2 Wheels - 2 Coasts: San Diego to Boston on a Bike

We've moved!!

2009-07-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

In order to delay the inevitable freakout that's coming as I realize how close I am to actually going out and doing this, I've decided to move on over to www.crazyguyonabike.com

I think the layout over there is going to be more conducive to making this trip easy to follow and interesting. It might be a quick move though, I'm not sure what their policy is on swearing. Fingers crossed!

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=3Tzut&doc_id=5644&v=8

Note: Don't panic that the Firstgiving thingy is gone! There's a new fancy way to donate to the Humane Society directly on the new page. Oh happy day!

Seriously. the homeless have it figured out.

2009-07-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

So planning is going well for the tour itself. I ended up making some fairly drastic changes to my equipment kit, which I'll discuss in some later post, but overall I feel VERY prepared for everything from August 20th onwards. That'll change and I'll be posting here sometime in early August with a post somewhere along these lines

GOD HELP ME WHAT HAVE I DONE HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP I'M SO FUCKING SCREWED ABORT ABORT

But for now, yeah, pretty laid back about that. The problem is what do for the month beforehand. Due to some fairly abrupt changes in my roomate's plans for this house, I found myself being told in early May that I had until July 25th to get my sweet, muscular caboose out of here. My original plan had been to just stay here, store my stuff at my friend Brett's place a few days beforehand, and just go straight from here to the road. I'd figure out where to live when I got back, paying for 2 months rent while I'm out in East Humpty, Missouri getting into knife fights with hobos for dibs on the best box car seemed like something I'd like to avoid.

So leaving here early doesn't change what I'll do when I get back, but since I don't plan on renting a new place until I get back, it does raise the interesting question of "where the hell am I supposed to live for the 25th through the 20th?" As time got closer and closer I was starting to worry abou this a LITTLE bit, until today I realized I had less than 2 weeks left here.

So I made a few phone calls and got a bit of the time taken care of. From August 18th-20th, I'm going to stay at studly Brett Murphy's pad, and try not to get in the way of whatever it is that weirdo does in his free time. From August 15th until the 18th, I'm going to either crash at my friend Kyle's place, or with my friend Steph Castro. This method of crashing with a different friend for a few days each time seemed to be working well, until I pretty quickly realized I'm an obnoxious, juvenile dickhead and have no friends to speak of. What was I gonna do for the bulk of my homeless time?

Enter the Roadrunner Hostel, Tucson's world-famous "only hostel".

http://www.roadrunnerhostelinn.com/content/view/21/46/

It actually looks like a pretty sweet deal. The rate is actually CHEAPER than my monthly rent here, and it at least doesn't strike me as a complete fleabag place.

Now, considering I'm planning on living out of several elaborate garbage bags for over 2 months, living out of a suitcase in a not-horrific hostel or crashing on friend's floors should hardly be the worst thing in the world. Also, from what I understand (and everything I understand comes from movies) hostels are full of interesting, diverse people, nearly all of whom are half-naked European models who walk around topless, sleep with anything, and can really plug you into the local social scene. Now I stopped watching that particular movie about 30 minutes in, but if I had to guess I'd assume it ended on a similar note, perhaps with all the roomates getting together and organizing a bake sale to buy a plasma screen TV for the local old folk's home.

This leaves on the 25th thru the 1st to deal with. Honestly the new people aren't moving into here until the 1st anyway, and that's assuming anyone rent the house starting then, so I can probably just get my stuff out of here but retain a sleeping bag and suitcase and crash here.

So yeah, it turned out a bit more complicated than I anticipated, but it seems to have turned out okay. In particular living in a nice-seeming hostel for 2 weeks might be particularly enjoyable. I'm not 100% how much my currently car-free lifestyle is going to bend me over for all of this, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to rent a car a few days here and there.

Winning hearts and minds

2009-07-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's been *gritting teeth* helpfully pointed out that for a blog about an alleged cross-country bike trip, there's been precious little talk about biking, and even less talk about biking from San Diego to Boston, and a surprising amount of movie reviews and juvenile swearing.

Fair enough. There's only so much I can babble about bikes and keep it interesting, y'know. Unless you folks want deep, thoughtful discussions about 14mm headset spacers being awesome, or how the SRAM Powerlink is the single greatest advancement in bicycle chain maintenance since the threaded pin extruder. In which case I'm more than happy to oblige.

So back to this post's title. I'm coming back from work, just about home, and feeling pretty down. Bookman's failed to have a book I wanted at two different locations, my MP3 player was 7 minutes into Dvorak's Carnival overture because I haven't figured out how to arrange my MP3s to keep boring instrumental music off my biking playlist, and Debrah Messing had grown a day older and uglier without appearing in my room wearing a French maid outfit and a grim determination to give her stupid French husband a reason to divorce her.

I was cruising down the bike lane at an intersection. This is always tricky because someone in the right lane might want to make a right hand turn at said intersection, and considers it their civic duty to cut off/cripple any and all bikers to their right when making any lane changes. I imagine they do this while gripping the wheel in white-knuckled fury, screaming "NOT TODAY, PEDESTRIAN!!!!".

So I sneak a glance behind me, and sure enough, some guy is indicating he's going to make a right hand turn. I jam on my brakes, come to a stop just in time to avoid crashing into his passenger side quarter panel, and rip off my headphones. I usually just try to give people who cut me off the staredown of a lifetime, because I'm a coward, but this guy was getting out of his car and I guess I panicked a bit..

Being irritated beyond belief, tired, and apparently suicidal, I screamed "WATCH THE FUCKING BIKE LANE, COCKFACE" and hammered my fist down on top of his trunk. I felt it dent pretty good. I then immediately took off on my way straight down the road. I didn't stop for conversation, or to see if I'd left a permanent dent, I felt I'd made my general feelings clear on the situation. I'm absolutely sure I effed up his trunk pretty good. I have no idea what year, make, or model the dude's car was, but it was something that was made within the past few years.

Now, I'm not a bicycle activist. I genuinely believe bikes shouldn't be considered this idealized pedestrian/vehicle hybrid that can go wherever it wants, and cars should just have to deal with them. In a fair world, they should be, but as I learned in my sophomore year of college when I admitted to having a crush on KD Lang in the early 90's, life is often cruel and unfair. The fact is 80% of all people are retarded and in their own blissful cloud of daydreaming when they're moving around. This includes bikes and cars. If a car and bike get into an accident, the bicyclist loses 99.999999% of the time. Bikes don't belong on the road together for the same reason chicks don't play in the NFL.

However after being car-free since October '08, I'm starting to understand why a lot of bicyclists are complete douchebags to cars. We're woefully outmatched and the people in their goddamn cars know it. If I had a wooden nickel for every time I've been run over, had stuff thrown at me, screamed at in an attempt to startle me and make me fall off, etc... well, unless I was at Yoken's* in Portsmouth, NH, I'd just have a lot of useless wooden nickels I guess, but the point is I'd have a lot. And it gets really aggravating. At this point I'm not sure if some kind of summit meeting is needed or what, but it's outright war between cyclists and motorists at this point and seeing as how I made the stupid, stupid decision to be a cyclist, I'm starting to feel like I chose to be a power forward for the Washington Generals.

Geez I just realized I hope that guy doesn't end up behind me any time soon.

* Holy crap, they closed down Yokens?!! CURSE YOU, PROGRESS!!!

Kyle reviews pointless shit nobody cares about (for a change)

2009-07-04T10:08:00.001-07:00

#1. My '09 Trek 7.3FX (B-)

Ah, the old Trek. I've taken to calling it my "beater", but honestly it was an expensive-ass bike when I bought it and it's still in pretty good shape. I put over 3000 miles on it in just over 5 months, so it got worked a little harder than the good folks are Trek probably intended it to. Anyways, here's my thoughts:

Components:

The Front derailleur is complete crap. It's a C102, whatever the fuck that is. I was forced to learn the Shimano hierarchy a long time ago, and this thing doesn't even show up on it. That either means it's a one-off model for this bike, or it's the REALLY cheap kind they put on Wal-Mart and Target bikes. I tend to think the former, just due to this bike's price, but even then it was still garbage. I could just never get it to behave. Front derailleurs with a triple chainring are hard enough to get adjusted properly, but no matter what I do this one still rubs in chain combinations it shouldn't. I don't cross-chain, I'm talking rubbing in the third chainring and the smallest cog in the rear cassette (i.e. the highest gear possible).

The rear derailleur on the other hand, was pretty solid. It's a Deore, which is pretty much the entry level component group for Shimano mountain bikes (there's Altus as well, but for "real" bikes pretty much everything starts at Deore). It needed tightening up fairly regularly but shifted well enough, and I did beat on it a bit when I was starting out and it never jumped the chain or complained.

The brakes were crap as well. They were V-Brakes, which I'm not terribly familiar with, but the rear one especially was always horribly out of alignment. You all know what I'm talking about. You pull the brake lever, and one side yanks 4 inches to the rim, and the other one barely moves. That's a brake out of alignment. Ugh.

