Author: Andy

Diving down the rabbit hole: Phytophotodermatitis

One of the most entertaining ideas I’ve learned in graduate school has been the idea of the rabbit hole. This term stems from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” where Alice takes a trip into a rabbit hole and encounters all of the surreal fantastical experiences of the novel. In a scientific context the “rabbit hole” has come to describe the intellectual process of taking a deep dive into some concept or field of knowledge. The scientific process is full of these sorts of trips.  Very often in the lab some hint of a connection between phenomena comes up and I find myself several hours later with 50 new journal articles to read, a head full of questions, deep in a rabbit hole trying to find a subterranean path to my own work. Diving down the rabbit hole has come to encompass any headlong, curiosity driven information binge.

I recently had a severe burn on my hand and in an effort to understand why my skin appeared to be melting off, I dove straight into the wonderland of phytophotodermatitis.  This post is a departure from the style usually featured here.  I’ll be covering a scientific adventure for a change.

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The Northern Tier: Days 47-52 and The End of the Tour

Day 47: Tramontane Cafe       I got an early start in Port Byron trying to beat the thunderstorms that were on the forecast for the afternoon.  The morning was nice but unfortunately already hot so I got as much mileage in before things got really terrible.  I was transitioning from the New Erie Canal … Continue reading “The Northern Tier: Days 47-52 and The End of the Tour”

Day 47: Tramontane Cafe 

     I got an early start in Port Byron trying to beat the thunderstorms that were on the forecast for the afternoon.  The morning was nice but unfortunately already hot so I got as much mileage in before things got really terrible.  I was transitioning from the New Erie Canal to the Old Canal, occasionally needing to take to streets and highways.  I made it through Syracuse pretty early after very good riding conditions.  The sunlight was filtering through the trees onto the paths I was riding on, rays of beautiful sunshine lighting the way forward.

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The Northern Tier: Days 43-46

Day 43: Warmshowers in Buffalo

     Just as I was leaving the campground at the New York state line I met a guy named Jeff.  He was also touring on a bicycle, although he was maing his own tour up the fly as he made his way from Virginia to Ontario, visiting friends and stealth camping the entire way.  He was an interesting fellow as I discovered while riding alongside him for the day.  For the uninitiated, stealth camping is when you camp in a way least likely to arouse suspicion or people’s attention of you.  This typicaly comes into play when camping on someone’s property without them knowing, camping without paying for a campsite and more generally camping anywhere illegally, all of which I have done numerous times, as it happens to be the cheapest (and therefore one of the best) forms of camping around.  Jeff is a pro at this style, having stealthed his way from Virginia all the way to Lake Erie using a hammock and his wits.

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The Northern Tier: Days 39-42

Day 39: The Gift of Wind

     Our forecast called for thunderstorms in the afternoon so Jenny and I got up early.  I woke up at five and worked on breakfast and trolled the internet trying to find an apartment in Seattle.  Side note: apartment searching while on a cross country trip is a nightmare.  More on that later. Monroeville was cool in the morning, and there was a slight fog hanging over the fields.  The wind was blowing us gently towards our destination of Bowling Green and things were shaping up for a nice morning.

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The Northern Tier: Days 33-38

Day 33: RAGBRAI

RAGBRAI is an acronym for the Des Moines Register Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. The ride has been hosted every year on the last week in July since 1973.  It starts from the west side of the state of Iowa, where riders dip their tires into the Missouri or Big Sioux River, and ends on the west side of the state, where riders dip their tires into the Mississippi. Each year the ride takes a different route, starting from a different western town and ending in a different eastern town.   Although I did not join the ride across Iowa, I did happen to be in Muscatine, this year’s finish town, on the same saturday that the ride finished there.

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The Northern Tier: Days 29-32

Day 29: Onward to the Mississippi

     I started from the Marina in Stillwater feeling very refreshed.  The sun was coming up over the east bank of the St. Croix and the water was calm.  I rode slowly through Stillwater, taking in the town in the morning light.  I love the air in the early mornings, cool and still.

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The Northern Tier: Days 23-28

Day 23: Heat Dome

This week there was a high pressure dome of air that had settled high above The Heartland, trapping warm air below and creating a massive heat wave across the plains states.  I woke up at 4:30 in Hazelton in an effort to beat some of it.  Lucky for me there was a low layer of clouds and fog that obscured the sun for the better part of the morning, allowing me several relatively cool decades before temperatures climbed into the nineties.

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The Northern Tier: Days 15-17

Day 15: Rest day in Havre Montana

Warmshowers.org is a website designed to allow people (usually bicyclists not on tour) to connect to touring cyclists and allow them a spot to stay for the night.  I found John Paul Schmidt on there and he was gracious enough to let me stay for two nights while I took a bona fide no-cycling-at-all rest day in Havre MT.

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The Northern Tier: Days 10-14

Day 10: Paradise in Whitefish

The day started smoothly from Peck Gulch.  I slept in and sat by the water, taking in the breeze and some instant coffee, proud from my last century.  I was eventually on the road and things moved smoothly to Eureka where I met Olivia and Eric of Riding Wild.  These two are on a worldwide tour, bikepacker style, and had just gotten started on the Great Divide trail when I met them in the parking lot of Stein’s.  We shared lunch sitting on the curb watching our precious bicycles and chatted about the tours we were on, how we were blogging and documenting things.

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