 Thanks everyone for coming and spending your Saturday morning here and a little bit of your afternoon There are many pictures so I'll move pretty quickly. I live in San Francisco. I grew up in Boston. I've been here since the year 2000 That's the route that I took roughly speaking It was a 4,257 mile bike ride It took about eight weeks 55 days I took a few days off in that period too across four time zones went over a few went through a few deserts over some mountain chains and I was alone. I couldn't really convince anybody to go with me in that in the short period of time that I spent getting ready for the trip I was 38 during the trip. I'm 39 now I do have out-of-shape bike ride on Facebook because that's what I what I was and what I'm now back to being a year after the trip I'm an engineer When I was in high school I used to bike to libraries and gradually I got to the libraries of say 30 towns in eastern Massachusetts and a couple of other places I have bad knees probably from running track in high school and I really just started biking again in the year 2009 My day job is pretty much sitting in my chair staring at my computer screen or at things that I'm drawing at my desk This is a part of a flood barrier on the east side of New Orleans. It was built after Hurricane Katrina This right here is about two and a half stories above the waterway That's what's protecting eastern New Orleans from the next set of hurricanes in 2009 when I started biking in San Francisco, I picked up this book and Because I was born as sort of a fascist and I like to follow rules and not get killed on the road I have this with me that I'm carrying all the time so that I avoid getting doored and you know Going on the inside of somebody who's turning right and getting run over that way I'm also a map fetishist, so I like to draw all the places I go in San Francisco. That's hanging on my fridge If you follow that book, this is pretty much what you'll cover in the city I started thinking about getting a new bike at the end of 2012 and I'm a cheap Yankee, so I really suffered some sticker shock thinking about a 600 dollar road bike I wanted something fast, but I gradually started thinking well, I'll get a bike that can handle The load of traveling across the country. Maybe in a few years. I'll give it a shot I also started buying some of the equipment at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 and started sniffing around to see if anybody would go with me and April about two months before I actually went on the trip. I decided I would give it a shot See May 14th two weeks before the trip. I bought this bike So I had two weekends of loaded loaded practice So prior to loading this bike up on May 17th or so I had never had a bike with all this weight on it June 1st I started the ride mainly because it's easier to keep track of time day one June 1 day 2 June 2 I got to go through these 13 states and We'll roll through those and you'll see some of the pictures that I took when I was out on the road So as you get into Sacramento, there's this lovely bridge. It's gold on one side. It's yellow on the other side The American River Start to see a little bit of the the water that you have in the west the first of the great rivers that I got to cross If you make a wrong turn and you leave your route you get to see Folsom Dam One and a half miles downhill One and a half miles back uphill. I had just read a book called the Egyptian It's a novel about the time of King Tut before this trip. So anytime I saw a hawk. It was the God Horus smiling upon me Unfortunately a bird can't really smile. So next time I'll pick a different God This was day day three up in the Sierra Nevada the first day of trying out my girlfriend's tent my air mattress my new sleeping bag see if my new stove worked Pots and pans freeze-dried food. There's a lot of stuff that was bought brand new for the trip So this is the first day that I got to camp There's the stove in action fits in the palm of your hand I will mention Middle of the night I had to wake up because my tent was surrounded by water from the road crews Spraying water on the road to keep the dust down So I had to pick up the tent and walk it over put it back down crawl back inside This is getting close to Carson Pass This is the hardest part of the trip day four again, I didn't have much exercise before the trip so Creeping up to 8,574 feet above sea level took a little bit of work Also, there was some thunder some rain Wasn't sure which pieces of clothing to put on because it was sometimes pelting me and other times completely dry This is on the backside if you look carefully you can see a little bit of the mist on the road That's that's actually from the precipitation hitting it. These are the trip profiles the first four of them Show what you have to go through in order to get east of the Rocky Mountains So that one there's day four up at the top That's Carson Pass In Nevada now, I didn't open the Nevada map until maybe the week before the trip. Okay, so I thought I know Nevada Nevada is is high up there. That's elevation 4,000. You see how flat that is. It's high It's flat right so then a week before I open it up and I see It's not flat. Okay So it's about four if you count them is about 14 mountain ranges that you have to cross when you go through Nevada The worst bit or so I thought was in here climbing up from Cedar City You go up about a mile in elevation over the course of two and a half hours of biking yeah, and People love to say okay. You're you're east of the Rockies. You're free of all this stuff. It's easy Until you get to Missouri and then you get this heart monitor here Those are the Ozark mountains and they're basically as steep as what you have in Utah They just don't last this long so you go up 10 minutes 20 minutes and then you have a roller coaster down 10 minutes 20 you do that hundred times in the day and you're done with that day These are little notes here are the days where I was in each spot the little arrows where I stopped On this day. It was 116 miles of up and down So Nevada Nevada is a lot of fun if you ride your bike from here in about five days you can be out in the desert This is Carson City same bike. Oh That's when I Called up work and emailed people and told them what I was doing. So I told the work. I was leaving for a hundred days I was tired. I didn't mind if they asked me at that point Little bit stressed out, but I needed to take the adventure of a lifetime and Kind of go for it. So I said to be out for a hundred days But I didn't tell most people what I was up to at this point. I had some credibility I had crawled over the mountains and I felt ah, I don't have to slink back and With my tail between my legs and say well, I tried and failed you know two days out so Secret that secret was out and then after that I had vacation. So 8 to 12 hours of pedaling in the day 51 to 120 miles per day The average on a riding day in the second month was 92 miles per day So this was at the end of 97 mile day And some people said you should just ride your bike around for another month another three miles in order to get a hundred miler But I was tired When you're out there, it looks like that You don't see a lot of cars in some places. You might see seven or eight cars in an hour in a few spots