The tires are another thing I was not terribly impressed with. They're Bontrager Hardcases, they're supposed to be DESIGNED for city riding, and I was still constantly popping tubes on glass and wires in the road. The rear tire even ended up getting slashed, forcing me to purchase a new one. The wheels are fine for most applications, but if you're a big guy and will be carrying 30-50 pounds of stuff, I don't think the 32 spoke rims are going to hold up well.

The frame I will say nothing but good stuff about. It was light as hell, responsive, and looked really sharp to boot. The frame was definitely the best thing about this bike.

Durability:

I'm not sure if maybe I got a dud or what, but this bike didn't hold up REAL well. The rear tire died, so I had to replace that. The headset is making a creaking noise when I put weight on it, I'm not sure what's causing that. A spoke on the rear wheel spontaneously broke. The chain is either warped or stretched because you can see it changing angles as you're riding.

3,000 miles isn't a TON of mileage for a brand new bike, and I was getting it tuned up and checked over fairly regularly. Enough stuff went wrong with it that I'm pretty skeptical it'll still be alive a year from now.

Suitability for Touring:

This bike would've worked fine for touring. I really believe that. It has braze ons (holes) for everything: fenders, racks, water bottles, you name it. The geometry was nice and relaxed, the chainstays were plenty long, and it felt stable when weighted down.

For those of you reading this who're looking to do your own tour someday and you're on a budget, and you've only got around 700-800 bucks to spend, first look at the Windsor Tourist. But if that's sold out (which it always is) then check out this bike. The fact that there'll likely be a local Trek dealer for it is a plus.

#2. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (B+)

Let's get one thing straight, I watched the original movie 7 times. IN THE THEATRES. I fucking loved that movie. In terms of pure action movies, it goes

#1. Terminator 2
#2. Transformers (First one)
#3. The Rock.

Since I would gladly punch Michael Bay in the neck if I thought I could get away with it, I'm not sure why I like those two movies so much, but there it is.

I went to the midnight showing of this movie and it was freaking awesome. Now let me clarify that a bit: There isn't a single aspect of this movie that is well done that doesn't directly have to do with giant robots killing each other. The acting, the plotting, the "humor" (Hey let's have the Mom curse and eat pot brownies! We're so edgy and fresh!!) and all that other crap was uniformly horrible. But holy crap were the action parts good.

Getting back to that Michael Bay comment, he's a horrible person and should probably be melted down into a sticky goo to be used as a low grade asphalt sealant. Seriously, as a person, any time you watch an interview with him blood will start shooting out of your ears. And as a director, he can make stuff blow up really well, but he's completely incapable of doing anything else. What saves him in the Transformers movies is the steady hand of Stephen Spielberg.

Now, again, by himself, Steve-O is a fucking mess. He used to make cool, edgy movies. He kind of jumped the shark with Saving Private Ryan, and then he made War of the Worlds (good movie completely destroyed by the ending, and that had Spielberg's sweaty fingerprints all over it), started digitally editing out rifles and turning them into walkie-talkies, and finally made the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

(There's two schools of thought on that movie. Some people feel it was an entirely acceptable, possibly even engaging summer popcorn flick. Others, like me who had The Last Crusade on VHS and watched it no less than 4,349 times as a little kid, have a less charitable view. Specifically, me and the writers of South Park feel Spielberg systematically raped Indy over and over again, in front of very eyes, then leaving his useless, steaming corpse in front of us before peeing on it and walking away)

But combine Bay's over-the-top "everything must explode, all other concerns are secondary" approach to filmmaking, and Spielberg's "what if you replaced that mean looking shrub with a magical Happy Tree that grants wishes and gives hugs" modus operandi, and you get a pretty good flick.

Now having said that, I think maybe Spielberg lost a bit of control over Bay in this movie, because a lot of non-action bits have degraded into sheer lunacy, and boring lunacy at that. I tend to imagine Spielberg's reduced role happened suddenly, and nothing was ever the same afterwards. A conversation like this probably happened.

Spielberg: Mike, I've been reading the script, and, uh, I've got some concerns. Do you really think we should make two of the comic relief robots into the most offensive ethnic stereotype ever made in the history of film?
Bay: It's what the fans want Steven. We got away with Jazz in the first movie, didn't we?
Spielberg: Yeah but, I dunno, one of the ones in this movie even has a gold tooth....
Bay: Fuck you, Steve. Transformers made over 780 million dollars, I am Michael Bay and I am a genius. You're not going to deprive the fans of my awesome ideas.
Spielberg: Okay, but....
Bay: No, I said fuck you. Now the two robots that've got your panties twisted are twins.
Spielberg: Twins? Wait, what, like they got made at the same time?
Bay: NO they're twins. And now there's a girl robot.
Spielberg: How can there be a girl -
Bay: FUCK YOU NOW ONE OF THEM HAS AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT. I can do this all day.
Spielberg: But that doesn't make any-
Bay: NOW SHIA LEBOUF IS GOING TO DIE AND HAVE A VISION OF ROBOT HEAVEN!!
Spielberg: Now wait just a sec-
Bay: I AM MICHAEL BAY, I MADE BAD BOYS II!!!! I SHALL NOT TOLERATE YOUR INSOLENCE!!!!

Still, though, yeah, B+. Dude they shot Devastator with a rail gun.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Packing

2009-06-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

Here's my reading list for my trip:

#1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
#2. Stephen King's "It"
#3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I actually had to think about these, because books don't pack well and space is at a premium (especially since I learned I packed wrong, more on that later). I picked It because, well, it's cheap and it's 1000 pages long. Don't get me wrong, It is the start of Stephen King's long slow spiral downwards, which ended with him crashing to Earth like a common commercial jetliner with the ending of "The Gunslinger". But it has a scary, scary clown and also has a scene where Swamp Thing rips off a 10 year old kid's head, so it's got some stuff going for it too. Being 1000 pages long is a plus, it'll take me awhile to burn through it.

I picked the last Harry Potter book because I haven't read it in over a year, it's the best one, and I have a soft spot for it because it's the one where Ron finally grows a pair and gives Hermione the Bad Touch. Good on you, old bean.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is probably the single greatest idea ever. The writer takes public domain books about boring nonsense like romance and class struggles, and inserts a bunch of random zombie mayhem. It's still the original book, which I've never read, but now there's the occasional scene where Catherine kills some ninja by ripping out their still-beating heart and eats it. So I'm like kind of culturing myself.

So about packing, yeah, I did it wrong. Two big, bulky items, my air mattress and tent, were gonna get bungeed to the top of my trunk bag. There's these bungees cords built into the top of it that you can slide stuff under. There's no good pictures of this thing on the 'net so I'm gonna have to do all of this with MS Paint.

That's like a top view of the bag. Those lines are the bungees. You can have things under them, like this.

Looks like a pretty solid setup, right? However my rear bag isn't waterproof. It has a rain cover that goes over it, for when it rains. I can't show this well in Paint without it being a big yellow rectangle, but it's just a yellow covering with elastic seams that slides over it.

The problem is that it fits pretty tightly, so the stuff can't go under it, and it covers the bungees. So now there's no way to attach them.

I could just use regular bungee cords, but then I also realized that the tent and air mattress (which CANNOT get wet or they'll grow mold) have covers, but they're not waterproof. So even then I'd be in trouble when it rained

So I might have to put some of those big items in my front panniers, which ARE waterproof, but then I obviously have less room for other stuff.

It's a little late in the game for serious packing problems like this, so I have to figure this out pretty quick. One idea is to just put both the tent and mattress in a big waterproof garbage bag before bungeeing them down, but that'd look pretty tacky and would probably vastly increase the chances of some random cop deciding I'm a homeless person.

Other than that, nothing much to report. The Surly is in the shop getting her one month checkup, so I'm back to the Trek. After this, I'm probably going to sell the old girl. I figured I could wait awhile to do it, but then I just realized this trip is only 2 fucking months away. TWO MONTHS!!

Effed up my ankle

2009-06-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I was gonna do...something. I don't think I was ever seriously going to do a 50 mile plus ride, but I was certainly going to do something longer than my normal commute. Then I went to go play racquetball on Saturday, lunged after an 18 mph bullet launched by my friend's fiancee, and landed on the side of my ankle. Seriously. My foot didn't even hit the ground.

I heard a crunch, immediately got up, and limped around for a bit. It honestly seemed fine. A bit sore, but nothing extreme. I was even able to finish out that game AND do another one. When I woke up this morning though, it was still swollen and was turning some fairly interesting colors.

So no biking for me today. It still doesn't feel awful, and once I got up and was walking around for a bit it felt much better, so I don't think this'll be a serious problem, but I do seem to be getting banged up a lot lately. I've never thought of myself as particularly fragile (don't confuse that statement with me being stoic or anything though, if I get hurt I will do nothing but bitch and moan for days) so it's a bit disconcerting that I'm feeling constantly banged up somewhere.

