Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Almost

Fredonia, NY

I finally got a few days of "normal" riding in again - after going around 500 miles in eleven days, I've done about 750 in the last few days, including a little over 400 the day before yesterday.  Today and tomorrow combined will be around 500 miles, so right on track for my usual 250 miles a day.

After Toronto it's back to one city a day until I get to Chicago.  The end of the trip has really snuck up on me. It doesn't seem like that long ago - in fact, it wasn't that long ago - that I wasn't even three quarters done with the trip.


Yes, I made a graph of how many states I've been to over time. I'm a data nerd, what can I say?
The last third of the trip the states have been flying by - one of the days I even covered four states (D.C. to Philadelphia covered Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). A month ago I wasn't even half done with the states, and now I've got four states left to go, and they hardly even feel like they count, they're so close to home.

With a few exceptions, the states I've been to recently haven't really had the same "new" feel to them that they did when I was out west. At some point in the last four years, I've taken weekend road trips to New York City, D.C., New Orleans, Tallahassee, and various places in South and North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee... so those weren't all that new for me. The last place that really felt new was Texas, even though places like Connecticut and Maine were technically new.

And as far as the ones I've got left, I've been to concerts in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana - some on a weeknight and I made it back for work the next day. Illinois - well once I get there the trip is pretty much over, even though I'll probably spend a few days in Chicago and a day or two in Rockford before heading back to Peoria and "officially" ending the trip.

The official end of the trip is September 17th - I rode for 48 days before I arrived in Las Vegas and caught a flight back to the Midwest, and from my arrival in Vegas, the 17th is exactly 52 days. One hundred days seems like a nice round number for the trip (this guy agrees). 100 days, 48 states, and what will probably end up being around 21,000 miles.

Almost done. Now to just find a job...

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