Choose a reliable vehicle The Navy was out there in the middle of the desert, which seems a bit weird. I'm glad I got to the one eating place before they did a Whole bunch of them showed up just after That's one of the mountain ranges that's coming up. This is 95 miles into Churchill County, Nevada There is some some plant life wouldn't exactly call it greenery and Dust devils see a lot of dust devils swirling around Sometimes you end up passing through them only a couple of times and You crawl you climb up one of these mountain ranges and then you go downhill for 10 miles 15 miles, maybe even 20 miles. It is so much fun the whole time if you're like me you're humming Judas Priest songs and whatnot Very heavy on the guitar I don't really sing on the other side. Just keep on going see some interesting architecture in the West and This place I was just about to cross into Utah. I got up a little bit before dawn to try to avoid the Sun and the road was covered in animals live animals rabbits and some other fluffy things and Got this view around dawn the last view of Nevada and crossed my first time zone boundary You know lodgings in Utah aren't quite the same as San Francisco. I Didn't stay there. This thing will keep you alive in the West. It is the best food on earth This is a chocolate and peanut butter milkshake You can eat as many of those as you like on these bike rides if you want to lose weight This is a great way to lose weight if you don't have any to spare you better put these away whenever they're available Look like an old mine shaft Gotta be careful out there It's a really a strange thing you do see a lot of animals that didn't make it and how quickly the inside turns into what looks Like soil is is marvelous So there you go Try not to exceed the speed limit on these uphills This is that that steepest longest climb part that I was worried about So 15 miles essentially up, but it is it is gorgeous Also when you're out there you're out on your own the motorcyclists see you the drivers see you they realize It's 50 miles to the next town people tend to be pretty friendly. You're getting waves and thumbs up and whatnot You start to see some of the orange and white bands in the rock there Getting closer to the top and then you get a reward So this is a Cedar Breaks National Park and so the elevation before that starting in the morning was about 5000 in Cedar City and There's no point taking a ride like this theoretically getting some exercise and then coming back with skin cancer So try to protect yourself a lot of people out on the road Not that there are a lot of people doing this, but they look like lobsters. They're they're red so it's good to have sun protective clothes that are breathable with the sweat away and Keep the dust out. Don't show the drivers that you're upset with them This is Bryce Canyon. You can see some of the hoodoos in the upper left One of the nicest campsites was in Tropic, Utah So you can see the one-man tent that I had barred for the trip see my paneers This is my usual setup. I would tend to chain up the bike to whatever objects were available After I had unloaded it. Let's see. This is Escalante or Grand Staircase National Park As I was riding along I snapped this picture as part of what I felt was my obligation Just to take a picture of the thing but with all the other senior it was just Doesn't it's not so great compared to some of the other places that I've been but you get back and you realize as you go Through the photos that really it's thousands of miles of some great scenery even your even your subpar shots are pretty attractive Neil is he's about 59 so he's about 20 years my senior he started a day after me and We met in Middlegate, Nevada and we were sort of leapfrogging typically When we're out west in the deserts we would meet at the end of the day You don't have many places that you can stop In fact, there was a series of three days where I was concerned logistically How much water you kept you carry how much food what what if there's an emergency? So the first of those three days it was about 65 miles of riding. All right, I could handle that I had enough water the next day was about 75 miles of riding All right did that and the next day it was about 80 miles before I stopped and it's basically without any gas stations Without any houses. No no artifacts at all. No water sources You're on your own carrying your two gallons or 15 and a half pounds of water in the bike But one of the nice things is It's represented by this picture of Neil here is that this is more of an adventure than some kind of crazy Exercise fanaticism you get to see the country you get this experience that you sort of you take ownership of it and If you have the right bike with the right gears you can do it without killing yourself without grinding your knees to dust and all that Neil just crossed the country for the continent for his third time this summer. He went across Canada That's me and smiling because I'm going to go down that Some bikers took this picture Motorcyclist and you can see the the road that I get to go on here winding its way along Close-up mostly bear rock another close-up Now in this place this motel I never Know not this motel. Hold on. This is much older I'm just hiding the previous one because it has my credit card info, but that that envelope there Is where you leave the money at the hotel. I never saw any staff So that's in Boulder, Utah You show up you pick up some keys that are hanging on the door and an envelope and you stick your money in there You write your credit card info Have a great time wash your clothes in the sink as I usually do hang them out on the bushes and That was that very straightforward transaction The next day I went across the street and visited some anasazi ruins This is always nice when you're going down to see that Usually what I would do is work my way up a hill and if I took a break I'd take a break at the top of the hill Snack eat my eminence with peanuts or Slim Jim's whatever keeps in the bags And then cruise down for 10 miles and get warmed up again Also at the tops of the mountains is when your your phone might work and the deserts Down in the Great Basin the mountains tend to block your cell phone reception even in some towns This is as I'm getting into Capitol Reef National Park, and this is really I didn't take enough pictures here Because I was just enjoying the stunning beauty of it. It was it was probably the best part of the trip the most beautiful scenery Also is mostly downhill for 20 miles Reason this called Capitol Reef is because These rocks kind of look like the Capitol building in Washington Allegedly I Met a really nice family when I took a break in Capitol Reef I was getting more water at the at the visitor's center and They chatted with me they asked some questions and stuff and then I paused here fortunately not to pee on the side of the road but just to drink water and They passed me and they're honking their horns and waving out the window really nice folks The next day they did the same thing that happened to stay in the same time same town apparently and they caught up with me around Lake Powell So Factory butte really looks like a factory to me Now I got to this campsite and there are two rabbits there. They were there first. They