So I spent today doing some home bike repair 101 type stuff. Currently I know how to change/patch a flat tire, do a quick-fix for a slashed or otherwise destroyed tire, kinda-sorta adjust a front and rear derailleur, and fudge with the brake and shifter cable tension. Friday however, I noticed my old Trek 7.3 had a busted rear spoke.

I don't really understand how it broke, the bike hasn't been ridden in over a week. Maybe it tried to kill itself out of shame. Maybe it was killed by ninjas for knowing too much, a la David Carradine. (I know it's way too early for that joke, but it's not really a joke. Ninjas are no laughing matter, young people.)

So I learned how to replace a spoke today (fairly difficult) and also did some futzing about with my saddle. The saddle's been a sore spot on the new bike thus far (GET IT!?!?!?!?) but the initial effort seems worth it. For those not in the know, i.e. anyone with normal societal tendencies, Brooks saddles are formed from a complex process that binds high quality leather with pure liquid pretentiousness. Want to see the box it comes in?

It's a fucking BICYCLE SADDLE. My favorite part was the faux-1880's style newspaper that explains in detail all the of the various ways people have changed the world for the better with Brooks Saddles. I shit you not. Because I already have my camera handy:

No but seriously, the Brooks Bugle is a great newspaper. It's informative, edgy, and isn't afraid to get the tough stories. I'm not sure about their journalistic integrity, it seems like maybe Brooks Saddles, Inc. in particular seems to get positive coverage most of the time, but I still found it less slanted than Fox News.*

Where was I? Oh yeah, so it takes a lot of adjustments and finagling to get a Brooks saddle to feel good, because it's made of leather. Not leather like a leather car seat though, or like a leather baseball glove. It's the hardest leather ever. You rap it with your fingers and it sounds like plastic. And the first 30 or so miles on it were horrible. It felt like I was sitting on Anne Coulter's face.

However after some tilt adjustments, and some indentations finally being made, it's already 1000% more comfortable. It's now got about 150 miles on it, and it's perfectly comfortable, comprable to my old squishy saddle. What makes Brooks saddles great, and is why I'm willing to completely embrace the dark side of bicyclist douchebaggery, is that it never gets UNcomfortable.

The knock against squishy saddles is that they're great for short trips, but after a long time in them with your jubblies all sunk in, stuff starts to go numb and cramp up. What you want is something that comforms to your shape like a squishy saddle, but ALSO is firm and supporting. That's what leather saddles do. People who I've spoken with that tour all swear by this thing. They say it's virtually the only way to stay comfortable in a bike saddle for 6-8 hours a day. I wasn't sure about all of that (and God dammit this paragraph reads like that time I was explaining the difference between solid top guitars vs laminate tops and FUCK YOU for not stopping me back then, Stew) but I DID know I'd tried two different normal saddles and they were definitely starting to make certain anatomical bits start to feel a bit cramped and oxygen-starved after an hour or two, and with this thing that's not the case. Instead of gradually progressing from "ah this is comfortable" to "Oh shit it's turning purple" to "Oh SHIT it turned black and fell off" over the course of 3 hours, the Brooks saddle simply starts at "Hmm, not bad" and stays that way. So I'm sold.

* It's okay Conservatives, I voted for McCain in the primaries before he tapped that shrill, disagreeable retard as his running mate.. Also HELL YEAH asterisks are back!!!

edit:

I think Jill must've stolen my camera at some point, because I certainly don't remember shooting this. Man that thing's a beast! And by "that thing" I mean Asaf, he's totally spooning on that bed.

Oops

2009-06-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

Hey so it's been awhile. Frankly, I'm not sure how many more times I could post "Gee whiz biking is hard" or "I sure do think redheads are hot" before it got grating. Besides, while updates here will be an every day type thing while I'm out on the road, you're just not missing much on a day to day basis here. It's been three weeks though, so here, let's take a journey together to discover what has usurped (editor's note: Douchebag "I read books which makes me smart" vocab useage alert!!) my time lately.

#1. If you're wanting to date an immature, catty 23 year old, then by all means do it (if she's cute enough). I mean, who're we kidding, right? We're all human. When the wheels fall off though, shrug your shoulders, make a mental note, and move on quickly. I think this is my roundabout way of saying it's hard to update a blog when you're spending 2-3 hours a day constructing elaborate theories to explain away giant gaping logic holes instead of admitting the chick you're seeing is a pathological liar.

#2. On the opposite end of the fun scale, it's also hard to update a blog when you're spending prime bike-riding weekends in Colorado, getting hammered on absolutely disgusting black licorice liquor. Bet you didn't know that kind of hell even existed, did you? I don't know why I segued from "not fun" into "fun" with drinking malted battery acid as an example, but... I dunno. Hey look here's Brett!

(I'd like to say that was a completely random, out-of-character "That's what she said!" comment at the end, but alas. We still think that's funny and use it as substitute for punctuation.)

#3. New bike hotness!!

Okay so if you'll recall, the beast of burden I chose for this trip is a Trek 7.3fx. A fine bike, a real man's bike. I think I also mentioned I was about to blow 4-5 hundred bucks swapping out various components to make it tour-worthy. It needed drop handlebars, a new drivetrain, a new saddle, blah blah blah.

I was already torn about spending the money to upgrade my current bike, or just getting a different one. My Trek is a great commuter, looks sharp, and let's not forget the awesome black on black color scheme. It matches my dark soul perfectly, like those edgy lyrics the goth kids used to write inside their Steino notebooks in high school before they went home to sniff glue and burn things.

On the other hand, it just wasn't built for this kind of thing. I mean it COULD work. Sure I COULD pay for 3 million dollars worth of plastic surgery to return Debrah Messing to her previous levels of hotness, or I could just throw 20 bucks at her younger, hotter protege Isla Fisher. And never doubt it, Isla Fisher would throw me a bone for 20 dollars. She's currently getting pounded by the same guy who dressed up as an angel and teabagged Eminem, and 69ed a 500 pound Latvian guy. This isn't someone with preposterously high standards.

So where was I? Oh yeah, I ditched the Trek and bought a Surly. BOO YEAH!!! (As always click on the picture for a decent view. Blogger, post-2004 thumbnail technology, have you two met?)

The Surly Long Haul Trucker is the Honda Civic of the Touring world. They're dull, conventional, and about as stylish as one of those giant Australian termite nests, but God damn they're built well, and even if you look like a tool on it, you'll be in good company because like 80% of everyone touring uses one. They are NOT cheap, but I actually got a discount from a local bike shop, in exchange for the humane society pimping them out, so I could kind of sort of afford it. It's hard to explain why they're perfect for touring without getting into horrible topics like "chainstay length" and "fork rake" so you'll just have to take my word for it: I am in way better position now than I was before.

Also, check out the GPS unit attached to my handlebars! It's like being in the glass cockpit of a fighter jet!! I'm still keeping my Trek for the time being, because I'm petrified of the new being stolen, but I'll obvously jettison it to some worthy individual before I leave.

So all that in mind, what's my current situation? We'll divide my end of May report card into bite sized segments I like to call Training, Planning, and Equipment Obtainment.

Training: F

There's no other grade I can reasonably give myself now. I've upped my weekly mileage from 100 miles per week to about 120-30, but that's still not really the point. Even 100 miles per week would be fine, IF I was knocking out the occasional 50-60 mile ride as part of it. Sadly I just haven't had a day lately where I was like "I've got 6-8 hours to kill, I might as well spend them on my bike!" I think I could do it without a problem, but I just can't be sure. There's a big difference between spending an hour in the saddle straight, and spending 6. It's similar to the difference between Eric Wolpert's penis size, and that of a normal human being. An ignorant girl with Eric might think he's all right, but as soon as anyone bigger than Vern Troyer comes along she's gonna be worried they'll shatter her spine with it.

My analogies are definitely getting worse. :(

Planning: B-

So far so good here. I've got places to stay lined up in Tempe, Fort Collins, New York City, and Boston, if I can find one place in Missouri or Illinois somewhere I think I'll be golden. My route's all firmly mapped and I'm starting to peruse Garmin's City Navigator 2010 maps to pinpoint camps, cafes, and other essentials along the way. Somehow, someway, my budget is still holding up as well. I still need to find a place to live for when I get back, and sell the remainder of my worldly possesions, but most of the big stuff has been taken care of.

Equipment: A-

I'm doing really well here. I'm basically done. A few eagle eyed readers pointed out my list of stuff to pack was more complete than the picture of it, and using a small tupperware container to stand in for "tool kit comprehensive enough to fix any bike problem that is the size of a very small paperback book" is easier than actually making said tool kit.

However, there's really not much I need now. There's a few random one-off things I still need, like 5mm socket cap bolts, bailing wire, and spare cyclocomputer batteries, but I daresay every major, difficult purchase has been made.

Updates! News! Excitement!

