Is This What They Call Nervous Time?

With the start of our “big ride” less than a month away, preparations are coming together.

We’ve received the final itinerary and created our Bike Across America Map with the dates for each overnight stop. A link to it has also been added to the top of the home page. If you happen to be near any of the cities we’ll be in, let us know ahead of time – we would always welcome seeing friendly faces over beer or an early dinner.

Bike shipping containers have also arrived, bicycles have been overhauled, gear has been purchased and tested, and flights have been booked. We hope that all of the details involved with leaving home for a couple of months have been accounted for, but I suspect that something will come to mind during the middle of the night somewhere in South Dakota or Minnesota.

We’ve also obsessively read all of the pre-ride materials from America By Bicycle and are trying not to get completely freaked out by the size of this adventure. The pendulum of emotions swings from excitement to terror in a span of minutes. The organizers assure us that as the trip gets closer, it will feel bigger, but that once we leave the Oregon coast and begin riding eastward everything will fall into place. We know that’s true but, damn, we’re ready to get this puppy started.

In the meantime, we keep riding lots of miles, sending not-so-subtle messages to our bodies about what they’ll be put through over the course of 3,650 miles in 50 days. I think they’re catching on, even if they like to periodically register their displeasure and throw the biological version of a temper tantrum. We shall beat them into submission.