weren't leaving So they just hung out It's a piece of bare rock that was along the trail now when you get this kind of vista you realize you're just you're just out in it It's you there's not much else It's it's it's so bare if you look ahead and you peer closely you can see The bridge that you have to cross next as you kind of wind around that away This is approaching the Colorado River. I think that's called Devil's Gulch or Devil's Creek That's my campsite in San Juan County, Utah Utah is a really beautiful place but hot dangerous in terms of heat stroke so you have to have your water you have to have some salt in your body some electrolytes and Take it as easy as possible Maybe don't carry a backpack so that your clothes can allow your your sweats to evaporate and keep you a little bit cooler But there's no question that it's hot and you either take a break at this point after 50 miles or You have to go a hundred and twenty five hundred fifty miles to the next stopping place So I got here early Set up my really hot tent Did my laundry in a sink there was nobody else camping there the There's this guy one of the lizards That's the view from the tent That's the lake. There's no water in it So it's very risky to launch your boat here and be careful of the muscles Any muscle they can handle that you do not want to mess with So the next day after not sleeping too well Van pulled in at one in the morning figured I was going to get murdered Fortunately, I had to use my army survival manual to make a field expedient weapon the night before I had sort of a morning Star made of a rock in my clothesline There's no problem This note here somebody left a gallon jug unopened along the roadside for me and the note is I saw you on your bike I've been backpacking so I can only imagine your thirst enjoy the white car drank as much of that as I could put the rest in my water bags and bottles and of course packed out the garbage Here's a cactus with some waxy flowers that I thought was pretty see a bunch of those and Some cliff dwellings first cliff cliff dwellings that I had ever seen This is on a nice 10 minute One-way hike you come back and some people have left some things in your helmet for you My camera was acting up there, so This Frenchman was riding kind of a loop all around the west and you can see that he is a trailer on his bike Rather than the saddle bags are the peneers that I have And yeah, there's a French flag on this on the tail You can go pretty fast in some places Up to 54 miles per hour, and I should say if you do have some questions you can you can chime in Let's see Minimum speed about 2.9 miles per hour a little bit slower than walking maybe not slower than walking pushing this out the hill but I Had one flat tire and I had one slowly slow leak that I didn't even Recognize for a little while because the next day I had to replace my wheel my tires anyway After 3,000 miles, which is too late. You could see the the rear wheel was worn down to the next color of rubber It's it's hard to see it with the mudguard there and the bags along and and whatnot And I thought I had a little bit more time I didn't So I got a slow leak around Kentucky and I got my one flat in New York the second to last state so a little green piece of glass You know it was rainy Fortunately, I had some place I could pull over and pretty easily take the wheel off and change it So it's not a prairie dog. They tell me it's a ground squirrel So see his head pointing this way. It's these little shoulders He has friends They squeak a lot one of them tries to distract you and the others run away Not fast enough sometimes that wasn't me, but it was the only way I could get a close-up was to Take a picture of a defunct one In the bag. There are some clothes for cold weather as well just in case I Was above the snow in some places Kind of felt bad about taking a picture of this because this is a reservoir. It's man-made. It's not natural beauty But it's I thought it was still pretty nice and here I am reaching the highest point of the trip crossing Monarch Pass in the Rocky Mountains and So this van I'm coming up behind this van and on the back. It says following me to Jesus in big letters and I see the two men. There's another man somewhere here They look like they're appreciating the beautiful vista of all these mountain tops and then I passed them and I look back And I'm like not following you anywhere today So again get a reliable vehicle. They'd be only two wheels to look after and this engine or something But this is about 30 seconds from the top fortunately, there was a place you could buy radiator fluid and Get on this way again But it's a little about two miles up 11,312 feet Colorado housing is not the not quite the same as in Francisco either, but It it matches them the mountains After you're through the mountains you look back. This is the Rocky Mountains So I just just looks like a table a lot of points on the table and In the West it's full of fences barbed wire and post I didn't go there But there are two museums somewhere out west one is a post museum and another one is a barbed wire museum I'm not making that up There's also dust barbed wire dust posts not so many animals Moving from the west to the east I thought I'd have a prevailing west wind pushing me and it doesn't really work that way You get a south wind you get a north wind Sometimes you get an east wind But the wind won't help you too much no matter where you go. You're always going to be muttering bad things under your breath you don't necessarily get cell reception as I mentioned and Even if you're staying in motels There may be no washing machine in the town at the motel anywhere So you end up doing the sink laundry thing. I have one shirt. That's the shirt every night. It got well almost every night get washed Usually by hand. I'm carrying a sink plug Kansas I ran into another rider out there that told me That another rider had given up in Kansas out of boredom I don't know. I'm easily entertained. I focus on all the things that are going on Cross another time zone check that off my list The horses come over they look at me. They're curious the horses come towards you cow The cows usually walk away. They run away Saw some cows running in Nevada because they didn't know what I was But there's a lot to look at in Kansas Pumpjacks Seems you know the farms are few and far between but it seems that everybody has a pump jack Taking oil from the earth You get interesting scenery There's some buildings If you like peanut butter, this is a marker related to George Washington cover and I like peanut butter in my shakes. So This was the tallest building in the West for a long time. I think At least that's what the sign said If you've read Animal Farm this could happen a lot of action going on if you get behind one of those It's really helpful to have this over your mouth Well somewhat helpful I did get behind one got a face full of whatever comes out the back of the combine harvesters See all kinds of crops You smell the fresh cut hay. It's sweet You meet your second cousin once removed I'm a genealogy buff, so that's how we know each other you see fires You get to sleep in a church The pastor invited me go ahead just spread out right on the benches on the pews That's my sleeping bag up front Is this