Month: October 2019

After yesterday night’s failure, we both finally managed a wonderful sleep, woke only by songbirds singing a most wonderful tune from the branches… actually no, while the sleep was wonderful it was the horn of a passing locomotive that woke us. While there are a few birds around I think they are all mute. We…

How could we have anything other than a lovely night’s sleep in such a wonderful home? Finally, we woke refreshed. Robert was already out of the house when we finally mobilised so we enjoyed the company of Becky over breakfast. Last night we had parked the bikes in the sunroom, so I went in there…

A good night’s sleep until around 3 am at which point Ivor the Engine and his pals decided to make an appearance and that was it for the remainder of the night as far as deep sleep went. When the body clock went off to demand we get up and start the day we weren’t…

Okay, so we have a conflict this morning. While I fell to sleep the moment my head hit the pillow, right through until around 6 am when our working neighbours that live permanently in the RV park started to head to work, including an Oklahoma Police Officer, Deborah had a different experience. According to Deborah,…

At last, a goodnight sleep. Absolute silence for once, not even noisy neighbours. No locomotives, no cars, no trucks… nothing. The bed could have been softer, but compared to a 2cm thick self-inflating mattress it was good enough. The free breakfast was as bad as they come, but cereal is cereal and pancakes are pancakes……

Due to technical challenges, ie. I wrote it then the WordPress app crashes and I lost everything, so today’s and yesterday’s blogs will be published tonight…. from Texas! 🤠

The forecasted rain didn’t materialise, so we had a good sleep until the guys in lycra that are doing a supported Route 66 cycle decided to start their day at 5 am. Once they were up they made sure everyone else in the vicinity was too. While we didn’t actually get up at 5 am,…

We woke early even though today could be a rest day, still. It was a free breakfast in a $38 hotel, so it wasn’t a full breakfast spread, but waffles and sugar-coated cereal do just fine. Over breakfast, we analysed the data presented by the Windy app on my phone, which is becoming as invaluable…

It’s weird not getting up, packing our panniers and heading west, but are coping. Just! A lazy morning, although most of it finishing off the blogs from the last two days. We then headed up to the main Shamrock attraction, just at the top of our street, the U-Drop Inn, where we had a lovely…

It wasn’t until it was time to get up, around 7:15 am, that the muscles started to really overreact to the idea of climbing out of bed. Breakfast was an interesting mixture of carbs, but without anything that would give it away as breakfast. We were already half packed, so the other half shouldn’t have…

If our tent’s waterproof rating was being tested by the sprinkler system last night, it’s ability to stand up to strong wind was tested this morning. When we went to bed the breeze was blowing in from the south and the air was warm. This morning the strong wind was blow hard from the north…

Apart from the occasional rattle on the garage door by the wind and hoot from Ivor, the night passed peacefully. As Adam had set breakfast at 7 am our alarm clock was set at 6:45 am, which was about 5 hours earlier than our bodies would have liked. Even inside the garage inside the tent…

For sleeping in a tent on spikey ground a few metres away from a busy interstate, even Deborah admits that it was one of our better night’s sleep. As we should not have been camping at the picnic area without permission, with a hefty fine if we got caught, we had set the alarm to…

A pal that is a real cyclist with lycra, a lightweight bike and probably even knows how to change a spoke, once told me that when it comes to comfort in the saddle it is the first twenty years that are the worst. Well, I’m not sure if we have lucked out on our saddles,…

A great night’s sleep until the point Deborah’s alarm went off when her watch read 5:45 am, as she had set yesterday’s alarm to repeat daily. I said, when her watch read 5:45 am as she hasn’t changed the time on her watch since we cross a time zone yesterday, so it was actually 4:45…

A great night’s sleep with some weird dreams, so it was a struggle to get out of bed when the alarm went off at 7 am. We knew it was going to be a long day, with at 60+ mile cycle and 900+ metres of climbing (3000 ft), what we didn’t figure into the equation…