2009-05-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

So here's what's been going on since I last posted:

#1. Star Trek pretty much sucked. There, I said it. Why does a Romulan mining vessel have advanced weaponry? Why didn't Spock just go to the Federation Outpost to warn them about Vulcan? Also, Uhura and Spock? Seriously, what the fuck.

#2. I finally found a large United States road map, so I have a graphical representation of my route. My map, please enjoy it:

I bought two maps, this one is my planned route, I'll also mark the other one with the actual route I end up taking. That one will get laminated and probably stuck on the refrigerator, along with everything else I've done that no one will ever, ever care about.

#3. My rides have been sucking ASS. I started kicking up the intensity right around the same time as my accident, and I'm worried at this point I might be overtraining. I'm puking after about half my rides, I feel sore all over, sometimes my legs just turn completely into jelly. I'm sure the 95-100 degree heat isn't helping things, but I might have to give up and take a week off or something in the near future. It's getting pretty bad.

#4. Speaking of my accident, everything fine there. I'm cleared to continue.

#5. After many months of trying to determine whether or not the Humane Society is actually with me on this or not, I've actually had some face to face meeting time with them and they are DEFINITELY on board. We're talking a feature story in their newsletter, pimping a local bike shop to possibly get me a decent discount on a new bike, appearances on the radio and local TV stations, and all that jazz. 1000 dollars is now the VERY low end of what I could conceivably scrape together with them for this.

Of course we ran into the slight problem of this blog being completely, utterly unsuitable for the vast majority of their constituency, but they're going to set up a different web site for me that their followers can, um, follow. That'll mean I'll have to update two places every day, but honestly the other site I can probably get away with posting a picture of a sunrise or an attractive moose and just write something like

When you push your body to the limit, you find the true measure of yourself as a man. This is what I believe, and it has made me a better person.

while I'm posting

Holy shit I just got raped up the ass by this 4,000 foot climb today but it was worth it because some chicks taking pictures at the top had awesome boobs and a tank top that was struggling mightily to hold those warlocks back.

here on this blog. Something for everyone, you know? Anyways, it is fun knowing I've got the support of the organization I'm trying to help, but the bottom line is I'm going to be able to raise a ton more money this way and that's what it's all about.

That was fun part 2

2009-05-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

First of all THANK YOU everyone for checking up on me. It was really nice of ya'll. I can assure you all I'm not nearly as bad off as most of you seemed to think. So to sum up today:

I woke up really early this morning, and there was a low throbbing pain in my back, right underneath my right shoulder blade. This was kind of ignored though, in favor of the boiling cauldron of hell that I was experiencing in my, you know, area. I also noticed I had been drooling a LOT while I was asleep, which I was pretty much going to chalk up to the percocet, but then I noticed there was a lot of blood on my pillow near my mouth as well. I was also having some trouble breathing

I decided it was time to give up and go see the doctor, and went to go take a leak real quick. Oops, tons of blood in my urine too. Now I was back to panicking a bit. I debated calling an ambulance but settled on a cab. I took the cab to the hospital, got admitted pretty much straight away, and the first thing they do: Morphine.

UMC is like the most morphine happy place I've ever been to. "Oops I stubbed my toe" "10 mikes morphine, STAT!!!" Unlike the phantom side pains I had back in June though, I was pretty okay with it this time. So I wait for like an hour with the resident, the doctor comes in and asks me to rate my pain, tell where it hurts, whatever. He doesn't seem too impressed, and is writing something in those infernal notebooks I'm convinced they write "Patient is a little girl and came in to whine about his owie" in, when I started coughing badly and hacked up another decent amount of blood.

That kind of got them going, so they gave me a CT scan and an echocardiagram. The diagnosis was cryptogenic hemoptysis, which sounded like an awesome House disease, but it turns out that it just means they don't know why I'm coughing up blood. The peeing blood was caused by a badly bruised kidney, apparently NOT by the shot I took to the sensitive bits by the nose of my saddle. The doc assumed it was a bruised lung causing the mouth bleeding but admitted it seemed like a bit too much blood for that. They offered to do a lung biopsy, but honestly if they're not worried I'm not.

They then told me I wasn't to use the bike for at least a month, because the bouncing and stuff was going to fuck up my kidneys worse. I'm going to level with you folks, I've been trying reallllly hard to just give the facts without trying to inject any drama into the proceedings, but at that point I laid back down and while I didn't start bawling or anything, I did start crying a bit. I was exhausted, frustrated, scared shitless of the fact that various parts of me are bleeding, and now some guy is basically blowing up my whole trip by saying I've gotta take a month off. There's just no way i could get back in shape in time if I did that, I'd be done.

So I plead my case, told him it didn't hurt that badly anymore (not that he was worried about that) and that I could just stand in the pedals for any large bumps. It's not like I'm taking it down a cliffside or anything, I'm on improved streets. I could deflate the tires a bunch to soften the ride, I'd come in for checkups, whatever he wanted. He asked why it was such a big deal and I explained it, and i gotta admit, the guy was really cool.

I have to come in for another CT scan and some other tests later this week, to make sure the bruising isn't getting worse, but he said I could keep riding and probably be okay. They released me later, I took a test ride, and it's really not that bad. I even made it into work later on. I can walk fine, it still kind of hurts to sit, and I'm not gonna lie it doesn't feel particularly good on the saddle, but it's certainly doable. All the bike needed was a new wheel and stem, didn't even bend the fork.

I'll be peeing blood for a few more days apparently, and taking deep breaths isn't really an option for awhile, but otherwise all things considered I'm pretty damn lucky. I took another look at where I fell and I have no idea how I convinced myself I landed on grass, the other side of that curb is straight sidewalk. I got all these bruises because I went end-over my handlebars and landed flat on my back on the sidewalk going about 20. Could have been a lot worse, so I'm looking at the bright side.

Again, thanks for all the well wishes and stuff, but it ended up not being a big deal. All's good.

Hey that was fun

2009-05-04T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've been hit by cars twice before, and honestly, it doesn't bother me as much as you'd think it would. When push comes to shove, I'm a bike on a street with cars. I mean, yes they're supposed to give me 5 feet, and yes I technically have the same rights as them, but they're supposed to come to complete stops at stop signs and put on their headlights 30 minutes after sunset too. Cars drive the way they do.

Tonight I wasn't actually HIT by a car, but I'm more annoyed this time than the other ones. So I'm biking down Campbell, on the short section where there's no bike path. So I'm more vulnerable than usual. But it's not usually a big deal. I'm cruising along, most of the way home and my head's, well, not where it should be when I'm the road. I tent to drift. Another point against me.

Suddenly I realize I'm hearing a car engine over my headphones. And it's VERY bright ahead of me. I sneak a glance back and see I'm being born down upon by a fucking huge truck. It's literally 5 feet behind me. And christ, the engine is loud.

The lights, sound, and all of it kind of made me panic. I was all the way to the right so I couldn't really bail out. Luckily there was a driveway right in front of me. I turned into going about 20, but didn't exactly make a full turn, I just merged over a bit. Unfortunately, this wasn't a crosswalk or anything, so the curb isn't on the side of the intersecting road, it's just a curb. Maybe 4 inches high.

I then proceeded to do absolutely everything wrong. I freaked out and tensed up (you're supposed to relax so your arms and legs take some of the shock) and I also stood up in the peddles a bit (didn't know you're not supposed to do this, but trust me, you're not)

So I hit the curb. The front wheel jumps up, then the seat immediately follows. The nose of the seat then rams up HARD into...well. I want to be delicate here. It hit me somewhere in between where it would've kicked me in the nuts, or anally violated me as badly as Michael Clark Duncan would. Still a pretty sensitive area.

I fall off (into some dirt luckily) and immediately hop back up, walk over to the idling truck in front of me, rip the driver out of his seat and proceed to administer a beatdown of Old Testament proportions. Nah, just kidding, that would've been nice to do. I writhed around on the ground like a fish for about 20 seconds, then spit up a fair amount of blood. Probably somewhere between Neo in the Matrix where Agent Smith kicks his ass for the first time, and Jubei from Ninja Scroll. As far as I can tell I'm not cut and didn't bite my tongue, so that's a bit worrisome, but I'm also concerned for my poor nether regions.

I did eventually get up (the truck was long gone) and thank goodness I was close to home, so I managed to walk the bike the rest of the way. The front rim is WRECKED, and maybe the fork or stem, but other than that it seems okay. Those can all be replaced easily.

As I got home I coughed up blood a few more times, but less each time. I vaguely considered going to the ER, but it was pretty far away and I don't think it was serious enough to warrant an ambulance. I got the bike home, went in the house, found the last two Percocet from my phantom side pains back in June, and swallowed those about 20 minutes ago.