okay? Yeah, that's fine There you go There's the bike the next morning Rolling into this town. I looked at my maps that said in this town You can you can sleep outside the church. So I called them. I was about 10 20 miles away and On the foot he said no no no it's full of ticks So leave inside the church or I'd say inside of our house, okay? And then when he was leading me around of he was having me duck duck You have to duck their trees all over the place and they're just full of ticks It's interesting place about 97 people lived in this town Okay, if you like the Billy Joel song that talks about white wall tires This was a part of a 12 mile detour because a bunch of bridges were shut down wild life scorched earth I didn't know we still practice slash and burn agriculture in this country, but maybe we do this this Could have been a lightning strike, but I think some of this was intentional a lot of cereal after this part of the trip I really wanted to eat some shredded wheat Missouri and more cattle and some horses And we're starting to get into the Ozarks. There's a dip and there'll be another rise and do that for 80 or 100 times One town had a little store associated with the gas station. They didn't sell any breakfast cereal That's what I tend to eat in the morning. So that day I stuck with graham crackers and my usual milk and Maybe some of those M&Ms After Missouri or Eastern Missouri I was winging it. I no longer was on an adventure cycling route prior to that I was following the Western Express route. So that took me to Pueblo, Colorado And then I got on the trans-america route, which is the most typical route for crossing from or crossing the country And then I wanted to go to St. Louis. So I would Write down the directions from Google Maps just a piece of paper the day before You'll see those slips of paper in my map case on the bike And just follow those and turn off my phone as was my practice because its battery would disappear very very quickly That meant walking through some creeks You can kind of see it in the sun there This maybe was looking back after I'd taken my shoes off and walk the bike through the water Part of the payoff in St. Louis When you are 10 miles out of town this dominates the skyline. It's a beautiful stainless steel structure It's 600 something feet tall the cross section at the bottom is a triangle. I'm an engineer Okay, the cross section of the bottom is 51 feet on a side 17 feet on a side at the top They built it in the 60s. Nobody died building it. They look very nonchalant building it without any helmets and Up there, you know 60 stories above the ground Yes, yes, it feels like you're in a Jetsons episode It's you know your foreclosest friends crammed into those windowless yellow capsules Yeah, there it is And again, you can see it there Here I'm standing on top of something that many people haven't heard of but it's the largest Archaeological site north of Mexico. It's called Cahokia and it has a hundred earthen mounds built a thousand or two thousand years ago by the Native Americans and It's just ten miles out of St. Louis back in town Gleaming stainless steel Then it turns to gold near sunset So there are some windows up in the top and then Fireworks, this was just after the 4th of July The next day was pretty fun because it was the day of three states. It's a very good for your ego You get to do some Missouri some Illinois Move on into Kentucky Eads Bridge is the first bridge across the Mississippi River It's a big thing for civil engineers like me. So it rode across that and into some decrepit Formerly paved roads with some nice countryside Yeah Yes, yes, no, no stay away from sidewalks and if you can avoid bike paths all that sort of stuff They're just too slow. They're not made for long-distance travelers So yeah get out in the middle of the lane so that you're telegraphing to the drivers that you're not sharing the lane in That case. It's just too dangerous I'll say about drivers. There are you know three types of drivers when you're out there on these empty roads Particularly in Nevada a good percentage give you a wide berth across the yellow line give you some extra margin in case you fall off Most drivers if you wake them up a little bit, they'll give you that wide berth when the road is empty I spent a lot of time doing sort of a one-armed backstroke thing going like this very very Largely saying move around and then they would wake up and they're go Okay, the road's empty and they would move over but then there's that last five ten percent who've passed you with a foot to spare There's nothing you can do about them Sometimes I left the road because they were too close One guy was passing some traffic. He had three cars to pass and an otherwise empty road. I think it was Ohio He came over to my lane. It was coming right at me in his pickup truck Get off the road so Here is a stern wheeler. You can see the the paddle wheel on the back of this boat. That's the Ohio River and Kentucky a little bit blurry about to cross some crazy dangerous high bridge into Kentucky If you've read Uncle Tom's cabin apparently Uncle Tom lived there. That's the site of cabin Reigned a whole bunch here. I was very lucky. I Ducked out of it. Just as it started into a supermarket and spent like two hours staying away from the downpour and Then rode in the mist. This was the first and only time I saw pigs on the trip about three of them Pigs See other things to not just livestock. You see marmots. You see a lot of lizards a lot of Flying grasshoppers very few mosquitoes and not where I would expect them. Here's some of the runoff from that storm my girlfriend kept Kept wishing that I would get it down for some horrible storm so that I would have a story to tell afterwards So that I would suffer a little bit So after 3,000 miles, this is what the tires look like Rear tire with all all the weight on it front was pretty far gone too and the side walls sides of the tires crack a little bit given how they flex under under your Load every you know as the cycle goes as the tire tire goes around So I had planned to rotate my tires part way through the trip But at this point I just got rid of both of them and replace them Here's another paddle boat another fire In Colorado you got to see Chinook helicopters flying around looking for all the all the smoke and fire The air was was was full of smoke. You could smell it taste it in your mouth The day before apparently had been worse. I mean you would end up with so telling you so I was luckier than some other people who are passing through through the fire area the Ohio River I Cross the Ohio River four times. So this is one time when I was going south of the river Out in Kentucky You see a lot of abandoned houses around the country maybe from farms Consolidating or the next generation moves away moves to the city. It's it's a little bit depressing It's interesting something to look at Ohio Ohio does such a terrible. Yeah Let's see I rode for 49 and a half days and I took breaks on five and a half days So total I was out there for 55 days So one day in 10 My first break I think was on day 13 In Cedar City before that big climb One of the important resources that is not listed in the adventure cycling maps is Back rub if you can get a massage somewhere. That's pretty good