I'm back!

Somewhere in Nebraska...

Sorry for the lack of updates, but let me give you a quick heads up for those of you that don't already know.  A week or two into the trip I realized I wasn't going to make it back to Philly by the 17th of November (a semi-arbitrary 'deadline' based on trying to be back before Thanksgiving, when I started up work again, and before the chance of snowstorms increased).  I decided instead of missing work, Thanksgiving, and facing an ever increasing chance of snow or bad weather, I'd make the date rather than the destination my final goal.  After doing some research (bus vs train vs plane all while taking into account getting 100+ pounds worth of bike and gear back as well), I booked a series of MegaBus rides back to Philadelphia leaving Tuesday, November 15 from Omaha, NE via Chicago, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh and arriving in Philadelphia Thursday around noontime.  My last week or so of riding through Wyoming and Nebraska were excellent with temperatures above freezing most nights and daytime highs mainly in the 50s and 60s - I even got a little sunburned!  An excellent bookend to my trip and I made it home safe and sound with little hassle.  Overall my trip was a success and was quite fun - I traveled through a bunch of states that I've never been in, saw some pretty neat things, and met some great people along the way.  I don't consider cutting out the eastern half of the US a 'failure' - it just provides another trip opportunity sometime in the future!

Anyways, I will get my my reports up for the rest of my trip but I'm not sure when exactly.  When I returned home my Internet connection no longer works (and still doesn't) and there aren't any other open wi-fi connections nearby that I can access from my home so I have to walk or drive someplace to get online.  Without a photographic memory, the only way I can really piece together each day of riding really well and write up a good blog post is if I can look at my Garmin GPS route online (to get the names of the start and end points, the towns I passed through, the lakes and rivers I passed over or next to, the highways I was on, etc) and compare it to the photos that I took.  This past weekend when I got home the weather was gorgeous so I was riding my road bike quite a bit and this week I've been quite busy so I haven't had the opportunity to spend several hours someplace with a reliable internet connection where I can sit down in peace and quiet and type them up and upload the photos.  Hopefully this weekend?  Stayed tuned - I haven't forgotten about my readers!  Plus the sooner I finish typing them up, the less details that I'll forget and that will allow for a better 'diary' of my travels to look back on later...

Corn dunes!