A Great Circle | Autumn Bicycle Tour | 2018

From the third floor of a circa 1890s Victorian-style home on the corner of Elm and North Streets in Saco, Maine, on the morning of 12 October 2018, I can easily visualize the finish line of my ca. two month autumn cycling tour. To complete the cycled portion of my great circle route (see map image below), I dedicated 34 days of the tour, out of 53, to bicycling. On the remaining 19 days I mostly explored locally by bike, spent quality time with friends and family, worked, or enjoyed the perspective from the passenger seat of an 18-wheeler or a cargo ship. Average distance cycled over the 34 dedicated cycling days was about 82 miles with 4200 feet of climbing per day. Total miles cycled will likely be close to 3100, my most ambitious tour to date, when I reach Bremen later today and the dock where the tour began on August 20th. With those cycling miles came hills of most sizes totaling more than 160,000 vertical feet of climbing, equivalent to five and half times up Mount Everest from sea level. Tomorrow I arrive and soon I rest, but not for long. There is far too much to see and even more to dream during our short lives on Planet Earth.

Please check back in to my blog over the next few days for a full account of my 53 day cycling tour through greater New England, USA, and Canada's Maritimes, Newfoundland, Labrador, and Quebec.