After returning to the United States, we spent a whirlwind week traveling up the east coast from Philadelphia to Boston visiting family and friends along the way. We then had one week in Boston to get ready for our roughly 1,500-mile bike ride from Kennebunk, Maine to Onamia, Minnesota. We got a free tune-up on our bicycles, some extra gear, and tons of advice from some very helpful employees at Cambridge Bicycle. We traded in our hiking backpacks and hiking boots for panniers and clip-in bicycle shoes, and filled a big box with stuff we’ll need for Phase 3 but don’t want to carry on our bicycles. We did a practice ride to Westwood, MA from Boston (roughly 15 miles) to see how realistic our goal of 30 miles average per day seemed. Jess took a minor tumble when she realized at the last minute she was supposed to stop for a school bus with its stop sign out but forgot to unclip her shoes. That aside, the test was successful. We made a few minor adjustments to our weight distribution and we were set.
We were planning to celebrate our first anniversary in Kennebunk, Maine and had planned to take the train to Wells, Maine and bike to the house some friends were kindly letting us use. Unfortunately, we hadn’t actually done THAT much planning and discovered sort of late that the Amtrak Downeaster only allows bikes to be retrieved from the train in Boston, Portland, and Brunswick. That left us no choice but to push our departure to Maine back by a day, take the train to Portland, and bike 30 miles south to Kennebunk. We had inadvertently gotten another test ride opportunity. After three relaxing days in Kennebunk, we packed up our panniers for real and got on the road.
We’re planning to post a summary of our bike trip week by week, so stay tuned for updates. You can also follow us on Instagram at je_united where we are providing updates closer to real-time.