When we set off on Tour 2011 Part 2 in early July, we had our summer and early fall fairly well planned out. Well, life is what happens when you are making other plans. The Tour turned out to be a frantic race, and Chaos Central became even more chaotic on our return.
We did combine business with pleasure, spending a week in Montana working before we continued on to Minnesota for the high-school reunion. We even got in a couple of bike rides in the evenings. The big news was, we got an offer on our Montana house while we were in residence. This, of course, changed everything. The Minnesota trip went mostly as planned: we camped, got rained on, dried out the next night in a motel, and continued on into the start of the mid-summer heat wave that discouraged biking and even site-seeing. We got word during our travels that the house closing was to be moved up, so our plans began to change.
On our return from Minnesota, in a couple of long mileage-eating days, we stopped in Montana, dropped off our bike and camping gear. loaded up some of the belongings we had left in the house while it was still our “business lodging,” and raced home to Washington. We unloaded the car, took care of appointments at home, then headed back to Montana to finish clearing out the house and sign papers. Little time for work this time except for a short meeting with the client: trips to charity thrift shops, trips to the dump, a load to the cabin, a short bike ride, and then load up the car with bike, camp gear, and remaining belongings, leaving behind what wouldn’t fit as a “gift” to the new owners. The financing bank, of course, fumbled, so the closing was delayed, almost to the original date. Meanwhile, the debt limit crisis came and went, but the country didn’t collapse, so we got our payout, finally, down to one mortgage payment after two years.
Now, we thought, we will be able to focus on training for our September bicycle tour, a.k.a. our “real vacation,” for which we had scrimped and saved and bought a new bicycle (the Green Machine, see earlier posts) and paid our non-refundable full fee. Ah, but life is what happens while you are making other plans: the client workload suddenly increased; the sudden influx of funding from the house sale made possible scheduling long-delayed home repairs, hopefully before our trip or at least before the fall rainy season sets in. Chaos Central truly is living up to its name.
We’re still hoping for a reasonable training schedule: we’ve made a few 20-mile fast runs, alternated with 12-mile dashes, but no day-long rides to get used to long days in the saddle coming up. We’re members of Warmshowers.org, a bicycle tourist lodging exchange. Since we’re on the coastal bike route between Vancouver, BC and San Francisco, we’re getting a lot of bike tourists through the area, and hope to tag along with some of them as incentive to get our riding in before we head east.
We’re also still finishing up the shakedown period on the new bike, even after a couple hundred miles. My left pedal seems to have a flaw that only appears under load, an ominous “click-snap” at top and bottom of the stroke, so we have approached long rides with trepidation until we resolve the problem. Hopefully, it is the pedal and not the bottom bracket or worse. Fortunately, we have a stable of bikes from which to mine spare parts. We’re also still collecting gear for our tour, deciding we need a different arrangement for day rides and supported touring than the expedition panniers we’ve used all these years.
And, the work projects pile up, with new clients on the East Coast, juggling time zones means early to work, missed lunches for mid-afternoon (EDT) meetings, and fitting in house and lawn projects with work time and finding time to ride the bicycle times and routes to avoid heavy traffic and allow plenty of time before the next appointment. Now, to make sure the Netbook computer fits in the new panniers…