got stuck in New York for almost two weeks

Howdy everyone. Once again, sorry for the lack of posts. My 3-4 days in New York ended up turning into almost two weeks, and since then I've been traipsing through rural areas with spotty internet. I ended up pretty thoroughly back in urban nocturnal mode while in New York. Here are some pictures that encapsulate my two weeks off my bike:


Gotta love a city where you can eat street tacos, drink on the street fairly cavalierly, and more or less not wear pants without people looking at you like you're crazy.



3 AM mango juice chugging in the name of hangover avoidance.



3 AM quesadilla scarfing also in the name of hangover avoidance.



Biking out of NYC turned out to be unexpectedly awesome, although I did do another round of unintentional mountain biking. The trail I was following disappeared into a forest, and I got myself totally covered in mud. It was pretty great!


My friend Molly gave my navigator a going away present. I'm keeping it for when I really need it.


Sadly, this place was closed when I biked by. I was really curious.


I ended up in Quechee, Vermont helping park cars at a hot air balloon festival.



I stayed with a friend of a friend in White River Junction, Vermont. She had recently started up an intentional community with a hugely ambitious series of gardens, so I put myself to good use on my rest days. I've been wanting to visit Vermont for a while, as I've always found that I get along splendidly with people from Vermont. The state completely lived up to my expectations, and I managed to garden and jump in a river every day that I was there.

Interview is up!

Howdy everyone. I've been in New York for.... jeez, almost a week now. Time just rushes on by here, and I've been having a really incredible time hanging out with artists and musicians and generally getting to feel totally surrounded by an insane, vibrant creative community. I've been working on some of the art responsibilities that I've been ignoring on this trip, and so I have art news to post about.

I recently was asked to participate in an extremely awesome project being orchestrated by New York journalist Gaby Dunn. Gaby made a list of 100 people she's never had a conversation with-- it's a diverse list, including someone who pickets at abortion clinics, a one hit wonder, someone who has been left at the alter, Stephen Colbert, and a whole lot more-- and I was very happy to be #49: Someone with a gallery showing of their art. Check out the interview here! 

Finally another round of pictures

 Grave marker in the desert. 

Weird sculpture out in West Texas. The carapace is an old chainsaw. 

I went to a really bizarre place called the Museum of Ephemerata while I was in Austin. This is a memorial necklace of woven hair from the early 1900's. 

 Collection of strange taxidermy, also at the Museum of Ephemerata. 

 New Orleans

  New Orleans

  New Orleans

  New Orleans

  New Orleans

 This telephone pole has clearly been home to many, many fliers. 

  New Orleans

  New Orleans

 Biking along the Gulf Coast. Absolutely stunning. Hit some awesome tailwinds and just soared along the beach for 20 miles. 

This place was amazing! The name pretty much says all. I ate two different kinds of pie for breakfast: peach and goat cheese pie is, it turns out, fabulous. 

 Tornado damage in Tuscaloosa.

 More Tuscaloosa. Huge portions of the city looked like this for as far as you could see. 

 Silver Comet bike trail between Georgia and Atlanta. Awesome!

Pretty barn.

 It seems the ivy is winning. 

 My favorite time of day to ride is early in the morning before all the mist has cleared. 

 I would love to know the story behind this. 

Crazy dam I biked over. 

 My friend Claire's wonderful family. We had a delicious salmon dinner and apple pie. 

4,075!

For a while back at the beginning of my trip, my bike computer had developed the obnoxious habit of resetting itself to all the factory presets. This meant I lost my cumulative mileage, and it was resetting often enough that I stopped bothering to reprogram the odometer. Back in Texas it somehow spontaneously fixed itself, and has been completely reliable ever since. Thus morning I was curious to see how far I've actually gone, so I busted out the paper log I'd been keeping in my sketchbook and did some math.

4,075 miles!

I thought I was getting close to 4,000 but didn't think I'd quite hit it yet. Anyways, as a reward, I decided that instead of biking 38 miles through New Jersey traffic, I would take the train into New York City.



Gotta say, it feels pretty decadent.

I took a detour up to Montclair, NJ to visit my friend Cole. We met on the crazy commune in West Texas, and he's one of the three people with whom I now share a tattoo of the constellation Orion. It was really lovely seeing a travel friend in his native environment, and we will see each other again in a few months because he's moving to Portland.
I forgot to take a picture of us, but we did take a picture of our tattoos to send to the other member of our triad.


That's my calf and cole's arm, kinda hard to tell. Cole still has a pretty fierce biking tan.

I managed to go 2,000 miles without a flat tire but my streak ended this week. I got two flats, both of which turned out to be caused by almost invisibly small pieces of metal that I had to pull out of my tires with pliers.


Yup, that little thing that looks like an eyelash is enough to bring me to an obnoxious standstill. So cars, while I dislike it when you roll down your windows and blare on your horns and yell at me about the extra six inches of room I should be riding in, I find the experience preferable to riding through metal shavings and gravel that give me innumerable flats.

Horse farm!

I crossed into Pennsylvania yesterday and had only gone about two miles before seeing my first Amish horse drawn wagon.






The scenery here is absolutely beautiful, although bucolic rolling hills are way more fun to look at than ride over. They're deceptively steep around these parts.

I passed this gorgeous old mill house on this morning's ride.



So after going down an extremely steep gravel hill, I got to a sign warning me that the road was closed 1000 yards ahead. I decided to continue down the hill, assuming that whatever meant closed to a car would be navigable by bike.
That turned out to be... True, but only because I am extremely stubborn. Turns out there was an only partially finished bridge over a river, so I did the only natural thing and carried my bike over the construction barrier, and then took my saddlebags off and carried everything down the construction scaffolding. It takes a lot to stop a determined bicycle!


Now I'm staying with a friend's family on their awesome horse farm!

Location:Downingtown Pike,West Chester,United States

I have a new least favorite activity: trying to bike north out of DC. Particularly at rush hour on the Friday of a holiday weekend. I had plans to just casually put in a half day of riding and get myself out of the suburbs, but I ended up completely mired in urban traffic and made painfully slow progress. But! I finally made it to the outskirts and saw an ale house, and decided that beer and fish and chips would greatly improve my day.

I ended up meeting two hilarious cousins, both named Buck, who let me stay at their house. They were preparing for their 10th annual epic memorial day crab feed, and had an array of festive hats for the occasion. It was very tempting to stick around til Sunday for the festivities, as crab is pretty much my favorite thing in the world, but I still have too much restless momentum.



The two Bucks.


Why can't they just come out and say speed bump?


Pretty series of locks that I biked on in my attempt to get out of DC. Would have liked them more if they hadn't carried me west instead of northeast...


I imagine the conversation that led to spotsylvania went something like this:
"Hey! This is a nice spot, we should make a town here."
"Yeah! It is a nice spot. We can name it Spotsville."
"That sounds silly, we want something more imposing, more... exotic."
"How about Spotsylvania?"

I've crossed a few more state lines (states are just so close together this side of the Mississippi!) and am in the lovely town of Carrboro, North Carolina. The folks I'm staying with took me to an incredible salad bar, where I proceeded to eat a pile of greens far larger than my head. The rest of the afternoon was then spent with bloody marys, beet pizza, and the Sunday New York Times. I had gone 65 miles that morning, but had so much lazy resting that it felt like I'd been off my bike for days.


South Carolina


And then north Carolina the next day.


This picture doesn't really show just how pretty the morning fog was.

Location:Aberdeen Dr,Chapel Hill,United States