Concrete Plans (for a larger-than-life fools' errand)

As reluctant as we (read: Mike) might have been to follow a predetermined cross-country bike trail we've decidedly to allow the Transamerican route to have some sway over our otherwise mindless fumblings eastward.

This is the general gist (click on the map for greater detail):

We're beginning our trek in Florence, Oregon, where we will allow our rear wheels a taste of the salty Pacific before bidding her a careless adieu. The hope is to one day dip our front wheels on the east coast.

For this leg of the trip, however, it is more likely that we will make it only so far as Mogadore, Ohio: Greg's home town. The journey finds its eventual end in New York City in mid- to late-August, where we will arrive just in time for the opening of the Republican National Convention. In New York, no doubt Greg will spend weeks bailing trench-coated teenagers out of jail. By that time, I'll have eaten my happy way through roughly 2.5 tons of pistachio nuts, and over 650 avocados.

In its entirety, the Transamerica trail is 4,247.5 miles; the portion we've committed to tackle is approximately 3,400.

The most highly anticipated portion of the trip will occur somewhere in the vicinity of Newton, Kansas— about 50 miles north of Wichita— where we will be joined by the fair and preternatural Penttilatron. In the past few months she managed an arrangement with a covert and itinerant coterie, the rub of which Greg and I know very little, but whose leader Penttila evidently smacked into while she was stuck in a DC joint. In any case, what might otherwise have been an unlikely (even inadvisable) alliance has borne her another opportunity— only the most recent in a long line of Penttilatronian second-story capers.

Sordid details aside, Tron will be circling over Newton around the 28th of July, awaiting directions from below. Gregory and I have been informed that we needn't concern ourselves with the coordination of this effort (indeed, we have been advised not to stick our noses where they don't belong). Rather, we will have been sufficiently monitored by Tron's affiliated operatives, at the fruition of which time she will appear to us on the eastern horizon— a seeming aberration in a sky of uniform blue.

She will find and promptly overtake us on the road at an approximated 67 mph, having dropped some 7.5 thousand feet from a "borrowed" commuter jet. She will evidently have enough control over her chute to slow her descent, but her fire-orange mountain bike apparently serves as reason enough to forego any tangential speed concerns.

Penttilatron will accompany us to Ohio, where she will meet her parents for dinners and hammock time.