The Unofficial Start of the Trip: A 115 Mile Test

Today we launched an unofficial beginning to the ride. It was mostly a test run. We figured a ride from Point Pleasant Beach on the shore of New Jersey to our parents house in Boyertown, Penn. (about 110 miles total) would be a great way to learn first hand about what we are still missing. We also figured it would be cool to say that we went from coast to coast. We tagged along with our mother and sister (on a field trip to a place near the Jersey Shore) to the Atlantic. And so we set off from the tide--Morgan got a little too close to the tide and started the day with a wet pair of shoes.

A summary: We got through New Jersey just fine, but upon reaching Penn. immediately went on a three hour search for a street that proved to be un-findable. Google really let us down. After asking many different people at many different places for directions we finally arrived in Quakertown, the town right beside Boyertown. As it was after dark and we had already come at least 115 miles, we got a quick ride back home.

The Lesson: we'll be getting a GPS device before we leave on Sunday.
Overall it was a good ride though. It was really hot, and certainly frustrating at times, but it was all three of our first "Century Ride" (a ride over 100 miles). And we have a pretty good idea about what we'll need to finish the journey.

And now, some housekeeping items. I'd like to give an overview of what we'll be planning to blog/tweet about as we go along on our journey.

Twitter:
Ideally, we'll tweet a number of different times each day regarding a few different topics:
--Thought of the day: Something to think about, of course.
--Question of the day: Something to think about, of course.
--An update: We'll try to give updates as we feel necessary. These are relatively straight forward and kind of boring, however useful.
--A best and worst aspect of the day: Insight into the most interesting moments of our day, whether that be biking, meeting people, or whatever else we might be getting into.
--Anything else: We don't want to limit ourselves, if we think of something else that doesn't fit into the above categories, we'll probably put it up anyway.

The Blog:
We'll blog as often as we can. We'll be staying at different peoples' houses and will blog when we can get our hands on a computer.

We'll be blogging to:

Communicate, of course.

Explain our experiences via: short stories, commentary, rants, explanation of events, poetry, video, pictures, etc.

We'll certainly be exploring the communities we stay with. We'll try to understand them and share some of their wisdom with you.

And with that, we'll leave you, at least for tonight. We'll be blogging in anticipation of the trips commencement on Sunday.