Tomorrow morning I ride!
This is the first "bike-packing" trip I have taken. I've gone on tent camping bike trips of similar mileage, but someone else has always carried my tent and luggage. It will be a new experience for this 64-year-old.
I am full of anxiety. What if....??? What if I have a flat tire? What if I am run off the road by a motorist? What if I can't find the camping spot? What if my water bottles break? What if I bonk? (blood sugar goes low) What if my batteries go dead? and a hundred other worries.
I have tried to be prepared for foreseeable emergencies. I have a tool kit on my bike, a patch kit, a pump to deal with flat tires. I have a couple of backup batteries and charging cables.
I'm debating whether to take a raincoat, since the forecast is for four days of sunny, 80-degree weather. I ordered a new backpacking sleeping bag that is advertised to be really small, packed down. It's supposed to arrive today! If it doesn't, I won't stress, because with 80-degree weather a sheet will do.
I still have so much anxiety that I have been procrastinating on the packing. Despite my three years of WW training and indoctrination, I reverted to nervous eating today. I was packing emergency rations (pack bars from Krogers, WW jerky sticks, a Joje bar, a couple of fig bars from Costco, and a couple of packages of commercial "trail mix" (nuts and M&M's). Oh, I also included a couple of packs of Nuun hydration tablets. Well, even though I am already over my WW points for the entire day due to having potato salad and cole slaw for lunch, and am not planning a zero-point dinner tonight, I still opened up a package of the trail mix and wolfed down the contents. It doesn't make me stress any less to eat too much, and then I have guilt stress. Oh well, as they say, track it and move on. I think I am taking too much "emergency food." My diet philosophy is to eat Mediterranean-style, meaning whole grains, and a lot of plant-based foods like vegetables and fruits, beans, seeds, nuts and quinoa, with meat or seafood as a condiment as much as a protein. I should be able to find food along the way. The emergency food is only if I am in the middle of nowhere and haven't eaten for hours.
I've been planning this trip for months. The route has changed slightly several times based on where I planned to stay and to park. I originally planned on staying at a Lake Erie Metropark, but because of Covid, they were not accepting reservations until very recently. I tried contacting a couple of churches along the route to ask if I could camp in their lawn as a backup. They did not even respond to me. So, the state opened up, the Metropark started taking reservations, and that is when I found out the price to reserve the location was $195 a night! Not feasible! I changed to a campground a few miles away. I found an AirBnb for the second night, and the third night will be camping again. Earlier this week I decided to confirm the location where I planned to park, only to find out that I will be towed if I try to park there overnight. So yesterday, I enlisted my faithful husband to drop me off at the starting point and take the car back home.
I've planned a route averaging 50 miles a day. A few days ago I rode 38 miles and really didn't have any issues at all, so I think I can do it. I've ridden some of the roads trails before. Of course I wasn't carrying 50 pounds of luggage at the time.
I have been debating on which bike to use. My good old steel Trek 520 was serviced last year by my husband and me, and I know it is in great machanical shape. I haven't ridden it much this year. It's the bike I took on my OTET trip last year and it is designed for touring. My Trek Silque is carbon fiber, lighter, newer, sleeker, fits me better, and has electronic shifting. The rack on it is limited to 50 pounds, and of course the bike was designed for day-tripping rather than bike packing. It's the bike I ride every day. But, I think I've decided to use the 520 on this trip just to avoid the risk of overloading the bike.
I know that if I have problems, I can call my SAG squad, also known as my husband. And on the last day, I can stop at a post office and mail the luggage home in a box. At no time will I be more than an hour away from home by car. I really don't want to have to call him because he won't let me live it down.
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