I'm gonna try to get some sleep and see how I feel in the morning. I almost certainly have to go to the hospital, but I don't want to be all melodramatic and call an ambulance or call someone to come get me. If I still feel like shit in the morning, I'll go. If no one's around, I guess I might call a cab. I don't think anything's seriously wrong. It hurts to breathe, but I hit the ground pretty hard so I probably just had the wind knocked out of me. I stopped coughing up blood about half an hour ago. I still taste it, but my mouth was kind of full of it for awhile so I'll probably taste it for awhile to come.

I certainly can't sit, I'm curled up in bed with my laptop as I write this. It actually doesn't even hurt that much down there, it's more kind of numb and throbbing. Also Percocet is pretty awesome stuff. I guess I should probably start worrying about how to get to work and around for the forseeable future, but I highly doubt anyone's going to question it if I call out of work tomorrow and spend the day figuring all that stuff out.

I swear to God if I ever find the dude that came up behind me I'm going to break his fucking neck.

Mechanical Problems

2009-05-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

You know, I'd always assumed a bike is a reasonably simple machine. 2 wheels, a frame basically consisting of two connected triangles, some gears. This past week has disabused me of that thought process.

About two weeks ago, a bit less, I ran over some caltrops. Caltrops basically look like the metal things in a game of jacks, except without the little balls on the end. They were invented to stop cavalry charges about 3000 years ago, you'd seed the field with them and the horses would get their feet messed up by running over them. In the ensuing 3 millenia, however, apparently their purpose has changed somewhat, in that they are now designed solely to piss me off.

So I ran over the caltrops, which didn't just fuck up the tubes in my tires, but the tires themselves. I didn't realize that at first, naturally, so I just replaced the tube and it kept blowing up within 3 seconds. The tube was poking out of a gash in the tire, and popping from being under too much pressure. At this point a reasonable person would've simply replaced the tire too.

"Nonsense" I declared (to my cat), "I'm not going to spend TWENTY DOLLARS on some new tire when all this needs is a bit of clever monkey wrenching!" First I tried just inflating the tube to 40 PSI, instead of 110. This worked for a little while, but the extra heat that created (I don't know why underinflated tires heat up more than fully inflated ones, ask someone smarter than me. They just do) caused the rubber to start to fail even worse around the gash, so the tube started popping out again and blowing up.

So then I decided to use some tire patches on the inside of the tire, which would prevent the tube from sticking out. "Genius!" I cried (to my cat, who gave me a look of deep disdain and wandered over to the corner to lick her own crotch somehow) and figured all was well. Except I still had a small tube graveyard, and no new tire tubes to replace it with. I decided that it would be foolish to buy new tubes, because if I did that I'd spend as much as I would've on a new tire, and then this whole sequence of events would've seemed stupid because if I'd just bought the tire in the first place I wouldn't need new tubes and I'd have a shiny new tire. With me so far? Yeah neither am I.

So I figured I'd find the least damaged tube, patch it up, and use that for awhile. I'm not sure what my end game was at this point. Eventually tubes (and even tires) wear out, so I guess my thought was that if I somehow coaxed another, oh I don't know, 1000 miles out of this horrible configuration, then I'd have vindicated myself somehow and could claim I'd have needed new tubes and tires anyway. But to my dismay, I'd used all of my patching equipment for the busted tire.

"Curses!" I exclaimed, causing my cat to jerk awake, look at me with contempt, and finally don a miniature fedora and suitcase and leave the house, slamming the door behind her. Now I was in a pickle, because a patch kit costs about 8 dollars at the good bike store (which is far away), but to get there I'd have to go buy a tube from the much closer, crappier bike store that doesn't sell decent patch kits. I was stuck!

But then true inspiration occurred. What if I put glue on the back side of the patch I put inside the tire, and put the damaged part of the tube inside the tire at that exact spot? Fantastic! So I spent, honest to God, three hours setting that up, then inflated the tire and rushed to the good bike store. By the time I got there, the tire was basically flat again. Apparently the tire didn't seal up right against the patch.

So now I've got the tube glued to the inside of the tire. I can't get it out without ripping off the original patch and starting from square one. Except I'm at worse than square one because now I have a ruined tire, ruined tube, AND I'm 10 miles from home. When the bike store guy saw the corpse of my tube dangling from inside the tire, he said "Dude, what are you DOING?". Suddenly I realized: I'm an idiot. With a sense of deep shame, I bought a new tire, new tubes, and a new patch kit. Grand total: 75 bucks. For those of you keeping score (editor's note: Fuck you) that's 55 bucks more than if I'd just bought the new tire to start with.

The lesson to be learned here is that A) Seriously, I'm retarded and B) you can't mickey mouse repairs on a bike. I'm going to have to radically rethink my packing list in terms of spare parts, because I CANNOT be going through this shit when I'm stranded in the middle of black bear country or something.

Let's just see how many people read this damn thing

2009-04-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Hey you. Yes you. I need your help. I need you to pick out what movies I'll bring with me on this trip.

You see, I already have the music all planned out*, now I need to get the movies taken care of. The only problem is because I'm cheap, my Ipod Touch is only the 8 gig version, which means I have to be choosy about what I bring with me. I can fit 4 movies, so I've compiled the following list and you all are going to vote for which ones to bring. Voting ends at midnight on August 15th, so I'll have long enough to ~~download them illegally off Limewire~~ purchase them lawfully from Apple before I head out.

Vote for THREE movies please. I know I said I can fit 4, but one of them is going to be Planet Terror. This is not up for negotiation.

Without further ado, here's the list.

What Movies Should I bring with me?

* Select Qkumba Zoo's "The Child Inside", set to repeat, listen until the sun explodes.

Mother fucking headwinds, man

2009-04-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

I can't find an internet resource to prove it, but apparently it's considered entirely normal for Tucson to turn into a godawful, horrible cauldron of gusty and shrieking windstorms during the spring. At least if I believe KGUN9, the news network that claims to be "on my side".

Biking into a headwind is probably the most debilitating, morale-sapping experience one can go through. I've long since reached the point where on a reasonably flat, smooth road I feel most comfortable being in 20th or 21st gear or so. I don't quite put it in the highest gear, but it's close. When there's a bad headwind though, I start feeling exhausted unless I put it into something like 15th or 16th. And even that's probably too high, because it still takes me an extra 20-30 minutes to get home and I feel like Gary Busey's liver when I'm done.

The most infuriating part though, is that the wind SWITCHES. Basically 1/3 of my route is directly north, and the other 2/3 is directly east. And reverse it coming home, of course. In the morning, when I'm going face first into a 30-40mph wind that's blowing due west, I used to actually tell myself "Oh well at least this'll be helpful when I'm coming home" WRONG. 9 hours later when I'm headed home, the wind has switched. Now it's blowing due east.

Omniscient Wikipedia has some explanations that would be helpful if lived near a large body of water .

Differential heating is the motive force behind land breezes and sea breezes (or, in the case of larger lakes, lake breezes), also known as on- or off-shore winds. Land absorbs and radiates heat faster than water, but water releases heat over a longer period of time. The result is that, in locations where sea and land meet, heat absorbed over the day will be radiated more quickly by the land at night, cooling the air. Over the sea, heat is still being released into the air at night, which rises. This convective motion draws the cool land air in to replace the rising air, resulting in a land breeze in the late night and early morning. During the day, the roles are reversed. Warm air over the land rises, pulling cool air in from the sea to replace it, giving a sea breeze during the afternoon and evening.

But nothing explains this infuriating phenomenon for me. At first I considered that maybe it was all in my head. I'm paraphrasing, but the Essential Touring Cyclist did have a section where they address the fact that for a large survey of people crossing the US (both ways) 70% of people reported headwinds.

It may always SEEM like a headwind, because you still feel air blowing across your face, but the only way this would not be an occurrence is if you are slower than the wind is blowing behind you. If you are travelling at 20 mph, and there is a 15 mph breeze behind you, it won't neccessarily feel like it. It'll feel like there's a 5 mph headwind.

I threw out this theory though because A) It's not just kind of windy here, it's fucking brutally windy and gusts up to 50 mph and B) I have several flags across my route, all of which confirm Mother Nature is bitch slapping me both ways.

I've been keeping a very simple chart of the headwinds since the beginning of March, and the numbers back me up. After 39 days of travel (which equals 156 instances, because I switch directions once each time) I've had the following luck

40 times there was no wind
24 times there was a crosswind
2 times there was a tailwind
90 times there was a headwind

That just seems ridiculous. That's more than all the other situations put together. There's no water nearby. There's mountains on two sides of me, but I don't see why they'd have an effect either. I can't think of a single, solitary reason for this. And don't think I haven't been trying to figure it out. I want to know what I can be angry at. When I blow a tire, I can blame the douchebags who throw beer bottles out of their windows and leave broken glass all over the road. When an unexplained rattling develops, I can blame myself for Mickey Mousing my poor bike into it's current monstrous form. When it's too hot or too cold, I can blame my choice of geographic location to live in.

