Written by Dave

As noted in the intro page, we are planning on riding across the USA this summer. The last time we rode across the USA was in 1992 (wow, we must be old). We married in July 1992 and because we didn’t have a proper honeymoon, we called the bike trip our honeymoon. To keep the honeymoon togetherness theme going, we crossed the country on a bicycle built for two – a tandem.

As we had jobs to get back to in 1992, we had a somewhat tight schedule. We crossed the county in only 58 days. We followed the classic “TransAmerica” trail, a route through the middle of the USA built by the group called Bike Centennial. Riding days we averaged 73 miles. It was a great trip but the pace left little time for smelling the flowers and we always said we’d do it again one day at a more leisurely pace.

A lot has changed in the last 32 years. We are now retired and have no limits on our time, so on this trip our pace will be slower. We are older and less fit now, so naturally this time our pace will be slower. We are riding single bikes, so yes, this time our pace will be slower. You get the idea, this trip we will be travelling at a much slower pace. This time around, we have mapped out a more sedate 79-day schedule.

The good folks of BikeCentennial changed their name in 1993 to Adventure Cycling Association. They are still building great bike touring routes and still offer maps to the classic “TransAmerica” trail. We’ll follow this route until mid-Wyoming before shooting north to their Northern Tier route. Our finish-line goal is in Portland, Maine. The plan has us at just under 4,100 miles – a couple hundred more than back in 1992. We liked the symmetry of riding Portland, OR to Portland, ME.

We created a planned route that you can see below:

In 1992 we rode as a twosome. This time around we are riding as a foursome about halfway and threesome thereafter, so far… Several other friends have expressed interest in joining us. So, it could be a five or sixsome at some point.

The first addition to our team is Chris Ansari. Chris and I started working together in 1989. In 1992 we were both managers in the support center for Sequent Computer Systems. When Nancy and I rode in 92, Chris helped covered my team for me at work. More importantly, by following our trip, he picked up the all too familiar cycling affliction, “one day, I’ll do that”. Chris retired last year and has time now to finally tick “ride cross-country” off his bucket list. That’s really where this whole Chris-crossing idea started. He’s not riding with us, we’re riding with him (shout out to Cindi – Chris’s lovely wife – for giving him up for a good part of the summer and letting us do his ride with him!)

Our second riding companion is Curtis Taylor. In 1994, Curtis graduated from UCDavis and joined the Sequent support center as a tech support engineer (Chris was his hiring manager). He was on the cycling team in college and has kept riding all these years. He is 10 years everyone’s junior and also a pretty serious AUDUX long distance cyclist. This July he is planning on joining his brother for RAGBRAI, a bike ride across the state of Iowa. He decided that he would join us until he has to peel off and head south to Iowa, somewhere in the middle of our trip. These long-distance riders are a funny lot, most folks would probably just fly to Iowa. If Curtis turns out to be too fast for the rest of the oldies, no worries, we’ll simply load him up with all the extra oatmeal and coffee to slow his pace (shout out to Curtis’s wife Jane as well!).

We hope to get a blog out most days. I’ve been angling that we rotate writing among the 4 riders on a daily basis. We’ll see how that goes – it could be interesting. I’ve bitten the bullet on this trip and am giving up my point and shoot digital camera. Nancy’s mobile phone photos on our last trip, in Japan, were almost always better than my point and shoot versions. And our phone was not all that fancy. For this trip, we upgraded our phone to one with the latest 50 GB camera and will blog using phone photos only. Having one less device to charge and fewer batteries is a nice side benefit.

We are trying to ride with the same “lightish” set-up that we rode in Japan. This trip is about 3x as long as our Japan trip so along the way we might wear some clothes out and for sure we’ll need to resupply some parts. The ease of Amazon shopping and deliveries is a nice feature that we didn’t have back 1992. It is great not having to take everything we need for the whole trip on the first day.

We’ve mapped every day of the ride because unlike in 1992, there are super detailed online maps and mapping tools (we use Komoot, Wahoo and Garmin). Back in 1992 we had the BikeCentennial maps that gave us tips about towns ahead, where to get parts, where we could pitch a tent and good places to eat. Back then, we didn’t have a mobile phone, much less a smart phone. Now, of course, we all have smart phones, GPS devices and tablets. Seems it will be impossible to get lost or not have a detailed advance plan for every day. I think this is better but there is some downside as in 1992 we created some of our best memories asking random strangers for help. Reminder to self – put the phone down and talk to people every now and again.

We should have this pre-trip planning thing down by now but it always seems a little stressful. Regardless of how ready we are, we plan on departing Nehalem, OR on the 29^th of May. There will be butterflies but once the pedaling begins, she’ll be right mate!