And I did that in Cedar City Aerial view of the bike Now this guy over here is serpent bound It's about a quarter of a mile long and it sort of looks like a snake swallowing an egg That's too big for it. And that's why I was in Ohio So It's really hard to see the whole thing the head is up there at the far end this is a thousand or two thousand years old and Ohio is full of these Native American sites Hope all Indians all over the place all this mound building culture was just it was just a rich site You can imagine the rich agricultural land and they also had very interesting artwork like carved into Micah But we don't know too much about just what they left behind and what's essentially their cemeteries This was probably built as a cemetery by these Indians each one of those mounds is a place where they had a house and they cremated people and had some rituals and after a while they stopped using that particular point and built a Mound over it and there's the mound one of the mounds And out on the roads of Ohio enjoying modern culture Where is it? There we go? another one pretty neat I Was falling a part of the Underground Railroad route. It's another adventure cycling mapped route and Sometimes I left it because it seemed to meander a bit too much But for the most part I was trying to follow the Ohio River get into Ohio and work my way north and Half of Ohio maybe more than half was just winging it from then on I was just getting my Google Maps directions right in them down on slips of paper Taking free maps from Ohio up from from motels when I had them some nice looking all American towns I would say I keep telling myself I'm going to look up some of what these signs are they're probably genetically modified serial numbered crops that you can that you can buy Yeah No, I would look back and forth between the car directions and the walking directions and You can really go on any almost any of the US routes with the black and white signs You can't go on the interstates, but you can you can go on almost everything except for the interstates If you read some of bikes bicycling history You'll find that a lot of these high-quality roads are actually built as part of the movement a hundred-something years ago By bicyclists to get quality paved roads. Oh Sorry There's more earthworks. This is what is it 1700 feet across this here. There's a golf course built into this now They they maintain that it's two or four miles across this whole thing It took takes a little while to ride from this part of it over there to another great circle These are probably not cemeteries by great ritual centers. We don't know what they did there soccer dancing. Who knows Maybe that's how they figured out who to bury in the in the fancy cemeteries and in this culture, it seems they had very small settlements just little villages and Somehow they selected some of their best people to cremate not everybody got cremated and chucked into the cemeteries But there must have been some basis for that It's hard to imagine sort of a Chieftain ship or something with so so small Settlements, but oh There's the golf course more of Ohio This one, it's another case why I didn't really think I should take a picture of this because It's sort of fake. Okay, this bridge was knocked down I think in the 90s when the river rose too high and they rebuilt it So it doesn't really count as this ancient covered bridge still looks nice so more housing and Another thing I wanted to see you on this trip was the Great Lakes. This is Lake Erie a little bit of Pennsylvania Pennsylvania is kind of small with tiny trees a lot of them big airplanes back there and Some riders from Canada this this family really fascinated me there are there are three kids there Everybody's on a bike. They're not really a bike a trike a tricycle recumbent tricycle so You see the two front wheels there and you see the father's wheels bear Balding like my wheel. They're quite early in their trip, but he says that he adjusted the angle of the wheels and Stop wearing down You lie back in that seat you've got these pedals here So you feed up in front of you as you go along now scarlet the youngest one is being towed by dad I think that's kind of hard to see her in that in that packaging there The two kids if you ask them well, you know, what are you doing on this trip and stuff from parents made us go Thousand miles later. I found an article on the web and the reporters asked them our parents made us go They're still saying it the whole way Let's see the daughter is 12 the son I think 11 or maybe 13 and 12 but I asked them if they felt they had gotten stronger from this and Son said no daughter said yes There they are and everybody's got a trailer There's it looks like a car seat Bags here like my bags a lot of weight Nice thing about this kind of bike is it's more efficient than an upright bike But it's harder to be seen perhaps and in fact the wife was hit by a car sometime along their journey She's all right. I guess they got a new bike the bike was heavily damaged but Yeah, these they're fast, but there's a little bit of a trade-off They're also kind of wide and people are a little drivers are probably freaked out by by seeing them You can see the Sun's rigged pretty well and as I said little scarlet who's about four years old is in that carrier. Oh And they had sold all their stuff they were traveling through Texas and Florida and kind of all along the east New York had some not quite offshore wind farms in New York nice houses Somebody told me I was crazy near this house because it was hot and sweaty out 100 degrees or whatever boring people But actually one place where I took up my my thermometer and measured the temperature Back in Utah at that campsite. It was 105 degrees at 6 p.m. So it did get pretty toasty, but I generate my own breeze by pedaling some places but our birds some interesting architecture and First cousin once removed Also, somebody I know from genealogy and the rain the pouring rain It finally got me. I Have the rain gear for legs and upper body, but wet shoes. You can't really go very far I should have gotten rain boots sort of booties before the trip, but I didn't So this was a short day Nevertheless a short day of screaming at 40 miles an hour with water streaming everywhere off the wheels and stuff and hoping that nothing happened rain and Bambi Next to what amounted to a freeway. So hopefully Bambi stayed there This is part of the Erie Canal a liftgate on the Erie Canal This one's called Mountain Road Fortunately, I'm at the right end of Mountain Road About to go down Here we are in the capital of New York State and then Massachusetts the other liberal state You have a lot of swamps there a lot of ponds actually with lily pads on them. It's beautiful. You should go It's the best state out of leafy green stuff. We have mosquitoes too. They're big I didn't know we had houses like this, but we have that too and yep proof. It was raining We have pizza in Massachusetts by Puppa Genos and sometimes you have to cross defunct railroad tracks to get there But it's worth it Unless the rain picks up later on and your last 12 miles or so are horrible The road I took into into Boston was pretty much the worst thing you can bike. It's route 9 Nightmare you get drivers pausing to let you know you're