But who do you blame for a headwind? The obvious candidate is of course, Mother Nature, or whatever force your personal beliefs feel run the show around here. But there's no rational way to get back at her. I can burn tires, spray 70's era coolant into the air, and leave the water running while I brush my teeth all I want, but in the end she doesn't really care. What with global warming, China, and asteroid collisions all on her plate, the actions of one insane, pitiful individual probably amount to less than a tiny blip on her radar.

I've come up with an idea though. GAIA. I'm not talking about the crazy hypothesis that the Earth is somehow alive and sentient, I'm talking about the fictional character from the well known cartoon series Captain Planet.

NOW we're getting somewhere. It's silly to feel anger or frustration towards a series of pressure gradients and geographical features combining to influence wind direction, but it's totally appropriate to feel seething, white hot fury directed towards this bitch. Fuck you, Gaia, and your stupid giant purple vein in your hair. I hope Mati comes into your house in the middle of the night and stabs you in the face with a carpenter's pencil for giving him the stupid power of "Heart", which as far as I can tell didn't help him in a single episode except for the opening credits where he used it to have a small group of monkeys save him from a burning rainforest.

I feel better now.

March Checkup

2009-04-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

So there was some stuff I was supposed to have done by the end of March, let's take a look and see how I did.

By the end of March:
- ~~Decide on how to outfit the bike (Components, panniers vs a trailer, blah blah)~~
- ~~Have relationship with whatever NPO established so I can start collecting~~
- Performed at least 1 60 mile day trip

I crossed out #1 there, but honestly I have no idea if that's really done or not. I mean they're certainly going to take my (your) money, but I'm not kidding when I say I simply cannot get my point of contact at the Humane Society to talk to me. There was chatter of getting the local news involved possibly, and getting some more exposure for this thing, so maybe I need to try going up the ladder over there or something.

Deciding "how to outfit" the bike happened months ago. I'm using panniers and have the components picked out, and I've selected a carefully tuned, sexy engine to power the whole thing, namely these babies. KA-POW!!! (Probably funnier if you can see me point to my thighs and do a fist pump while I say it)

In terms of actually training though, like doing that 60 mile ride, well... yeah. Look, it's been a ridiculous couple of weeks. I got a promotion at work which necessitated switching my schedule to the unreasonably early hours of 7:45 AM - 4:15 PM for a few weeks, and I've been spending my weekends either flying across the country, going camping on the windswept, haunted summit of Mt Lemmon, or this weekend simply trying to recover from the previous few.

This isn't a problem, however. I still have plenty of time. I've been running simulations through the most powerful computer programs available (Playing Oregon Trail, recording it on video, then watching it in reverse) and as long as I can avoid any bad cases of measles or running out of bacon and coffee, I should be fine.

Speaking of Oregon trail *, have you ever noticed that in the newer editions, where it actually shows a picture of who you're talking to when you're trying to trade, that the Indian dude always tries to screw you? "Sure I've got a spare wagon wheel, that'll be 500 bullets and two Oxen". What the fuck? And half the time I usually trade anyways, out of guilt. It's not his fault, his people traded the state of Colorado for some shiny beads and a couple of Smallpox blankets, so there's obviously some problem with the concept of ownership here.

So although I feel like I can recover, it's tough to give myself a passing grade here. I'm actually getting a tad SLOWER on the bike, and since I haven't had the energy to go shopping for wholesome or even partialsome (holy shit Firefox thinks that's a word!) food, lately I've been eating Cheetos and Pepsi for breakfast, and Double Quarter Pounders from Mickey D's and that's about it. I know, I know, there's a difference between accepting things are going to be a bit less than optimal for awhile and accepting it, and what I did which was turn into the skid and by at least 12 state's guidelines tried to kill myself, but the point is... actually I don't know how to end this sentence gracefully. I ate Cheetos and Pepsi at 8:00 AM every weekday for two weeks. Holy crap. I'm going to end up as a House episode.

Posting was slow here for that time as well, and I'd apologize, but honestly like 3 people read this and there isn't really any way to gussy up "I'm still biking a lot for something that'll happen in 4 months" and make it interesting.

Final Grade : D+ (I'm still cruising around about 100 miles per week, which has gotta be doing SOMETHING, and I'm so full of excuses for the weak performance that I believe at least one of them is decent enough to merit just barely passing)

*Congratulations on actually reading one of my asterisks! As a reward, check this out: If you find yourself feeling nostalgic to play Oregon Trail for the 5 minutes it was actually fun before you got bored of shooting bears, click here.

Crap

2009-04-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

So yeah there's been a bit less on the training front lately. Sue me.

Packing, eating, training, etc...

2009-03-16T01:42:00.000-07:00

A few things:

#1. To avoid blowing my training timeline, I NEED to do my 60 mile ride next weekend. I'll be in NYC drinking beer and agonizing over whether to draft Jose Offerman or Dante Bichette in a fantasy baseball draft the weekend after that, and after that it's April and this needs to be done before the end of March, according to the arbitrary, meaningless goal I set for myself.

#2. I've plateaued in terms of training, I think. My rides haven't gotten any shorter over the past few weeks. After a fairly impressive 22 pounds lost thus far, I seem to have stalled out in that regard as well. Diagnosis?

I've still been eating nothing but garbage food. Granted, less of it, and since I still bike 100+ miles per week I was getting away with it for awhile, but unfortunately it's time to take the next step. Right now my diet basically consists of dollar burgers from the various fast food places (FYI: McDoubles are SO inferior to Double Stacks it's not even funny), Crystal Lite, Granola Bars (not the good kind either, the Quaker Chocolate Chip kind) and the occasional multivitamin to stave off a bad case of scurvy. That's no longer going to cut it.

So there's something to look forward to, folks. Anyone who read my vegetarian blog back during Lent 08 knows what a raving lunatic I turn into when you take away my fast food for a few weeks (never mind 4 months)

#3. I'm all done packing stuff. I'm also all done buying various camping equipment. I gotta say, I'm sick of buying Mountain Hardwear this and biodegradeable that. Here's my complete packing list. This is everything I'm bringing with me.

Sleeping Bag (20 Degree rated)
Sleeping Pad
Tent
Footprint for tent
Water Bottles
Flashlight
Pocketknife
Bungees
Maps
Towel
Nylon Cord (50 feet)
Headlight
Taillight
Helmet
Cable Lock
Gloves
Clipless shoes
2 Pairs of bike Shorts
1 Pair of Underwear *
1 Pair leg warmers
3 Pairs of socks
1 Waterproof Rain Coat
6 Rubber Bands (to put on my pant legs to keep them from getting caught in the crank)
1 Fleece Pullover
Tire Patch Kit
Tire Levers
C02 Pump
Multi Tool
Chain Lube
Chain Tool
Spoke Wrench
Presta Adapter
Duct Tape
Safety Pins
Plastic Ties
3 Inner Tubes
Spare Tire
6 Spokes
2 Chain Links
1 Cyclocomputer Battery
Eating Utensils
Sunglasses
Camp Soap (Biodegradeable "everything" soap)
Water Purifying Tablets
Tweezers/Nail Clippers
Pills (Not the fun kind, some multivitamins and some Sominex to make sure I get to sleep early)
Gold Bond
Book
Rain Cover for rear panniers
Laptop
Digital Camera
NiMH Batteries (8 AA 12 AAA) plus charger
Ipod Touch (music/backup computer)
Cell Phone
Food (1-2 Days worth)
2 racing jerseys
1 pair Zip-Off pants (pants that can turn into shorts)
2 T-Shirts
Rain Pants
Speakers (For hands-free listening to Car-Talk or watching movies on my Ipod)
GPS
Wool Cap (for any nights my sleeping bag isn't going to cut it.)

Sounds like a lot of stuff, right? Well look at it all laid out (click the pictures for a better idea. Blogger has the worst thumbnail system ever):

Looks pretty unwieldy, right? Kinda like cramming Rosie O'Donnel into one of those wetsuits Michael Phelps wore when he won 9 billion gold medals or cured cancer or whatever he did. However, hand to God, it all fits. Check it out.

It's a kind of tight fit, but everything goes in there without having to jump on the bags or anything like that. I might still install a small handlebar bag to have some extra breathing room, but if I can avoid that I wil.

So yep, packing and camping stuff is done. All I need to do now is get the bike components swapped out and we're made in the shade, folks.

* "WHAT?!?" Hear me out, bike shorts aren't meant to be worn with underwear. The underwear is strictly for days off, which are going to be few and far between

Kyle Reviews the Topeak MTX DXP Rear Panniers and Sunlite Fortress Front Panniers

2009-03-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

Hooray! I know what you're asking. "Kyle, why the hell would I want to read a post where you review some esoteric bike component that I'll never ever ever use and if I ever did need to use one I could just as easily strap a garbage bag to my bike with some duct tape? Also you smell bad"

Well first of all, that second sentence isn't a question, and secondly, screw you. If you want to read something interesting go read grouphug.us or something. I do all the time. The VERY first entry, I kid you not

I finally found out the person she cheated on me with was my grandpa, and he is ugly and old. Now, I’m not one to wish ill will on anyone, nor make fun of them but I must admit…. I found a small satisfaction in that bit of information.

