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T-minus 48 days and counting...
All of the bike touring stories I've read all seem to tell about the start... how the idea to pedal thousands of miles across a continent (or around the world) was born. My madness began nearly two years ago.
In the spring of my Freshman year (2006) my best friend Seth (shone right) decided to start a bike club at our school. His dad, the Chemistry teacher, was the club's advisor, and about ten of his friends joined the club almost immediately. I was one of them. I'd gotten my orange Trek the summer before, and was slowly adding up the miles, and the idea of a bike club sounded like fun.
During the first few meetings, Seth laid out his plans of bicycle maintenance classes, time trials, and track races. It was all going to be fast, testosterone laced, riding. That night, I went home and talked to my dad about everything Seth had said. He suggested another direction that the bike club could go: bicycle touring. To me, the slow and usually not too competitive rider, this idea sounded brilliant.
The next day at school, I told Seth of this new idea. "Maybe the bike club could ride out to the beach the week after school." I suggested, "we could build up to it in the next couple of months, and it would only take a few days." Seth himmed-and-hahed a bit, trying to think up a reason why we shouldn't do a tour. "Or..." the idea had been building inside of me for some time, since my dad had admiringly mentioned a bike trip across the United States, "we could go all the way across the country." Perhaps it was just my own enthusiasm, but Seth seemed to catch the bug.
"Or maybe we could go and bike around Europe." he said, getting excited, "We could bike all through Germany." (Seth had just fallen in love with one of the school's German exchange students, and desperately wanted to see her again.)
I was too excited by my own idea to be distracted. "We could do that the summer after we cross America. You have to start small, of course." My faulty logic (crossing America certainly won't be a small undertaking) seemed to convince Seth.
We spent most of our lunch that day, and most of the days that week, pouring over a map of America in Seth's history classroom. We carefully plotted out which states we wanted to pass through, discussing, with absolute ignorance, the merits of each possible route we could take. We decided that both of our dads would accompany us, as well as one of our friends, Tyler, who really wanted to go along, but first he'd have to convince his mom.
The initial excitement began to die out after the first week, and we moved on to more every day tasks, putting our dream momentarily on the back burner. A few weeks later we attended a free REI class on all of the basics of bicycle touring. I came home from that with a new energy, and instantly sent out a flurry of letters to the states we planned to ride through, requesting bicycle maps of the state.
Around that time, my dad also gave me a copy of the book Miles From Nowhere, by Barbara Savage. The book is the story of Barbara and her husband Larry's bicycle trip around the world. (It's an excellent book that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a good adventure.) This book finally sold me on the trip (if I wasn't sold on it already), making it clear to me that I would ride my bike across the country, even if it meant doing it all by myself. This, I suppose, is how my adventure was born.
~Seth
All of the bike touring stories I've read all seem to tell about the start... how the idea to pedal thousands of miles across a continent (or around the world) was born. My madness began nearly two years ago.
In the spring of my Freshman year (2006) my best friend Seth (shone right) decided to start a bike club at our school. His dad, the Chemistry teacher, was the club's advisor, and about ten of his friends joined the club almost immediately. I was one of them. I'd gotten my orange Trek the summer before, and was slowly adding up the miles, and the idea of a bike club sounded like fun.
During the first few meetings, Seth laid out his plans of bicycle maintenance classes, time trials, and track races. It was all going to be fast, testosterone laced, riding. That night, I went home and talked to my dad about everything Seth had said. He suggested another direction that the bike club could go: bicycle touring. To me, the slow and usually not too competitive rider, this idea sounded brilliant.
The next day at school, I told Seth of this new idea. "Maybe the bike club could ride out to the beach the week after school." I suggested, "we could build up to it in the next couple of months, and it would only take a few days." Seth himmed-and-hahed a bit, trying to think up a reason why we shouldn't do a tour. "Or..." the idea had been building inside of me for some time, since my dad had admiringly mentioned a bike trip across the United States, "we could go all the way across the country." Perhaps it was just my own enthusiasm, but Seth seemed to catch the bug.
"Or maybe we could go and bike around Europe." he said, getting excited, "We could bike all through Germany." (Seth had just fallen in love with one of the school's German exchange students, and desperately wanted to see her again.)
I was too excited by my own idea to be distracted. "We could do that the summer after we cross America. You have to start small, of course." My faulty logic (crossing America certainly won't be a small undertaking) seemed to convince Seth.
We spent most of our lunch that day, and most of the days that week, pouring over a map of America in Seth's history classroom. We carefully plotted out which states we wanted to pass through, discussing, with absolute ignorance, the merits of each possible route we could take. We decided that both of our dads would accompany us, as well as one of our friends, Tyler, who really wanted to go along, but first he'd have to convince his mom.
The initial excitement began to die out after the first week, and we moved on to more every day tasks, putting our dream momentarily on the back burner. A few weeks later we attended a free REI class on all of the basics of bicycle touring. I came home from that with a new energy, and instantly sent out a flurry of letters to the states we planned to ride through, requesting bicycle maps of the state.
Around that time, my dad also gave me a copy of the book Miles From Nowhere, by Barbara Savage. The book is the story of Barbara and her husband Larry's bicycle trip around the world. (It's an excellent book that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a good adventure.) This book finally sold me on the trip (if I wasn't sold on it already), making it clear to me that I would ride my bike across the country, even if it meant doing it all by myself. This, I suppose, is how my adventure was born.
~Seth
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