Wed Jun 18 00:13:42 2003
First three days -- Sharon, MA
After some hasty packing on Saturday, Emily, my dad, and I woke up early on Sunday and took off. But not before a wonderful send-off from my mom and sister. We took the requisite before-trip pictures, and drove to Race Point Beach in Provincetown (Cape Cod). We had a quick picnic lunch, I went for a swim (the water was cold), and I dipped my wheels in the water. Finally we set off at 2 PM. There were a bunch of minor auxiliary systems not working on both Emily's and my bikes. Our speedometers weren't working, for instance, and Emily's panniers kept falling off. But we didn't worry about it too much, we just wanted to start riding.
We took 6A to Truro, and I quickly discovered that Emily rides much faster on her upright bike with panniers than I do on my recumbent with a trailer. Whether this is due to an inherent slowness of my setup, or her great speed, I don't know. But she's been very accomodating about stopping and waiting periodically for me to catch up. It's given her a chance to catch up on her reading, currently "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
In Truro Dad split off to visit Milton's and Breene's cottages on Great Hollow Road, where we stay each summer, then head back to the car and drive home. Emily and I pushed on to Eastham, hoping to make it to Idle Times (the cycle shop) before five for much-needed tune-ups that we didn't have time to get in Acton.
We arrived in Eastham slightly too late, but Emily, arriving first, got a great tip on a campground from the guys at the shop. It was only two miles off; we got there in a few minutes and set up our tent with the fly off since it was such a lovely night. We cooked rice and black beans for dinner, and ate them in a tortilla with cheese.
Monday (yesterday), we got up early and rode fairly hard all day. The Cape Cod Rail Trail was beautiful biking, and 6A was fairly nice. Unfortunately, Sweet Tomatoes in Sandwich (the best pizza place in the world) was closed. Evidently Monday is a holiday in Sandwich.
We crossed the Sagamore Bridge and rode south towards Wareham on the Canal Bike Path. Wareham wasn't anything special but I wanted to find someplace with motels because I was expecting a call at 6 from Google. They were going to have an engineer do a phone screen with me, and I was hoping to ask if I could just go and use a phone in one of the rooms to talk to him. No such luck, but I found one motel with a payphone in the lobby and a comfy chair to sit in. I finally settled there even though it was 100% sketchy. The woman who answered the door when I went to ask about phones had oxygen tubes in her nose and was smoking a cigarette. Periodically while I was on the phone shouting matches would break out. It turned out alright though. I hope the interview went well. The engineer asked a series of questions on three topics. The first was coding, the second was on how to build a high-speed web-crawling engine using $50,000 of equipment. The third was "How many internal combustion engines are there in California?" I was really glad I had been reading up on interview techniques, because that's actually a pretty standard style of question in a lot of tech interviews these days, but if I hadn't heard about it, it probably would have thrown me for a loop. Each question had a set of followups, some of which were really difficult. I nailed a lot of answers and flubbed a few answers. It's always hard to tell how you did on an interview.
After the interview we went for a celebratory dinner at "Cape Thai," just to celebrate having finished the interview. They had a big sign with a lobster on it out front, and a cut-out where you could stick your head in and take a picture as a lobster. It was actually quite good. We rode a few miles north to a campground the motel owner pointed us to. When we got there, we discovered that it cost $25.00 for a camp site. We were like totally outraged to the max, but we realized it was getting dark and we probably wouldn't find a better camp site so we stayed. We met a lovely older couple named Dick and Mona, who had biked up from Florida and were headed to Maine. They were giving speeches at churches and universities along the way about global democracy and a proposed global parliament. They gave us some flyers and we chatted about gear for a while.
This morning we started at 9:00 again and headed northwest. Halfway through the day we realized it was quite possible to reach Sharon by the end of the day, where my adorable friend Becca lives, when she's not off gallivanting at summer camp. Now, we are in Sharon, and Becca is typing this for me, yay :). The end.
...choose your own adventure will continue soon. come back for the next edition... at your own risk... muahahahaha!