have a banquet tomorrow night and a dinner tonight with our spouses, so I imagine there wil be a lot of stories told over the next hours, and tomorrow.  Looking forward to it.  

Here is the map from today.

And the stats, a lot of climbing today, more than I thought.

Thank you for following along with me on this journey, and if you can please make a donation to the Children's Hospital below.  100% of your funds go to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

https://vanderbilt.ejoinme.org/bikeacrosstheusa

As a non-profit institution, the Children's Hospital provides care to the children who come through its' doors regardless of the family's ability to pay.  Caring support from the community allows this level of service to continue.

Tour de USA | Stage 47 Brattleboro, VT 78 miles

Another great day on the bike.  We entered, I believe the 11th state on the tour, Vermont, and we only have 2 more states to go.  We will hit New Hampshire and Massachusetts tomorrow.  Tomorrow is really the last real day of riding, 96 miles and a lot of climbing like today, because Friday is a 17 mile ride, more of a ceremonial ride to the beach.

We thought it may rain today, but it held off, and it was a nice overcast day in the low 70’s again, what am I going to do when I get back to Nashville with record high temps, UGH!

I was a little concerned with my knee and all of the climbing today, over 5500 ft, but the knee held in there.  I found yesterday that a few things that I did differently really paid off in terms of the knee swelling and pain.  I took more Aleve, and some other anti inflammatories, Paula taped my knee with KT Tape, and I spent less time stopping.  If I stopped I only did it for a short period of time.  I found that I have been spending too much time at the SAG’s, and by the time I get back on my bike after hanging out, eating, drinking and talking for 30 minutes that my knee isn’t happy when I finally get back on my bike, so I have more than cut that time in half.  Also when I stop for pictures, I stop, get the picture, and get going again, and this is a real help as well.

All in all, I am really happy with today, and I am looking forward to our ride tomorrow.  I am icing my knee and will elevate it more later.

When I saw this sign coming into town, I laughed, Who Sick? You sick?  Me Sick? We all Sick?  OK Ice Cream works better.


Be on the look out for farmers!  Lots of farms for sure.  Upstate NY, and VT is very pretty.


Hard to see in this picture, but this is a ski resort at the top of the first mountain we climbed.  It had a 6.5 mile climb UP, yup, loved that one. :) 

Looking for some Moose, but didn’t see any.


Nice 8% grade going down, was the same going up, but I didn’t want to stop and take a picture, I was focused on getting to the top.  The road was freshly paved, and not even striped yet.

The river was a lot smaller as I was going up the mountain, and pretty.




Many of you may not know about my animal taming abilities, but it is a skill I greatly enjoy.  I tamed this Vermont Spotted Leopard. 

And again this Vermont Green Faced Cheetah. 


And hard to believe, but one last cat, this time the famous Vermont Two Toned Big House Cat, she insisted we do a selfie, such a millennial.


Not sure what kind of snow machine this is, but I think it would go anywhere.

At the top of the second mountain climb of the day, Hogback Mountain, VT.

Cathy and me on the top of the mountain. 

Welcome to Brattleboro, VT our home for the night.


Vermont is famous for it’s covered bridges, and look a covered bridge, and I’m in front of it!

Here it is again with our bikes checking it out from the replacement bridge.

Cathy and I stopped at the Top of the Hill Grill, a recommendation from the bike shop in town.

Thank you for following along with me on this journey, and if you can please make a donation to the Children's Hospital below.  100% of your funds go to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

https://vanderbilt.ejoinme.org/bikeacrosstheusa

As a non-profit institution, the Children's Hospital provides care to the children who come through its' doors regardless of the family's ability to pay.  Caring support from the community allows this level of service to continue.

Tour de USA | Stage 46 Albany, NY 79 miles

Ok, so here is a funny story from tonight’s dinner ( or last night depending on when you are reading this post).  We are staying at the lovely (Not) Red Roof Inn and after dinner at Applebees we decided we needed some more ice cream, because as you know I didn’t have enough earlier today.  So we decided to walk across the street to WalMart as the Red Roof Inn doesn’t have a little market with ice cream.  By the Way, the Brits (Pete and Mark P.) love Walmart and were having withdrawals because it has been several days since they have been to a Walmart, except for earlier this afternoon, LOL.  Anyway we decided to get some ice cream at Walmart, and on the way, we found a shopping cart, and because my knees are hurting, they decided that I needed to get in and have the New Kid, Peyton, push me.  And of course, I obliged. 




The rest of the cyclists of course were dying laughing at us, and the local New Yorkers were looking at us as if  we had lost our minds,  and maybe we have?  Anyway, We finally get into Walmart and we are looking up and down the ice cream aisle for the Ben and Jerry’s as I want to treat the Brits to some good ice cream.  We can’t find the Ben and Jerry’s, just 4 empty cases, and I say, it looks like this is where it should be.  I look at the labels on the empty shelves, and yup, it says Ben and Jerry’s.  Below is a picture of the empty shelves, although it’s difficult to tell with the shadows.  So we convince Cathy to go ask the manager “where in the hell is the Ben and Jerry’s??”  She finds a worker, and he goes to find the Ben and Jerry’s, or try to figure out what’s up?.


And out comes Butch, from the back of the store with a basket cart FULL of B&J’s, 

So we dig through the full shopping cart and find our favorites.  Thanks Butch, it wasn’t even his area of the store.

Here we are eating in the lobby of the Red Roof Inn.  Not pictured on the far right is Pete, Mark, New Kid (Peyton), me and Cathy.  Pretty fun way to end the evening laughing and telling stories over B&J’s. And yes we all had a pint each.

This morning started off a little cool.  I opened my door to walk out, since we are at a motel, to go to breakfast next door at Denny’s and found it was very cold out.  I went back in and grabbed my rain coat, and checked the temp, it was 43 at 6:00.  As you can see it warmed up a little bit by 7:05.

I introduced the Brits (Mark and Pete) to the Grand Slam at Denny’s and Peyton too.   They were all very happy and we were all fed very well this am with a ton of food.  There were more rolling hills today, getting ready to head to Vermont tomorrow.

We were along the Erie Canal again today for a large part of the trip.

This was our SAG stop on the side of the road at a rest stop.  Because of the sun’s direction it is hard to read the sign, Historic New York.

And you thought I was touring the US?

Statue of Liberty surrounded by a fence and a parking lot.  I always thought it was a lot bigger and had water surrounding it??

One of the issues with riding by yourself, which I did for half of the day, is you don’t have anyone to take your picture of you doing silly things like  getting inside of the mini truck, oh well.

Below is Cathy in front of the post office in Scotia, NY.  I wish that I was riding with Pete from Scotland during this part of today as this town was founded by a Scottish man/group many years ago and there are a lot of people from Scotland that still live there.

Here is the map from today.  We are very close to Vermont and Massachusetts. We will head a little northeast and go through Vermont and New Hampshire next. The next 2 days will have a lot of hills/mountains to climb, with I hear a 6 mile straight up climb tomorrow. Oh boy.

We had a little more descent than ascent today, hope the legs, more specifically the knee is ready for the next 2 days!  Truth be told, it felt the best today than it has for the last week.

Thank you for following along with me on this journey, and if you can please make a donation to the Children's Hospital below.  100% of your funds go to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

https://vanderbilt.ejoinme.org/bikeacrosstheusa

As a non-profit institution, the Children's Hospital provides care to the children who come through its' doors regardless of the family's ability to pay.  Caring support from the community allows this level of service to continue.