Bike Trip - Day 1

Day 1 of our bike trip across the country did not go as well as I had hoped. It involved packing, realizing we had more stuff than we had originally expected, and the discovery that this weight had to be very carefully and strategically placed on the bikes if you didn't want to wobble precariously down the road even at speeds as low as 1 mph. Tim's bike shuddered visibly on the first downhill so we had to stop on a quieter road less than one mile away from his house to figure out how to solve the first of many, many problems we would encounter on the trip. Tim's mom, Joyce was following behind us in the car and I am convinced she was thinking we'd bike back home and call it quits. She patiently helped hold the bikes as we moved weight off of Tim's bike and into Navi's trailer, and arranged the remaining weight until we had two stable bikes. It was a beautiful day but it must have been 98 degrees outside with 100% humidity and by the time we got started again, it was probably around 2 pm. None the less, we started out feeling like superheros as we wound our way through Lancaster to pick up on the Atlantic Coast Trail. Suddenly, there was a large hill that wound its way around and around so we couldn't see the top but we forced our way up this monster. Every turn around the hill revealed even more of the enormous monster and when we finally reached the top, we were absolutely exhausted. A quick downhill later, we were faced with another monstrosity. We were either climbing a horrible hill at 3 mph, or descending another at 35 mph. We were realizing as the day wore on how much weight Navi was adding to our load. We took a break midhill to catch our breath and have a bite to eat, and when we started again, hell resumed. We were devastated, and our morale was lower than low. We eventually realized that bringing Navi along would make things very difficult for all three of us. We sadly found a campground and after sobbing for something like an hour, we handed Navi off to Joyce to take care of until we could have her again. Feeling quite defeated, we biked to a campsite, set up our first camp of the trip, and quietly and sadly made dinner and headed to sleep with the heaviest hearts.

Time with Tim:
It started an easy ride that I knew, then things quickly went downhill. The trail routed us through the apparent "York Rockies." Ick. We decided bikey with puppy was bad, and sadly parted. We snuck into a campground with nobody noticing, and never paid for it.