Back in the USA

Miles from Home - 1734.7
Firsts / Highlights - Hearing English, driving a car for the first time in 2 ½ months
Miles Ridden - 0 miles
Vertical Feet - 0 ft.
Route - No route today
People - Just me.

This post is from July 12-16, 2009.


View Falls Village in a larger map

I assumed that a plane ride across the Atlantic would solve all of my challenges with being a mono-linguist. I forgot to consider that my first stop would be New York City where one language is barely adequate.

Getting back to U.S. soil was a long process, but fairly uneventful. I took a train from Lausanne to the Milan, a bus from the train station to the airport, a plane from Milan to JFK, a bus from JFK to Grand Central, a train from Grand Central to Wassaic and was picked up in Wassaic by my sister to go to Falls Village by car. This was my 8th and final time passing through Milano Centrale train station on this trip. Although I did not spend much time in the city, it was certainly the hub for all of my travels.



I will be spending 4 days visiting my Mom, sister and niece in Falls Village, CT before heading back to Steamboat. Since I planned to spend one day in NYC and one day visiting a college friend in a nearby town, I decided not to assemble my bike. In retrospect, I think that was a mistake to miss the exceptional riding in this part of New England, but this stop was more about catching up with people than riding.

I tabulated my bike stats for my time in Europe. My miles per day decreased a bit after the first month, but my climbing per mile increased. The totals for my 2 ½ months were:

Miles ridden – 1,974.44 (3,178 km)
Elevation gained – 155,257 feet (47,322 meters)
Time in the saddle – 160 Hours, 30 Minutes
Calories expended – 120,288 (software over-estimates this a bit)
Riding days – 46
Travel / Rest / Tourist days – 20
Days driving a car - 0
Rain days – 0
Flat tires – 1
Mechanical failures – 1 (broken chain link)



Of all that information, the one I have the most difficulty wrapping my head around is the vertical feet (elevation gained). I tried to put that number in context by visualizing a single hill that climbed to 155,000 feet. Of course, no such hill exists, but if it did, it would climb through the Troposphere and Stratosphere, pass the ozone layer and begin to enter the Mesosphere (the atmospheric layers where meteors burn up). It is a little over half the elevation required to achieve low earth orbit and is 1/6 of the way to the International Space Station. I’ve always wanted to travel into space, but Italy may be the closest I will ever get.

I will be flying from Connecticut to Steamboat on Friday where I will decide how I will spend the remainder of my sabbatical.

Thank you to everyone who has followed along and participated on my adventure so far. I will make a blog post when I decide what is next.