crazy to be out here. You're gonna die. Well, I know I grew up there So this is Castle Island Allegedly Edgar Allen Po served here under an assumed name So it's a five bastion Civil War era fort Let's see there are a couple of them in Boston. There's one out on the island, but this is Castle Island where the soldiers who were involved in the Boston massacre were temporarily housed I think during the trial they would they would take them out to Castle Island right now It's actually a peninsula. They've built the cause way out to it But this is near where I grew up in South Boston Great aunt not a cousin not once removed. It's great aunt Nobody else is there for some reason on this day. You get to see what the rain gear looks like Quite wet they closed down the restaurant is really coming down dogs and cats. Oh And you can you can see that I'm really I'm off the map at this point This is just a strip of paper where I have my directions written. Okay, there's that. Let's see how we're doing for a time Okay Again ask Dogs definitely Yeah, the first one I think is in Utah a whole bunch in Kentucky Kentucky is horrible One thing that I would take is bear spray dogs. I think dogs like bear spray and they would They would enjoy it. I would enjoy it I was I had five dogs converge on me in some middle of nowhere place and they're they didn't bite but you don't know that when they're a foot away and If you go up a little bit of a hill you can't outrun them Easily over a hundred miles Yeah So you it's it could be you're taking a risk and going out there certainly You can also be even 500 miles from the nearest Mechanic of any sort or bike shop. So you need to carry some tools with you. Oh Anytime I stopped there was a tornado warning when I was in Kansas if I was at a McDonald's That's oftentimes where you're eating. It's not too much available some places There would be there would be tornado watches left and right I ran into some people some three riders a father and his two sons two adult sons and They were going the other direction and they said, you know, if you if it starts to pick up it could be quite sudden and There's there's really no shelter. There might be a ditch They just said get a ditch and lie down and you know lay your bike down and all that just hope for the best So timing worked out. I was lucky enough. That's the best thing you can have preparedness and you can have luck You want to have a lot of luck on this kind of trip. Oh Nice You you feel that ownership. It's true, but I I like hard rock and heavy metal. So that's more what I Yeah, I've got a list of so I mean horse with no name. I I like that song It seemed appropriate, but it didn't have the right rhythm. So uphill. I wasn't I really wasn't singing I just put it in a low gear and I'm just going along looking at the stuff and it's exercise uphill downhill it's got to be something with where the guitar sounds almost like a drums just Four days Let me let me think. All right, so it was day 13 that I took a break there day 4. I went over Carson Pass. So Day 5 I went to Fallon. So yeah day 6 until Day 6 or a week week. Yeah Yeah Yeah, I went right across Utah and so that was that was kind of a long trip It's a big state Ohio is another place where I spent about a week Longest was 120 miles And that's my record when I was in high school. That was the longest I had ever done going up to New Hampshire and back And shortest was about 51 days. I think that was day 4 when I went over Carson Pass There may have been a couple of other short ones close to 50 or 60 Mainly in the West because after that there was no other stopping place for a while And then the East because it was pouring out and I felt miserable I Would I would typically imagine about 10 miles per hour because you're drinking water you you stop Maybe you look maybe you think about your map a little bit particularly in the air Take a little bit of a break when there's a tree at the top of a hill you try to send people a message on your phone So you might be moving at a moving average of something like 12 miles an hour, but I'm a slowpoke I'm really really not in shape just guinea So I would I would say that could have been a 12-hour day almost sure We got here area So orange juice anything with citric acid in it I would spend the beginning the first part of any ride 10 miles or more burping Hot water is bad. That's what happens when you have it in those water bottles on my bike I would put ice in there and it would melt in five minutes and other five minutes. It would be hot Let's see I don't really like Very fibrous granola bar type things on the second one. I'm already lacerating my tongue from the from the harsh material I think I got skinnier in the second half I think it was less attentive to it, but I could I could probably have knocked as much as 10 pounds off There were there are places. I should have stopped into Walgreens and use the scale, but I Didn't had too many miles to do Let's see things on the road had to keep so if I could get cheese in one of those gas station Convenience stores that would be good, but otherwise Slim gyms or some kind of Sausage type thing nuts and those of peanuts are a big thing Drinks anything cold I could get the shakes Milk love milk. I had powdered milk on the bike with me, too Fierce grape Gatorade. It's the only Gatorade I'll drink. It's some of the others don't have flavor There's one town which had Two restaurants, and they're both closed when I got there at three or something So all I had was four cans of Pepsi out of this machine, but they're cold I don't normally drink tonic or soft drinks Let's see an off the bike. It was mainly normal food whatever restaurant was available Yes, there there was the area that I was really concerned with before the ride was my knees I do have bad knees But as it turns out if your seat is the right height that does a lot to mitigate that and and really make it go away And I would take it easy every day of the first hour and a half or 15 miles every day I treat it as a warm-up. Just just take it easy and make sure everything's working smoothly if something hurts Change an angle a little bit If the seat is too high Your legs kind of stretched out and the back will hurt if it's too low Most people have it too low the front starts to hurt and you're too you're too crunched up Now what really was almost a showstopper was my hands my hands started hurting a week or two into it And they got very numb just that pressure and there are only so many positions. You can put your hands in That I had numbness for months after the trip. So that was a real that was a real risk that potential nerve damage It's just there's not much you can do about it. Maybe my second time across. I'll go slower take some more breaks Kind of squeeze it a little bit to massage it But the hands and it kind of worked its way up into the shoulders a bit Yeah, there's if you look on the web and talk to doctors, there's not too much you can do It's a kind of a repetitive stress thing I Would say so say so of the three general types of handlebars or the straight mount my book kind of handlebars I wouldn't go with that I would do this or some kind of a moustache bar Or maybe it comes back like that or curves in some funny way With more positions It it helps a little bit Yes, I