Blue Boat Home

A light rain fell all morning as I rode out of Philadelphia, but it stopped after noon as I approached Trenton.  As soon as I'd crossed the Delaware, before I'd ridden 100 feet, three drivers had welcomed me to New Jersey by shouting rude things.  The most creative was the witch's theme from "The Wizard of Oz."

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on April 29, 2005] [additional text subsequently added from the week's journal entries]

Hi, folks! I'm back in Philadelphia, staying at my nephew's grandparents' (Jay and Elsa's) house. I hope to get back in shape (and see some sights around Philly) before I venture into the Garden State!

I took the commuter train into downtown Philly and the Greyhound to Pittsburgh and the city bus to Becca and Daniel's house without incident.

It's a good thing I didn't have farther to go today... Philadelphia is a lot hillier than I had anticipated, and getting into town was trickier.  I stopped at a bike shop in West Chester and got an official bike map of the Philadelphia area.  The proprietor gave it to me for free because he knew it to be inaccurate, and he gave me some tips about roads that are better or worse than indicated.

38.2 mi

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on April 14, 2005]

What a beautiful week of weather! I don't know when I've ever experienced seven days of perfect bicycling weather in a row. Unfortunately I wasn't able to appreciate the first five because I was sick, but I was dimly aware that I would otherwise have been appreciative!

I slept in longer than I really should have, since people arrived for work before 8:00, but no one said anything.

I slept in this morning but still felt lousy until after lunch.  I started out on a road parallel to US-40 but found that the highway felt safer because it had a shoulder.

Today was a beautiful day; it just wasn't my day.  The bike map misled me about a dozen times on the way to Baltimore.  Still, I got to the library around 3:00 and found that the libraries in Baltimore are not the Baltimore County Libraries I found online, the ones that had the maps I needed.  The libraries in Baltimore are all called Enoch Pratt, and they didn't have the maps.  So I rode on to a Baltimore County library and got a motel in Rosedale.

38.3 mi

I went to church at All Souls again this morning to see Rev. Rob Hardies speak, as my friend Elisa had assured me he was not to be missed.  I was impressed -- All Souls is not only the most diverse UU congregation I've seen, it's also the most charismatic.  The congregation gave both its ministers standing ovations... Hardies when he finished his sermon and the associate minister when it was announced that she had just gotten married in Massachusetts.

Marisa and I both felt lousy this morning, so we slept in our separate rooms until after noon.  After lunch we rode the metro to the "Sakura Matsuri," a street festival inspired by the cherry blossoms.  It was a cross between the street festivals I saw in Japan and those you can see anywhere in the US.  We bought some Japanese trinkets and ate too much mochi.

I left the hostel just in time: the cold that had been lingering in my throat for several days moved into my nose.  The hostel has no soap or towels in the bathrooms, and it's easy to forget to bring one's own, which is probably why I got sick, but had I stayed an hour longer I would certainly have passed it on to other people.