Dunkirk, NY

Hello from the East Coast! We are finally on the move again after a pretty demanding air transfer from California. We just crossed the 2,000 mile mark and are gearing up for the second and final part of the trip.

On Friday June 19, after completing the entire border-to-border route of the West Coast, we loaded our boxed bikes on the Southwest Airlines flight from San Diego, CA to Detroit, MI, waved good-bye to the Pacific and said hello to the Great Lakes. After a transfer in Nashville, TN, we collected the huge boxes and our 10 pieces of bicycle luggage at Detroit Airport and loaded it all in a rented Chevrolet. We spent the night in rainy, stormy Detroit and got on the road promptly at 6.30am the next morning. We started heading to Cleveland, OH, as it puts us on the route we are following (purple route from Cleveland to Bar Harbor in the picture below). We went to Cleveland Airport rental car drop-off and started assembling our bikes immediately.

Now, we drew quite a crowd over there. The airport and car rentals personnel kept approaching us, asking questions and expressing general disbelief in what we are about to do. To regular people like them, it seemed just a little bit weird to be getting out of a car, putting together a bike and heading over to Washington DC, casually stopping in Maine along the way. They helped us with directions, filmed us with their camera phones and even offered us a discount on our rental.

In any case, the bikes didn't get damaged while flying although it took us the full 3 hours to put them back together. And needless to say, it felt awesome to be moving under our own power again, feeling the breeze and observing the new scenery.

We managed to ride over 50 miles that same day, mainly getting through Cleveland and some other towns around it. Although desolated and kind of run-down, Cleveland seemed to be (or had been in the past) a nice-looking town, with lots of parks and a long shoreline along Lake Erie. The weather here is a lot more humid that it was on the West Coast, and you get very hot very quickly, even when it's cloudy. Though it had been a long day and we were anxious to get to the campground, Tomas and I couldn't contain ourselves and we jumped in the lake eventually. We'll be riding along the lakes for a few more days and cooling off in the water is the definitely the best part of the ride.

After crossing into Pennsylvania and camping at Perry Township State Park, we continued to move east along the southern shore of the lake. The ride is very flat and suburban but the view of the water on our left is gorgeous. In fact, the lake feels much like the ocean in the West - it stretches out into the horizon and the waves are almost as big. But the water is warm and fresh and once you're in it, you just don't want to get out. After 78 miles of riding, we got into a town called Erie, where we camped with a fellow named Francis, who left behind his building business in Vermont to embark on the cross-country bike trip he wished to complete for 33 years.

And today, we're getting a bit more of the back-country road, which offers a nice break from the manicured suburban gardens. We just crossed into New York State and will continue on Route 5 along the lake. The sun is out, the road is flat, the conversation is good, and the water on our left is very inviting. I think I'll just have to jump in as soon as I'm done with the emails.

We'll be stopping in Buffalo, NY to pick up Jeremy tomorrow. We'll see the Niagara Falls together and do some climbing in the Adirondack Mountains in the next two weeks. So long!