The post I wrote for Saturday about the new Bicycling in Virginia map sent me searching through my box of old biking info in search of an old Bikecentennial map.
It had been awhile since I'd scrambled through this stuff, and I was shocked and awed by the sheer amount of stuff that I'd picked up during my cross-country bicycle tour in 1984. I gathered up the armload of maps, brochures and books I collected on the trip, put it on the bathroom scale, and discovered it weighed in at 8 pounds!
Not something to be proud of, especially in these days of striving for ultralight cycling.
What was in there? The heaviest item was my journal (shown at top with the Olympics Summer Games sticker). And of course I had a set of maps and guidebooks for 4 of 5 sections of the TransAmerica bike trail, as well as gas station highway maps for just about every state we crossed.
But I also had dozens of free brochures I'd picked up from such places as Shirley Plantation, Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park, Mesa Verde, Santa Fe, Cave-in-Rock State Park, the 63rd Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, and the Ponderosa Guest Ranch, among others.
I also had picked up a few books, such as “The Abraham Lincoln Fact Book” that I picked up at his birthplace in Kentucky, “Cinders & Smoke” guidebook for the Silverton-Durango narrow gauge railroad in Colorado, “Southwestern Indian Tribes” and “Hayden Survey 1874-1876 of Mesa Verde and the Four Corners.”
Also in the box was a cassette tape entitled “Lazy Louie Bicycle Camp.” The proprietor of the bike camp in Hartville, Missouri, would serenade the cyclists on his guitar and sell tapes — individually re-recorded — of his songs.
Carrying all this stuff just shows how much stronger a person gets on a long bike tour. I wouldn't have wanted to start out with all this stuff. I'm also glad I did collect it, because it helps to jog my memory about some of the highlights of that bike tour.
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