Puerto Rico tour, 2015

This was my second Adventure Cycling tour. The first was a coast-to-coast tour in 2005 via the Northern Tier. Both tours were "self-supported" in that there is no sag wagon and you carry all your stuff with you on the bike, but the Northern Tier tour was camping and this was "Inn to Inn", where you stay in a hotel each night.

I took along my vintage Magellan GPS again on this trip. Adventure Cycling had provided GPS waypoint files, but I didn't use them, partly because I couldn't find the GPS handlebar mount when I was packing for the trip so it had to live inside my pannier while riding. I did set the GPS to track each day's journey. When I got home I used a home-made computer program to download the tracks and generate the map route and elevation profiles that you see in each day's diary. However I didn't get that working until day 4, so earlier tracks were plotted manually.

As an amateur radio operator and radio enthusiast, one of the highlights of the tour was a trip to the Arecibo radio observatory. Unfortunately, in researching the trip I found out that the observatory visitors' center was closed for renovations until early 2016. However, through my ham radio connections I was able to contact the Director of Telescope Operations (who is also a licensed radio amateur) who offered to give us a private tour, which I describe in the diary for day 11.

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Last updated November 23, 2021