There are a lot of details. I suspected there would be, but not this much. Especially for a non-planner like me. Anyway, things are progressing, and here are some of the details.

The Bike: I first thought to put a triple deraileur on and take my Motobecane Le Champion Team road bike with a BOB Yak trailer, but I’ve decided on a new Kona Jake the Snake CycloCross bike with a nice low triple gear for gettin’ over those nasty eastern mountains.

Bike Computer: CicloSport HAC 4, the Swiss Army Knife of cycling computers. It’s heart rate function is greatly helping my training, and it logs temp, altitude, power, speed distance and more, and then I can send the data to the PC and make all kinds of cool graphs.

Trailer: No panniers on this trip: I’m taking a BOB* Yak. *(Beast Of Burden).

Tent: Peak 1 Aires 4.8lb (No longer available. This was a Coleman “pro” brand, but it seems to have morphed into the Coleman Oryx 2 tent). Easy to set up, roomy for 1, a bit tight for 2, but OK. Never got wet in this tent, though the fly pole tends to slip out of it’s pocket quite regularly.

Sleeping Bag: Big Agnes Encampment with Two Track REM sleeping pad. This is a cool bag with no filling on the bottom. Instead, you slip your pad into the bottom which provides insulation. So, you never slide off your pad, and the whole system is very lightweight.

Tour Company (from Seattle to Rapid City): Cycle America

NOAA Weather Alert FM-AM-TV Radio/Flashlight/Cell Phone Charger with hand crank power generator: Eton FR300 (Now, if they’d have just included the kitchen sink..;). With this, I hopefully won’t get caught off guard by any nasty weather.

Cell Phone: Kyocera 7135 Palm Phone with keyboard (from which I’ll be posting missives to this blog). This is a cool phone which IMHO still runs circles around the Treo.

Here’s a little story I wrote about the Kyocera for an IEEE contest.

Food: On the tour part, I’ll be getting two squares a day with rest break snacks and only need to take care of lunch. I’m not taking cooking gear, so when I’m on my own, it’ll be grocery stores and restaurants with an emergency supply of jerky, packaged foods and PowerBars. There are reports that one needs about 6000 calories a day while touring. Woo-hoo!

Maps: And, I couldn’t be doing any of this without really good maps.
Kudos to those states with bike maps. To all the other states: Wyoming’s is one to look up to as the most informative and visually clean, but Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Washington and Maryland, Wisconsin (the online versions) all have good maps. I’d add Montana, but they haven’t sent me the state map I requested two months ago for which you have to call (Put it online, please.)

I bought a good number of Adventure Cycling‘s maps where my routes matched theirs. Quite clear and concise, with all kinds of info on everything you need to know out there.

Honorable mention goes to: South Dakota (who, while they don’t have a bike map per se, sent AADT (Average Annual Daily Traffic), Road Characteristics (lanes, shoulder width, etc.) and planned construction maps and a wealth of other info). And Nebraska, Connecticut & Rhode Island, too. All had good statewide maps, though I’m going through any of them on this trip.

Map “poo” awards to (a chance to flame some DOTs):
My home state of PA — woefully inadequate bike resources (like, I know you folks have the GIS inventory and can generate a map of AADT/Shoulder Width/grade/lanes –so why dontcha? Add climbs & descents and you’ll have a bike map!) BikePA is a good try at doing some routes, but it’s not enough. To visitors planning to come to PA to bike — don’t be discouraged by PENNDOT: There’s great riding here. Great training mountains. Long rolling valleys. I love my state. It’s as beautiful a place as any I’ve visited in the world (and I’ve travelled quite a bit overseas). And here in Central PA, you’re minutes away from a ride in the country. But, PENNDOT pretty much sucks as a biking resource (and as a DOT in general), though it does provide some resources — see the Bike Directory

Indiana — no statewide map?
Ohio — no statewide map? (Though there is a nice state route map, but far short of aadt, shoulders, climbs & descents).
Massachusetts and New York– although my route’s not taking me that way anymore, I was thinking about it. You get the same notes as PA et al: Where’s the statewide bike map?
And MA — No statewide map and AADT info in a spreadsheet? C’mon, how useful is that? This from a state with a big computer industry?
Michigan: Nice resources, I guess. But to pay for them by county? And no overview map to know which counties one needs to pick for a certain route. I called for the order form, but never received it. Changed my route to bypass you. Help those of us not familiar with your state out a little here, huh?

And still more to come…

This is an updated version of my 2005 Blog of my first Cross Country tour. It doesn't all translate well to a modern layout, and some of the links are obsolete, but it's more accessible and searchable than the archived original. 

Here's the original blog header text that also got lost in translation: 

This weblog documents my cross-the-usa bicycle trip. 

"It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle." - Ernest Hemingway

Across the USA on a bicycle! That’s what I’m doing this summer. It’s March and my start date of June 18th is just a little over three months away. I’ve been busy training on the bike when our Central Pennsylvania weather allows, and in the gym otherwise.

3722 miles. Starting in Seattle, Washington, through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, and ending up in or around Bethany Beach, Delaware. 14 states in 6 or 7 weeks.

I’ll be riding with the Cycle America group tour from Seattle to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, and from there on my own to the Atlantic.

Why? That’s a good question with a very much longer answer than I’ll get into here. The short version: I started serious road riding 6 years ago, and I’ve cycled over 10000 miles in that time, but never more than 3000 miles in a year, and most of that in Pennsylvania. I’ve been to the Southwest, the South, the Midwest, and the Northeast of the U.S., but never to the Northwest, and it seems like I’ve seen more of the world than I have of my own country. After talking to people who had done a cross-country ride and getting a little taste of bicycle touring on a few short trips, well, I got the bug. And turning 50 this year has a lot to do with it, too. I’m making this trip part of the celebration, and I’m shooting for 5000 miles plus this year, which should be pretty easy with a 3722 mile head start. 😉

In his book It’s not about the Bike, Lance Armstrong called serious riding “pointless suffering,” a description that is sometimes right on the money. To make the whole endeavor a lot less pointless, I’m going to be riding for charity, too. Collecting a penny or more a mile for a yet-to-be-chosen charity in Central PA ;). ALL of the money donated to charity will be given to the charity — not to pay for the trip (that’s taken care of).

So, with the support of family and friends, and the cooperation of my business customers (even though I get a lot of “you’re absolutely crazy” looks), the dream trip is well on it’s way to becoming reality.

More to come…