Reflections at the end of 2020

During my 4,500-mile 90-day trip in 2019 I sometimes thought that I might make an extended journey on my bike every summer. I made no such trip in 2020. One might think that was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I don't think that's the only, or even the primary, reason. After completing my 90-day trip on August 25th, in the remaining days of 2019 I rode a total of just 637 miles. During that time I took only one multi-day trip, during which I rode 127 miles and spent a night at Beaver Pond Campground. I didn't write a blog post about that trip, but if I had I would have told about how I discovered that a short trip close to home could not recreate my experience of being on the open road day after day.

In the first nine months of 2020 almost all my rides were inside Manhattan (I didn't ride outside of Manhattan until June), and during those nine months I didn't take a single multi-day trip. Why didn't I? Every day during the first year after I completed my 4,500-mile 90-day trip I would think about where I had been and what I had been doing one year prior. It was as if I were still on the 90-day trip. After I had been home for a full year my epic journey was now in the past and I was ready to seek new adventures.

In October I rode 239 miles on a three-day trip to Stroudsburg, PA, in November 227 miles on a three-day trip to New Paltz, NY, and in December 186 miles on a three-day trip to Milford, PA. In this blog I've written about these three trips in which I stayed in motels. I did no camping this year. My rides out of Manhattan during 2020 extended both northwest through New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the Delaware Water Gap and north along the Hudson River to the Catskills. So even though it seems I haven't ridden much this year, I've covered a lot of territory and have logged more than 3,000 miles.

Rides out of Manhattan in 2020

What is significant about the extent of one year that prevented me from riding much more than required to make my appointments around town until I had been home from my 4,500-mile trip for that length of time? I think it's because the orbital cycle of the earth is the longest cycle we experience. We have respiratory and breathing cycles measured in seconds, menstrual and lunar cycles which last about a month, the earth's rotational cycle which lasts one day, and the earth's orbital cycle which lasts one year. Although we make a fuss about birthdays that are a multiple of 10, a decade is an artifact of the base 10 number system and corresponds to no physical process. There are some species of cicadas that have a 13-year cycle and others that have a 17-year cycle, but I suspect only a small proportion of people have any experience of these cycles. Then there are the Milankovitch cycles related to the earth's orbital eccentricity, axial tilt, axial precession, orbital inclination, and apsidal precession, all of which are measured in thousands of years and observed only by astronomers. So it seems the earth's orbital cycle is the longest cycle we experience.

My three-day trip to West Point in 2016 was my first multi-day trip in more than 40 years. I have no record of that trip other than a few photographs (which you can see here) because I was not yet using RideWithGPS to navigate or to record my rides. Initially my plan for a three-day trip would be to ride to a destination on the first day, take a short loop ride on the second day, and ride home on the third day. In my recent three-day trips the middle day sometimes included as many miles as the first and third days, although the middle day leaves open the possibility of an easier ride, or even no ride at all. I love the three-day format because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I find a two-day trip less satisfying because it seems to have only a beginning and an end.

What lies ahead in 2021? Where else might I go for three-day trips? Where might I go for an extended trip of a month or more? Now that I have removed my stuck seat post I have the option of packing up my bike and flying with it at the beginning or end of a tour. I could do a coast-to-coast ride, perhaps the TransAmerica Trail, which was featured in the movie Inspired to Ride which inspired me to take my 4,500-mile trip in 2019. Or perhaps I would prefer a route of my own making. Wherever I ride, I know that 2021 will be full of adventure.