Anyways, back to me. Oh wait, you're probably asking something else as well. "What the hell are panniers?" Click this link to learn more. I'll wait.

All set? Sweet. So the choice I was facing was between pulling a trailer, or using panniers. Most people who do this kind of thing choose panniers, although that might be because trailers are a relatively new thing to the touring scene and most people who do cross-country tours are old farts who fear change and teenagers. What are the pros and cons of each?

Panniers

-Pros: Doesn't hold as much stuff. Much much lighter. Doesn't increase rolling resistance because there's no third/fourth tire.
-Cons: Doesn't hold as much stuff. Makes the bike wobbly. Can't be taken off as easily as a trailer

Trailer

-Pros: Pops right off, so when you're done biking for the day you get rid of all the weight. Holds a bunch of stuff. Doesn't affect how the bike handles.
-Cons: Heeeeavy. Increases rolling resistance.

The observant among you may notice I listed "doesn't hold as much stuff" as both a pro and con for panniers. This is because trailers hold SO much stuff it's easy to overpack. Or so I've been told. I doubt my personal packing list would be much different either way. I'm probably going to leave my tools and food at home to make sure I can bring three Frisbee golf Frisbees and 45 pairs of leftover Superbowl 3-D glasses either way. Seriously, I have no business being left alone with a can opener, never mind packing essential survival equipment.

I was originally going to go for a trailer, because I figured it'd simply be easier. I'd heard about the whole "it's heavy and will slow you down" argument but didn't think the difference would be that noticeable. So awhile ago, I tried it for a day. As the old saying goes*, "try it before you buy it."

Now, full disclosure, it was a child trailer, not a touring trailer. So it was heavier than one made for touring, but not THAT much heavier. It had two wheels as well, which a lot of touring trailers don't (some do), but I had made the decision I wanted two wheels because otherwise the trailer is connected to the bike by a fixed joint (instead of a universal joint) so if the trailer tips over, you and the bike tip over too. As the old saying goes, "No. Just...no" **

Anyways, I freaking hated it. Yeah, it was heavy, and even going up the small-ish hills on the way to work I noticed a big slowdown, but the main thing that killed it for me was the extra rolling resistance. 4 tires on the ground are a lot harder to propel than 2 tires. It really does make a big difference. So I decided it was time to give panniers a look.

In the end I chose small ones for the rear, and big ones for the front. This is a bit backwards, as most people prefer to put the big panniers in the back, and small ones in the front. I say "most" people but I really mean "most Americans", as the European style is to put the big panniers in the front. The arguments are that it's bad to put the weight in the rear, because that's also where most of the weight is to start with since you're sitting on the bike, so putting ALL the weight on the rear tire makes spokes snap more often. Others say it's bad to put the weight in the front because that's where you steer, so putting the weight there makes the bike all floaty and squirrely. Still others say "Sit up straight, spit out that gum, and wipe that smirk off your face, mister", but those people were mostly my 5th grade teachers so I feel their advice doesn't apply to this.

In the end, who the hell knows which is right. I certainly don't, I can barely dress myself, never mind comprehend the minutiae of weight placement scenarios on my bike. I chose to go with the "European" style setup because my bike has short chain stays (the part of the frame that goes from the pedals to the rear wheels) so if I had big bags back there, my feet would likely hit the bags. (I have big feet.) Also I used to drive a 1985 Mercury Grand Marquis (May it rest in peace ***) so I'm no stranger to floaty handling.

So, okay, big bags in front, smaller ones in the rear. Maybe I should start actually reviewing the fucking things now. ****

I bought this set for my rear bags, and this set for my front. I'll talk about the rear one first, because I bought that one first.

The Topeak bag was bought because it works with their Explorer rear rack. Several people on Bikeforums.net had good things to say about them. Basically what makes it useful is that is CLIPS into place with this ingenious yellow tab thingie. Most panniers get stuck to a rack with a complicated system of bungee cords and prayer. I'm sure it's easier than it looks, but when I saw a co-workers pannier setup, it looked like a 5-10 minute job to just put the damn things on. Even though I'd passed on a trailer, I still wanted a setup where I could pop off the panniers in a few seconds, leaving my bike unencumbered by them when I go into town to forage for food and internet access. This bag just does that.

It only holds about 1500 cubic inches of stuff, which is SMALL for rear panniers. But it was cheap, is exceptionally well made, and is basically the only show in town for quick-release rear panniers that don't cost hundreds of dollars. It's going to hold my clothes, tools and spare parts, toiletries, electronics, and basically everything other than my tent and sleeping bag.

I really like this bag and think I made the best choice possible. It's small, but that's fine because my feet won't keep hitting it while pedaling. It does the quick release thing better than anything else out there, it's very durable, and it was pretty cheap. One thing: It's not water proof. It's water resistant, to an extent, but it's not made to withstand driving rainstorms. They sell a yellow waterproof covering for it, for like 20 bucks, so I'll just get that.

The Sunlite bags, I didn't know anything about. They were the only thing I could find when I Googled "Front Panniers + Quick Release", although that might be because I had broken the search page a few hours beforehand by searching for "Eric Wolpert's Mom + Midgets" and it found over 3 million hits and crashed Google's servers.

They were kind of expensive (but not Arkel or Ortlieb-level expensive) but I figured in my own very special way that maybe that would mean they were high quality. It turns out that while 99% of the time, such logic is retarded to the core, in this case I came out all right. True, the quick release system is incompatible with the 15 dollar Nashbar front rack I bought, but some quick thinking and a hacksaw solved that little problem (And truly, thinking on your feet and having a hacksaw can solve just about ANY bicycle problem, as well as any problems having to do with dead hookers) and the panniers pop on just fine now.

These puppies ARE water proof, they're coated in the same weird plastic-y stuff that higher quality bags are. They're going to hold my tent and sleeping bag, two fairly light items but they're bulky. So they shouldn't screw with my steering too badly. They had to be water proof because they're less than a foot off the ground (my front rack is a low-rider one), so they'll get their fair share of splashing. They're very big for front panniers, seem to handle water just fine, and feel really well made. I think they're, again, going to be just about perfect for my trip.

So if you find yourself looking to equip yourself for a long distance tour, are really tall, want to use panniers, and are looking for panniers that come off the bike in 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes, these two might be exactly what you're looking for. I heartily recommend both.

* In this case, "the old saying" being "a phrase I just came up with because it rhymes"

** In this case, "the old saying" being "a girl I tried to talk to at the local Safeway last night". Oh God I'm so lonely!!

*** Want to hear a sordid tale of death and betrayal? I bought this car for 100 bucks, AWESOME car. After a week, the alternator light turns on. I check the cables and they're all corroded. So I painstakingly spend 3 hours replacing my battery cables, hook them back up to the battery, and promptly set every piece of electrical equipment in my car on fire. Apparently making sure you connect the negative and positive terminals to the right places is pretty darn important. I know this post has been more self-deprecating than most, but seriously, I'm 100% certain I'm missing no less than 3 chromosones or something.

**** If there's any people reading this who have already done a long-distance tour, or know a lot about bikes, I'm sure you're saying right now "Why didn't you just buy an Ortlieb or Arkel pannier? They have quick release thingies, they're water proof, and made really well" You know why I didn't? They cost THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS APIECE. I refuse to spend 600 dollars on what amount to fancy bags. I won't do it. I just won't. If Isla Fisher goes slumming one day and promises to have sex with me if I buy her a 300 dollar designer handbag I might do it then. Maybe.

Yeah so I didn't quite get around to that ride on Monday

2009-03-09T00:19:00.001-07:00

My front derailleur was making a funny noise and the weather was kind of wrong and the prevailing winds were all wrong and holy potatoes am I lazy. Yeah yeah, I need to get my rear in gear. Look, I know this.

Thus far my training still consists of the roughly 100 miles I do per week commuting to work. There are going to be some DAYS I need to go 100 miles, so this is obviously not an acceptable regiment forever. I still have to do a 60 mile ride, an 80 mile ride, a 100 mile ride, and a ride up Mount Lemmon, along with a vastly increased mileage workload. I'm aware I need to do these things. I really am.

If I sound slightly defensive, rest assured it's merely because I'm a whiny oversensitive little bitch. Also, this thing is getting super expensive. When the idea to do this first entered my head, I bought a copy of "The Essential Touring Cyclist" for reference, and in the chapter where it talks about the commitment level needed to do this, it broke down a cross-country tour into three budget classes. Equipment, food, logistics, all of it. The cheapskate budget was about 2,000, the mid-level was 3,000, and the high end was about 5,000.

I've been keeping a tab on how much this trip is going to cost me when all is said and done, out of curiosity mostly to see how close I could keep to that budget. I'm like a 5th level blackbelt at sniffing out deals and finding the best price for stuff, so it should've been pretty easy. A quick rundown of the $$$ I've spent on this so far*.