have to clips, but I have pretty pretty much ordinary flat sneakers partly because shortly Not really the toe clips hold the feet into in position quite well with the rain I Guess it didn't have enough time to affect my feet I'm actually wearing toe socks under these two and they keep your toes separate. It looks like a glove for your foot But it was fine. I find that first ride of any year, but the sore But by the next time you get used to it. I also have an ergonomic saddle with the cut out there I wouldn't ride any other kind of bike I don't know because some people like Brooks saddles. Maybe you can sort of settle into those but it's really great not to have that pressure there and More engineer stuff, but if you measure the bones in your buttons about four inches apart That's really all you need You don't want a big fat saddle because it actually Impacts the back of your thigh on the down stroke and gets in the way you could get some soreness there Just from having too wide a saddle so Let me see part from the gear that's tough You could do it very very cheaply if we say the average motel when I stayed in motels was 60 bucks. I stayed in one one or two places that were 30 Some camping places are free some some were five bucks or whatnot you could do warm showers and you can stay with people and There are a lot of friendly people out there who are willing to host bicyclists So that part of it Yeah 40 to 60 bucks a day plus a little bit of food Call it 60 a day times 50 days or so. Yeah the let's see Those are the shoes One thing that found for shoes is when you're pushing too hard and it feels like the gears are biting into your soft rubber shoes downshift go into an easier gear and Your shoes will last you 4,000 miles of pedaling there again They're normal shoes, but they're they're a little bit wider toe box So they're shaped like a human foot with four toes. There's only one company. I know that that makes them I've never ridden. Maybe once I rode a bicycling show shoes that have clipless pedals But I looked at them and I kind of didn't have time to to test them out before the trip It was really down to the wire those last two months getting ready And it seems that they're too narrow in the front and that seems uncomfortable for you know 812 hours of pedaling Good I would go with the peneers. I was very happy with my setup and with my equipment I have actually the equipment list here and all that but I was very pleased with how that worked out. I Wouldn't want to deal with the idea that I could jackknife somehow But I think I could get enough on the bike and have one No, just normal normal checkups, I suppose it was probably December so six months beforehand Yeah, nothing nothing special in that department Well, a little bit a little bit of chilly nights, but um Partly my ego after I after I got to the point where I didn't need it any longer just yeah I'm gonna go all the way with all the weight I carried less water in the east because there are places you could get more water So the bike went down from 85 pounds fully loaded to Maybe as low as 70 73 pounds Yeah The new bike I bought it just before the trip $900 new equipment you could shave some things off of that. I bought a tablet for the trip. That was 250 dollars I bought an air mattress and sleeping bag all that so all these things are hundred dollars plus a very lightweight winter jacket that I could pack small That thing was one of the most expensive items probably 150 ish If you own things you can cut down on the price what else Have a lot of gears on your bike have a have a triple chain ring in front three gears in front And then this bike is a 27 speed so it's got nine cogs in back nine gears in back It didn't have to use the easiest gear until I think it was day 14 or so So not till two weeks in not till Utah, but it's nice to have that margin and I could I could stay seated to go over any of the mountains with these gears I'd never had to stand up to to bear down on the pedals. I think that's probably bad for your knees to standing up so Don't wear cotton clothes wear this stuff no underwear with this okay It traps your sweat it traps your traps the salt Tends to wrinkle if it's cotton and rubs against you get saddle sores This allows the water to wick away cools you off Really intelligently designed I didn't own all this get up before the trip It was part of the day-by-day experiment of this ride Let's see here's why some people ask why would you go alone? It's hard to find people to go with you We just found ourselves Yeah, yes I'm I'm really fanatical about sun protection, and I'm just really fanatical in general So I keep it on I don't care, but I'm hydrating Hydrating all the time having some Gatorade with the electrolytes, so we're replenishing the salts I'm also getting slim gyms, which have salt in them and It was just it was really sweaty and hot in some Kentucky. It's pretty bad You endure it and you know get a little bit of wind It's Sometimes yeah, I was maybe I was lucky enough that it didn't really get cold Maybe I would have appreciated a little bit of coldness. I could put some other clothes on if I needed to If I took this route, I would leave the same time of year you can't leave too early because Carson's past might have snow in it You can't leave. Well, you don't want to leave too late because it's just getting hotter and hotter So you have about a two-week window if you're taking the Western Express route across Nevada When when you want it you want to target that two-week window end of end of May Let's second half of May or right at the beginning of June. I would say It says on the adventure cycling maps where there are different resources. They're really great they show you where they're camping sites motels and whatnot and bike shops That said, I did I typically only looked one day ahead. Okay, and you know, I didn't want to see the rest Part of completing a trip like this is is you do one day at a time and you just you know You don't you don't want to say I still have 3,000 miles to go. It's just tomorrow. I'll do this That's it. No never. Yeah Seven liters or Almost almost two gallons That was the heaviest thing on the bike apart from me. It's about 15 and a half pounds of water I flew back so I went to a bike shop and I had them send the bike back They unpacked it a little bit and then I I got rid of my stove fuel and I ate up the remaining Dry food and I managed to pack everything so that I think I could carry it all on by shoving the yellow bags into the red bags And carry my helmet separately. So I was surprised I could compress it all. Yeah Hmm not really I felt that I was in the moment the whole time I mean, I really I really looked around a lot I know some people that I've met on the road that kind of zoned out or they said they would like to have a Radio, but I didn't find that was a problem. I'm always thinking about Managing the bike looking at the roads that they're rumble strips along the these great Nevada roads Otherwise, they're great really wide shoulder, but there's a rumble strip right there So way to the right or wait right out in the lane So I was pretty focused and alert for it all back there sure It was it was five thousand something feet. It was about a mile That wasn't the hardest the hardest was early in the trip