Blogs from Elkins, West Virginia, United States, North America

So, just to paint a picture as to why we decided to do this long distance bicycle expedition, this is something that Fi has wanted to do for a long, long time; before we even met. When she first proposed the idea of a self-supported bicycle expedtion accross a continent, I thought she was out of her mind. I've always loved her adventurous spirit (we met while hiking separately in Peru) but I secretly hoped that she'd forget about it; she did not. As it turns out, I actually warmed up to the idea after a couple of years, and now I'm just as excited about trying this as she is. We've met several people who have done this exact thing, and have thought, "why can't we?" Now that I'm finishing my career in the U.S. ... read more

July 10th, 2013 Today our trip started. We left @ 6:20am arrived in Elkins, WV @ 6:00pm. The day started out with a send off by son Dennis, grandson Austin and a friend Hoppy Hoy. Our granddaughter made a sign for the back of our car "PA to California or bust". The car ran super until the unexpected happened, we ran out of gas 121.4 miles into the trip (12.77 mpg), The car always gets 20 mpg. A trucker stopped, he volunteered to drive his rig one mile to gas station and fill our gas can and drive back to us, air gas mixture adjustment was 1/4 turn too rich. Next tank of gas was run with air gas mixture turned 1/4 turn leaner, result was 18.9 mpg, car ran very good. Next encounter was a ... read more