In June of 2019 Rob and I took off on what was going to be a year-long ride circling the U.S., with bits of Canada thrown in. We started from our home in New Hampshire on June 7 and headed west. We arrived on the West Coast in September, spent Thanksgiving in San Diego, Christmas in Tucson, and Mardi Gras in Louisiana. As we turned south in Florida toward the Keyes, the pandemic hit. Instead of continuing south, we bicycled to Orlando, threw our bikes in a van and drove north, back home to New Hampshire.

Rob tells everyone we have “unfinished business.” Our original plan was to bicycle south in Florida along the west coast to Key West, then north along the east coast. Because it was already hot when we were there in March and very crowded with spring breakers, we’ve decided to put that piece off for another day. Floridians have told us that November would be a good time to return.

Now that the pandemic seems about to be under control, we are planning to close the loop. On April 7 we are renting a car in Boston and will drive to Orlando where we will begin where we left off, heading north back to Boston. Maybe we’ll bike all the way back to Portsmouth where we now live. Or maybe we’ll just take the bus back from Boston, since we’ve already covered a lot of the terrain north of Boston. Who knows?

Our route will take us as close to the coastline as possible. For the first part we will follow the published Adventure Cycling East Coast route. In Virginia we plan to catch a ride across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel, take a ferry from Lewes, Delaware, to Cape May, New Jersey, another ferry from New Jersey to New York City, and again from Long Island to New London, Connecticut, and finally from Provincetown on Cape Cod to Boston. If we have time we’ll take ferries out to Block Island in Rhode Island and Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts. We’ll get in a little cycling between all those ferries. (I love ferries!) I really have no idea how many miles we’ll cover on this trip; I expect somewhere between 1500 and 2000. We plan to be back in New Hampshire by early June.