Bike Trip Aborted

I'm supposed to be in St. Thomas, Ontario, tonight. Instead, I'm at home in Michigan. Why is that?

On Tuesday night, as I was putting the finishing touches on my preparations, getting ready to make a crack-of-dawn departure, I went to grab my passport. "Thank goodness I didn't forget THIS!" I says to myself.

Then I looked at the expiration date: March, 2015. Let's see. This is June, 2015, so March, 2015, was in the past. So my passport is expired.

Do they have 24-hour passport stores? They do not. I was not going to be crossing any international borders any time soon, and certainly not in two days.

I like to think I didn't intentionally try to sabotage my trip by forgetting to check my passport's currency. No, I'm pretty sure that's not what I intended. But that was the result.

So what now? I spent the rest of the evening, into the wee hours, putting together an alternate trip, one that took me to Buffalo via Ohio. I could catch a train in Buffalo, arrive NYC on the designated day. Google maps told me that it would be a 65-mile day, then four 95-mile days. Hm. Let's go!

But I didn't have good maps, which makes me uneasy. I used Adventure Cycling's new interactive map to give me a pretty good sense of their route from Toledo to Buffalo, but it would require me to use the iPad as my main source of route guidance. It works beautifully, but it's not the same thing as having a map in front of me all the time. Four 95 miles days would be doable.

So I left at noon and rode to my father's house in Ann Arbor. I even let him take me out to dinner as a special treat (for him, of course).

I did have the Adventure Cycling map for Ann Arbor to Toledo, and as I started adding up the miles, I realized that my first day was going to be well over 100 miles. And so would the other days, since Adventure Cycling rarely takes the most direct route. (Google maps, impressive as it is, doesn't really do a very good job picking bicycle routes.)

Suddenly it all seemed too much. I still needed to get to NYC, but perhaps biking wasn't the way. I checked plane tickets and found that I could fly for the price of my hotel rooms. I could still use my return plans (only they'd be easier because I wouldn't be schlepping a bike).

So I booked the flight, got up in Ann Arbor this morning, and rode back home. As consolation, the ride was lovely. I used some old favorite roads (Huron River Drive between Ann Arbor and Dexter was my first biking route when I was a kid, and it's still gorgeous.) I stopped in at the cottage on Portage Lake at which I spent all my childhood summers, I explored a completely new route that took me north to Fowlerville before turning west, and I rode on a fair number of quite nice dirt roads. So the return trip, 68 miles, was great.

But it's discouraging, bailing out on a planned trip, even one that was thrown together at midnight. Let's face it, it was cowardice, or lack of commitment or some other personality trait that I'm not proud of. I didn't think I could do it . . . no, that's not really true. I knew I could ride four 100+ mile days. But I suddenly didn't want to. I panicked.

And now I have doubts. Will I ever bike tour again? Perhaps there's no way for me to do it by myself, other than my "commuting" rides from mid- to northern-Michigan, which are actually quite fun. I suppose I could join an organized tour--Adventure Cycling has many--but that just doesn't sound fun.

Oh well. For those of you following this grand adventure, never mind. I'm going to power wash the garage, instead.