Roughstuff

Any tour, any time, anywhere is the BEST! And as usual I love the pictures.

indyfabz

+1. I have a long weekend route to a place that I have gone to more times than I can remember. It still beats a good day at work. But I retired today, so I will no longer be able to make that comparison.

Doug64

Best wishes to you on your new adventure.

indyfabz

Thanks. I have enough stuff to do around the house that I wasn’t able to tackle last year that I should be able to keep busy until the snow melts. 😀 Until a few days ago, we hadn’t had at least 1” or more of snowfall in 715 days.

Polaris OBark

Wow. Congratulations. I knew you were considering it, but still ....

Steve B.

Congrats on your retirement. I got out April of 2022, it was by far the best decision I have made since I accepted the job 40 years earlier. You will very much enjoy it, I have.

rm -rf

Variable weather!
I use the weatherspark.com averages by month to get an idea of the local weather. But the day to day changes can be much larger than the average would indicate.

Here's Cincinnati Ohio for May, with the month's average highs and lows (switched to C instead of F). But look at these two historical data years -- it varies a lot around here.
I like the color hour-by-hour temperature chart, with sunrise and sunset indicated. Are the mornings cold? What about mid-afternoon?

Average highs and lows, with 75 and 90 percentile ranges shaded in.



May 2023 recorded temperatures. Quite cold and quite hot on different days.


May 2021. Cold weeks and hot weeks.

rm -rf

Strava.com Route Builder. This route planning app is part of the paid version of Strava. It's probably worth it to sign up and pay by the month in advance of your trip.
It uses a year (or two?) of strava ride recordings to follow popular cycling roads.
I tried clicking Wichita to start, and Cleveland to end, but that was too long.

More local to me: a quick test of Columbus Indiana to Cincinnati Ohio, then on the OTET trail, Ohio To Erie Trail system. It's mostly bike trails, paved or nice crushed stone, with a few road connections between finished parts of the trail.
This automatic route selection is quite good. I could pick different roads that I know, but these are good, and it stays off busy main roads as much as possible. It's a good way to reach the start of the trail system at downtown Cincinnati.
Don't like part of the route? drag the red route line to a different road.

I'd avoid riding for days in the really flat farmland areas of northern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, just due to boring miles of farm fields and very small towns along the way.

a_d_a_m

I think the ACA needs to edit the Northern Tier route through our area. There are much better/safer ways to get places...

irc

On my 2023 USA tour I was mainly camping. I found the Booking.com site good for checking prices on the day or the day before. It's worth booking on the site even an hour before you turn up as the walk in price can be more than the online price.

mev

I also learned this, though my most common site is Expedia rather than Booking.

I had one instance in Fort Stockton TX where a motel clerk explicitly told me I would get a better rate booking online than he would give. So I booked online, waited 15 minutes for it to clear and then checked in.

I had a different instance with the Days Inn in New Haven CT where I had checked the site in the morning for prices but not made a reservation because I wanted to keep flexibility on exactly where I ended that day. When I walked up, the quoted price $147 was significantly more than the online price of $87. I told the clerk this and checked and it was still the case - so I said I would book online instead. At that point he decided he was "full" and wouldn't be able to honor any booking - either online or in person. It was a civil conversation though he was definitely not helpful.

I went elsewhere but tried to file a complaint anyways (a) Expedia makes it hard to make non-standard type complaints - you can't review a place you didn't book and customer service seems more oriented towards a script of more typical complaints (b) I placed a review on more typical Google Maps and Tripadvisor (c) I figured out the owners email and sent a message.

My quick looking at those review sites suggested I was far from only person complaining about interactions with the staff (other common theme was persistent marijuana smell which I didn't notice). Since that time, I've also noticed the motel was sold and converted into a homeless shelter by authorities in New Haven - https://www.nhregister.com/news/arti...s-18565374.php

irc

My experience was in Blythe CA. Booked two nights at the Days Inn from a nearby McDonalds. $115 for 2 nights. Went over to check in and was asked for $215.

That was the walk in rate. When showed them the booking on my phone I got the correct rate.

Highly recommended by the way. Central location and great room for the price.

indyfabz

Get in touch with them. They would probably be happy to hear and consider your feedback.

My suggestion for a better way though the Philly ‘burbs on the Atlantic Coast route was adopted a long time ago. I suggested it after riding the original route through the area. Sprawl had made some segments no fun. I suggested a route well used by a local club.

And while I don’t know if it shows as an alternative on the permanent map, ACA said it was going to post a link to a RWGPS map I made for a segment in MT in the corresponding map addendum. The alternative I proposed was benign, pretty flat gravel that bypasses an 8 mile stretch of unpaved state highway that has truck traffic from an aggregates business. I proposed it after trying it out in 2016. Encountered more deer and waterfowl than the one moving vehicle.