Another amazing sleep with the only disturbance being the 6 am alarm. The sleeping bags were cosy warm, but the air felt cold and damp. How cold and how damp was demonstrated by the layer of ice that covered the tent and the frozen bottles of water we had left on the ground outside of…

It remained quiet as a quiet thing all night, or at least the small part of the night either of us was conscious. There may have been a grizzly bear party going on outside for the rest of it, although if there was they were very tidy. We knew our first order of the day…

It would have been a good night’s sleep if it wasn’t for loud music coming from cars parked nearby, a crying baby in the room next door and a touch of food poisoning that had my up much of the night. It wasn’t the best start to the day from a bike perspective either. My…

Windy (phone app) had been predicting today was a windy day with wind speeds of 20+ mph and gusts of up to 40 mph, so it wasn’t a surprise when the wind picked up in the middle of the night. Apart from that brief wakeup call, the night was peaceful and the sleep was good….

A day of two halves. Through necessity today was going to be a long day as there is nothing between us and the next town with somewhere to stay for the night, Grants. Also, because the area between the two is a Native American Reservation we are not allowed to wild camp. So at least…

We are happy that today didn’t go to plan. Very happy. While we went to bed reasonably early it took a while before sleep was possible. As we lay in our sleeping bags trying to ignore the noise of the distant road one of the guy ropes on the tent pinged as if someone had…

We woke early after a magnificent night’s sleep to a very cold morning. The water we had left outside had frozen solid, which not a problem today, would require a new tactic for keep drinking water drinkable when camping if the overnight temperatures continued to drop. By the time we had dressed into warm clothes…

We woke early to get our panniers packed before heading over to the main house to have breakfast with Erec. We were still faffing about trying to fit square pegs into square holes and failing miserably when Erec came over to the cabin to ask what we would like for breakfast. We joined Erec on…

The Red Roof wins the prize for the noisiest motel room of the trip. Even though there are few weeks of cycling to do there is no way that any motel could beat it. It couldn’t have been louder if the train line actually passed through the room. In actual fact, the line was approximately…

It seems I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, which last night was a pannier full of our electronics. Deborah, on the other hand, did not have a restful night sleep due to prairie dogs finding our tent interesting and tripping over the guy ropes around the tent all night. We woke just…

You would think that after forty days of train horns sounding we could sleep through it now, but we can’t. When the time came to get up for breakfast it felt a few hours too soon. Breakfast was served in the small Mexican restaurant across the car park. It was advertised as a hot breakfast,…

We set the alarm super early. Actually, I set it earlier than I planned to set it by mistake, so it went off at 5:30 am instead of 5:50 am. Due to crossing timezones again it is now light at 6 am it is dark by 6 pm, so we are adjusting our day to…

If there were trains passing through Flagstaff last night, the noise of them was drowned out by the noise of the wind. By the time we crawled out of our tent at 7 am most of our fellow campers where already in the process of collecting together the collection of poles, pegs and canvas that…

The wind from yesterday continued enough to make enough noise in the trees above the tent to drown out some of the choruses from the local coyotes, but for once there was no nearby train line and the road next to our $10 plot of grass wasn’t busy. The aircon unit that was a few…

Another bitterly cold start to the day, which is not too surprising as we were out of the tent while it was still dark to watch the sunrise over the canyon. A couple of wrong turns, including walking through a graveyard, and we found ourselves standing on the rim, just as the sun broke the…

While I am sure the sunrise over the canyon would have been as spectacular as it was yesterday we are calling the days spent at the Grand Canyon rest days for a reason. For the first time since records began we rolled out of our tent at 8 pm. While we had a reasonably good…

While it was toasty warm in our sleeping bags, when the need did arise to leave the sleeping bag in the middle of the night in search of the little boys room it was into a night that was colder than any experienced on this trip to date. The little boys room was too far…