Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
• I'm estimating the trip to take three months, which will bring me back to New
York in time for the World Series. The last trip took seventy-five days; I'm giving
myself an extra day for each year older I've gotten.
• The plan is to average three hundred miles a week, or fifty miles a day with one
day off. A very doable schedule, though there is a relentlessness to it that I'm
certain will become mentally as well as physically taxing. I averaged about sixty-
five miles a day last time.
• I'll be sleeping indoors. Against the possibility that I'll be stuck without a roof a
time or two, I'll be carrying a sleeping bag and a tent, but if I never ever sleep on
the ground again, on this trip or afterward, I'll have gotten my wish. The theory
is that if you carry an umbrella it won't rain.
Yes, I have thought about the obvious physical question: Can my body handle this?
Here's my self-assessment: I'm in reasonably good health and reasonably good
shape—for someone getting close to sixty. I get to the gym most mornings. (In my opin-
ion, given the amount of time I've spent exercising over the years, I should have a much
better physique than I do.) I drink a little too much—bourbon is my chief vice—but I
don't eat many sweets. A year ago, I rode a rigorous tour in New Zealand, somewhere
north of three hundred miles in six days, including some pretty vertical terrain, so I'm
not starting from a place of utter weakness or ineptitude. I'm six one, and I weigh just
about 190, precisely my weight when I began my trip in 1993. (I finished at 176.)
All that is mostly to the good. So is the fact that I quit smoking three months before
the 1993 trip, but it has been ten years this time.
On the other hand, my knees aren't great; they haven't been since I tore an anterior
cruciate ligament playing basketball in grad school. I've long since given that up. Tennis,
too. Don't even play much softball anymore.
I have gout, a couple of episodes a year for the last ten or so, though medication keeps
the severity down.
A tendon in my right foot is degenerating, and about half the time it hurts when I
walk.
Last year, tendinitis in my left elbow kept me from straightening my arm for about a
month.
I have tinnitus—persistent ringing in my ears—the result of some ill-advised scuba
lessons in the Caribbean a couple of winters ago.
I now take medication daily for acid reflux, which caused an irritation in the back of
my throat that gave me a persistent, and occasionally debilitating, cough off and on for
more than a year.
