Control What You Can

 Where are you from?” and “Where are you going?” are the top two questions people ask us, and neither is easy to answer. No one seems to know where Glenside, PA is, so we sometimes just say “Philadelphia” or “New Jersey”. One time a guy asked “Where are you from?” and we said, “The Atlantic Ocean”.  

What does THAT mean?” he asked, totally confused, imagining, I guess,  the two of us emerging out of the waves like mermen, pedaling up onto the beach, our bikes covered in seaweed. 

The answer to “Where are you going?” is tricky, too, because there’s more than one thing we can say.

Usually we’re so wrapped up in the moment that the first thing we say is, “Well, TONIGHT we’re just trying to get to…”, but of course that’s not what people mean. We used to say “California!” or “The Pacific Ocean!”, but we realized after the first week that at the pace we were going we’d get to the Pacific Ocean sometime in October…but we have to stop mid-August. So now we say, “We’re trying to see how far we get THIS YEAR, and NEXT SUMMER we’ll get to California!” 

Because here’s one thing that became obvious almost immediately after we started…something ALWAYS happens. We’ve got maps and apps and weather reports and, still, every single day something happens we

didn’t expect. Sometimes those things aren’t so great, like a torrential downpour that showed up an hour earlier than weather.com said it would so we just had to lean up against the front of an apartment building for a half an hour to wait it out, or a road or trail being closed and the detour adding miles (and more hills!) to our day. And so we just deal with it. Other times, though, the unexpected things are awesome, like Tommy saying, “Wait…let me get a picture of this!” or a random conversation with someone that turns into a half hour sharing of stories. 

Stuff just happens…and so we slow down, get off our bikes and take the pictures or talk. Like when we said we’d take a fifteen minute break in Quaker City, Ohio then rolled right into the middle of the 118th Oak Hills Folk Festival with rides and music and funnel cakes and sno-cones and Desmond who’d come all the way from Indiana for the festival with his grandpa and grandma and HE knew how to ride a bike TOO but did we ever fall off ours?  We nodded our heads and Desmond gave us a long look then admitted, “Yeah, me too.” So you HAVE to stay for an hour at the festival, eat some mint chocolate chip ice cream and hang out with Desmond and check out the fun, right? What’s the point of blasting by a flower…or a duck…or a deer?  Yes, Tommy takes all these

pictures…and Matt takes pictures of Tommy taking pictures. It’s our thing. 

We’re in Columbus, Ohio, home of THE Ohio State University. Google says that’s 535 miles away from Mantoloking, NJ, but on bikes that trip has taken us over 700 miles as we wind and twist and stop and start. We should be in Indiana in a couple of days and in Illinois in about a week, maybe St. Louis in two or three, but just as likely maybe not…something’ll probably happen! Right now, we're just enjoying the ride.