going up Carson's pass. So four days four days from here Probably because I wasn't ready for it in a way Back there again Yes, sir Let's see. I had some dry food in the bike ahead of time That was sort of my emergency reserve any time I was in a town I would go to a convenience store whatever was available and I Only needed a few things during the day and I had that backup food in case I got stuck somewhere I was camping and I would eat at a restaurant whenever it was available One sound had had nothing you just pack you you set up your stuff in their town green you saw almost nobody they had a couple of spigots where you could get water without contacting any other person and There I ate my camp food and the next day I rode for quite a long time before getting to I think the town was called Eads and There I put away a whole pizza and and a half gallon of juice and it's ridiculous how much your stomach can handle but Okay, I Like I like nature so it's animals alive or otherwise There are lots of suicidal lizards that just seem to be right there I would dart this away, and then they would run under me, but I don't think I ran any over For me, it's mainly the animals. I was happy. I didn't see wolves bears Cougars I didn't see any of those It's pretty that was fine, but marmots and And the prairie the ground squirrels were really great birds were nice Yeah No, sir. Yes I tended to lean towards motels maybe Maybe 20% of the time 25% of the time I was camping But I tried to go to the motels because I had this fantasy that they would have washing machines And it takes really long with the camping because your your tent has condensation inside of it Your sleeping bag may be wet from that you may maybe you sweat a bit So it takes you an extra hour in the morning to pack it all up. The sun is already up It slows you down that way two tubes miscellaneous nuts and bolts Patch kit you can see the pump that I have on the bike there Or what else maybe not too much else Mainly the tubes for maybe mainly the the metal tools for tightening this and that When you get new pin ears, you're supposed to tighten the bolts 1500 kilometers, sorry Whoa, sorry Break pads. Yes Yes, I had Yes, I had some people following me on Facebook and whatnot some awesome people Rode all the way out to Nevada 500 miles of driving to meet me Around Austin and in Ely Nevada and then drove back to the Bay area to my friends. Yes Yes, and she visited me at several points on the trip. So she's so much better because of I mean She's also awesome So we met in St. Louis. So some of my breaks corresponded to when we met so St. Louis And so a Cahokia and all that and a couple of other places Let's see. I'm a big ancient history buff. So all of those Indian sites Cahokia St. Louis arch stunningly beautiful For natural beauty, it was out west. It was Capitol Reef National Park Yeah, the main ones I never had any problems That was when I was with my girlfriend. We actually rented a car for there I mean she dropped me where I stopped the the riding and picked up the same place But I never had any problem taking my bike into a motel So that's when we're at a motel. So No, no, that would be that would be completely cheating Let's see starting in the east you don't immediately have these steep mountains So maybe you get to build up your strength From the west theoretically you would have the wind pushing you but no, not really I Took I just took the route that was sensible for me I live here and I used to live in Boston and I wanted to go there. So figured out that way. Oh Narem and Alberto. Yes. So some more transcontinental riders Because if you take 12 hours the way some of us do you get it at the beginning and end of the day You'll get it somewhere Most of it was in person REI I really discovered how great REI was on in all this because They show you what the weight is for a lot of things and that helps All this get up except for the shoes is REI and the gloves at somewhere else I Caught a lot of sales And this was quite lucky that way And the rear the rear bags the peneers they've been across the country twice. I bought them from somebody I worked with But it was it was mainly in person some bike shops around here in REI there there are two places you can buy this kind of touring bike market street cycles and No mad cyclary out in the sunset It's a James Aurora. It's a 2013 James Aurora. Well, if you if you have time Just take a lot of bike rides in the Bay Area Start out flat on the Iron Horse Trail in the East Bay Ride to a bunch of towns in your own neighborhood Get that book short bike rides in and around San Francisco. Some of them are beautiful There's one called Planet of the Apes Road that has an abandoned road by Devil's Slide There's another abandoned road up by Martinez where you're kind of up on the cliffs above above the car key Is straight Take the ferry out to Merah Island It's a Vallejo and then go to Merah Island there. You can go through the heritage district in Vallejo See the nice buildings in Venetia across the Carquines bridge or the Venetia Martinez bridge Just do a lot of rides and have a lot of fun with it Use the public transit to to make the rides short enough that you can handle them Bart Ferris Caltrain You can do the route around the Bay just piecemeal Just to just to build up your mileage. I would say do some aerobic exercise, I guess To put yourself in the mindset of going fast enough. I live in San Francisco. I wasn't sure if I could handle these steep hills I took my old bike which is geared such that it's it's it's twice as hard to pedal uphill as this one so I took that up Let's see up not pillow one of the steep streets, which is like 24% grade. So I did that once or twice Without without stopping in one stretch. I'm panting at the top, but maybe do a few steep hills just to see if you can do it But ride a lot and just see a lot of the beautiful things around here There are a whole bunch of these huge bridges that you can cross Golden Gate Bridge Dunburton Bridge Here's the East Bay the Iron Horse Trail When you get up in Marin You can see the bridge from the west On the East Bay, there's a nice park in Oakland. You can see East Bay Bridge Karkina's When you're crossing Karkina's bridge, you can see this part of the bridge which engineers well, they checked that connection After it was fabricated Let's see up by Mara Island. This is a serious point bridge. You can't cross that but you can get a nice sunset Mara Island straight Dunburton Bridge is great big wide sidewalk for you to go across safely But yeah, just just do a lot of riding So let's see we can continue asking questions But maybe if some of you want to come up and just feel what the bike is like physically that would be great I'm more than happy to have you actually pick up the bike. It's 85 pounds or so 84. I don't have the tent on it. Sorry 81 80 right now. Oh, I'm gonna unpack it right now. Yeah. Yeah before I unpack it if a few people want to come up and Actually feel what a touring bike feels like feel how It feels cumbersome at first the first time I loaded it up I felt as if the bike frame would be too delicate for it And then I wrote it and I couldn't believe that anybody would be able to ride a bike with all of this stuff But very quickly get used to it and it's it's pretty stable