Welcome friends!


We'll keep you up to date on our crazy tandem adventures... in the hope that you'll help us reach our goal of a dollar raised per kilometer ridden. 100% of donations will go to either Oxfam or Kiva, your choice. (In the case of Kiva your "donation" is actually a loan so you'll get it back!)

Mid-May to mid-August 2010
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia to Bolinas, California

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Extra Extra Read all about it: Jane and Eric are still married!

Internet's slow here, can't upload pictures, but will soon!

Jane: Thank you for the fantastic send-off on Sunday!

We found a veeeery windy campsite in Grosses Coques that night, and made it to Digby on time for the ferry the next day. By that time we were so windblown, sunburnt, hungry and saddle sore that we ate everything we had in 5 minutes flat and fell asleep for most of the 3 hour ride!!

We camped 3 km from the ferry terminal in St. John, in a clearing in the woods near Irving Nature Park. Next night was at New River Beach Provincial Park, lovely spot. On the fourth day we got to St. Andrews, the rain started, and we stopped!!!

Heading off again on Sunday, a little more aware of what to expect, well rested and well fed. On the road it was instant oatmeal for breakfast (except for the morning we couldn't resist buying a blueberry pie at a roadside stand and ate half of it right away!), bread and cheese for lunch, pasta for supper... we'll get more savvy with the one burner stove as we go. ;-)

Eric: We have made it to St. Andrews NB and everything is going good. There were some definite communication issues to work out on the first few days. Jane wanted to speed down every hill as fast as possible, while I wanted to take it slow in case the road changed. Inevitably the issue only came up halfway down a hill (her pedaling madly, me braking) when it was kind of hard to talk! It would continue up the other side until we were both too out of breath to negotiate. This got worked out though during a very hilly 20 km detour to see a waterfall that we never found (we went into Weymouth Falls thinking the name might mean something..).

Each day on this trip we are learning to appreciate things we have taken for granted, like access to running water, big fluffy pillows and motorized transport.

We have climbed a great many hills already and learned to make good use of the time coasting down the other side to perform synchronized moves to alleviate butt pain.

Overall it has been great and I am sure it will only get better every day. For now we are happy to be staying with our friend Sarah on a small organic veggie farm near St. Andrews, to sleep in a real bed and get out of the first rain storm of the trip.

Much more to come when there is no weeding, planting, and bike repairs (on other people's bikes - ours is doing great) to do (we have to earn our keep!)
Lots of pictures on the way too.
Miss everybody back home and hope you're all well.
Eric and Jane

7 comments:

  1. Way to go, and thanks for the laughs!

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  2. glad to hear your still married....lol and all is going great thus far....take care

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  3. Hey - you'll have to give us km updates as you go along too.... awesome update! :-)

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  4. Great read guys! Glad to hear that you are getting through some of those trials early and working out some of the kinks! You trip is going to be a BREEZE once you turn west and hit the flats.

    Keep us up to date whenever you can!

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  5. Don't worry about the butt pain. It goes away eventually making way for lovely calluses. Cheers.

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  6. So what was the decision on the hills? I think being in the rear I would also want to speed down the hills so I could minimize the pedaling after but I heard it's really hard to steer the tandem so maybe that's not such a good idea.

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  7. I got off my high horse and accepted that yes it's hard to steer the tandem, and to reach down to shift gears... So I let Eric do his job in peace... And then as he got more comfortable he has started to want to go faster... Except now I just want to coast down hills for a butt rest! So we go back and forth. Rest day today has made a big difference in our moods- less arguments!

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