Bike: 600 dollars
Rear rack: 35 dollars
Rear Panniers: 50 dollars
Fenders: 40 dollars
Front Rack: 30 dollars
Front Panniers: 100 dollars
Tent: 120 Dollars
Sleeping Bag: 135 Dollars
Water Bottles (Steel): 35 Dollars. THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS!!!
GPS: 110 Dollars
CO2 Pump: 20 dollars
Leg Warmers: 40 Dollars
Waterproof Jacket: 30 Dollars
Zip-Off Pants: 30 Dollars
Bike Computer: 20 Dollars
NiMH Batteries and Charger: 30 Dollars
Headlamp: 35 Dollars
Cycling Gloves: 20 Dollars

-------------------------------------------
~ 1450 Dollars

That might not seem like an outrageous amount of money, but remember I get paid about as well as people who smash rocks with other rocks, so blowing 1500 dollars on this so early is a bit of a surprise. Whoever said this is doable for 3 grand was clearly alternating between smoking Salvia and huffing model airplane glue. Doing it for 2K, on that note, would involve either giving handjobs for sandwiches along the way, or sorcery of some kind.

It might seem like most of the expenses associated with this have already been incurred, but the bike gets a lot more expensive (the base model is 600 clams, there's a LOT of stuff I'm tweaking that ups the cost considerably that I'll get into in a later post), there's a few random other items I need, and there's the food, lodging, and plane ticket home to still figure in. which will be the far bigger expenses. As of right now, I don't see any way to get out of this for less than $5,000, and I cut some pretty big corners (getting a ride to San Diego to save a plane ticket, E-baying a lot of stuff, etc...)

Also please let me know if you like the site layout better now. It's still a work in progress. At least I dropped the weird Sesame Street stuff, right?

* Although it's prefaced with some unabashed whining, the main reason I'm posting this list isn't to bitch and moan about how expensive it is to take two months off work and have fun touring around the country. I'm mostly keeping a running tab because, unlike most people who've done something like this, I'm neither a spoiled college kid whose Mommy and Daddy pay for their living expenses while they're off gallivanting around the country, nor am I some mid-40's professional who has advanced up the ladder far enough to the point they don't really need to watch their expenses anymore.

In summary: I'm actively cutting any expenses possible (without compromising to any extremes), and since most people who do a cross-continent tour don't do that, a list like this is fairly unique and others who read this and are planning their own tour might find it interesting.

Home Sweet Home

2009-03-01T00:06:00.000-08:00

A primary concern for my pre-tour planning was to get the accommodations figured out as soon as possible. Considering I'll be spending 97% of my nights in this thing (Motels are for sissies) I figured I'd better put some thought into this one.

And think I did! There's no shortage of lodging options for the discerning camper. I considered the following possibilities: (click for bigger pictures)

Bivy Sack:

Pros: Super duper lightweight. Wicked easy to set up.
Cons: No room for changing in, or to invite foxy ladies over that you met at the local farmer's market. Can't spend a rainy night in there reading or whatever either
Reason ruled out: I'm not a filthy hippy lunatic.

Ultralight tarp:

Pros: Evener light than a bivy sack (At least this one seemed to be). Plenty of room.
Cons: No floor or walls. Needs poles.
Reason ruled out: I actually considered this, as it's SO much lighter than a real tent. The problem is those poles are hiking poles. So it'd be great if you're an ultralight backpacker, but hiking poles aren't much use on a bike. Also keeping dry in the rain involves luck, and digging a trench to avoid water runoff, a big environmental no-no.

Hammock:

Pros: Lightweight, very comfy, appeals to my intrinsic laziness
Cons: Needs trees, makes stealth camping tricky
Reason ruled out: I was seriously, 100% going to do it this way. It's got the same no walls problem that the tarp did, but any decent backpacking one has the tarp and a mosquito net included, so you're more protected from the elements than it might seem. A tent has no real insulation value for heat, and the lack of a tent actually keeps you DRIER by eliminating condensation issues. The problem? A lot of my route goes through some very tree-challenged areas.

A Normal Boring Tent:

Pros: Has walls and a floor. Plenty of room inside. Vestibule to keep my bike under.
Cons: Heavy. Interior condensation can be a problem. Not very "edgy".

It's not exciting, interesting, or apt to impress anyone, but let's face it neither am I. In the end, people usually camp in tents for a reason. Although I haven't come up with a firm packing weight, it's going to be somewhere between 30-40 pounds, and putting together enough stuff to keep you alive for 2 months isn't easy when you've got that little wiggle room. The tent pictured above is the actual one I'll be using (the other pictures are random stuff I found [Except the green tarp, my roomate made that herself and was showing it off] via a Google Images search, and holy shit does some weird stuff come up when you turn SafeSearch off. So basically half the photos were randomly picked. Except not really the bivy sack one, I found the girl in it to be oddly attractive.)

This tent weighs basically 5 pounds when you throw in the footprint. 5 pounds is pretty heavy. Apparently when it comes to tents, from my research, you get to choose two of the three following qualities:

1. Cheap
2. Durable
3. Light

I wasn't terribly interested in spending 500 dollars on a tent, and this tent will suffer some pretty serious pounding over the course of two months, so I ended up having to forgo a light tent. The tent I ended up with a Mountain Hardwear Meridian 2. Mountain Hardwear apparently makes VERY high quality stuff, so this baby should serve me just fine in the durability department, and it's a 2008 model so I got it for a good price on clearance. I chose this model because it's got some good features, especially for someone who is just barely mentally competent on a good day.

You can see the opening above the little window, it lets a lot of air in, which should minimize condensation issues.

There's exactly ONE pole, and it doesn't need to go through those infernal sleeves, the tent just clips to the pole. Pretty sweet, right? Makes it set up in like 3 seconds, and the process is...well, not idiot-proof, we'll say idiot-retardant. (Tee hee!)

In other news, I elected this weekend to rock back and forth enough to heave myself off my pudding-stained couch and actually do one of my "serious" rides. I didn't do it today, because, well, I just didn't feel like it. I can't do it tomorrow because TNT is showing the three Lord of The Rings movies back-to-back-to-back in HD so I'll be stuck inside for about 12 hours*. So I decided to take a day off work on Monday and go do it then. Look forward to my wheezing, out of breath report!

* OH MY GOD just reading that I want to punch myself in the face.

Aw dammit

2009-02-26T22:38:00.000-08:00

Today (according to my little bike computer [and some quick, shaky math considering I only remember to turn it on about 40% of the time]) I crossed the 2,000 mile threshold. Since I started training for this in late October, I've now biked 2000 miles. Another way to think of this it's taken me over 4 months to cover roughly half the distance I'm supposedly supposed to ride in just under 2 months.

@!$%.*

*^** See how I'm censoring myself now? Funny story behind that. The Humane Society somehow heard about this whole operation, wrote me a nice letter thanking me and asking if I needed anything, and when I replied with "Hey thanks! Have you checked out my blog yet?" they immediately ceased all communication with me. SAD FACE.

** What's that? Stop with the asterisks? Blogs aren't supposed to have footnotes? Yeah well your FACE isn't supposed to have footnotes. Think about it.

Being homeless would probably make it easier

2009-02-22T23:48:00.000-08:00

When I gave up my car a few months ago, I didn't expect to run into any serious challenges. Yes, bringing chicks home from the bars was going to be more difficult, because I'm willing to bet 1,000 dollars right now this conversation* has never happened in the history of humanity.

Guy: Wanna come over to my place?
Girl: Sure! Where's your car?
Guy: That's a complicated question. The good news is I think you'll fit on my handlebars.
Girl: It's like I won the Hot Stud lottery!

But other than that, I live right next to the grocery store, have no social life to speak of, and if I'm going out with other people the chances are good THEY'LL have vehicles at least. I figured this car-free lifestyle would be pretty easy.

And really for the most part, it has been. During the week I'm at work and so is everyone I know, so the lack of a car hasn't impinged upon my social life too badly. On the weekends, I can usually sucker someone else into carting my sorry ass around if we're going out to the bars or bowling or whatever.

Sure there's been the occasional hiccup. This last week after work some coworkers spontaneously suggested I go with them to feed and put out their horse. Although horses terrify me (When I was really, really little I saw a horse skull at a farm or something. It had these HUGE teeth and not really knowing what horses looked like, I thought it was a monster. Then when I went to go see the actual horses at the farm one bared its teeth at me and scared me shitless. Ever since then I haven't been a huge fan.) I figured it'd be fun, and without thinking about it too much I agreed to go.

The first problem was they weren't going until two hours after my shift ended. If I'd been driving, I could've driven home, chilled out for an hour and a half, then driven back. Since my commute is more like 45-50 minutes now though, I ended up staying at work. Then we didn't get done until like 1 AM, and by then I was really tired and NOT looking forward to the eventual bike ride home. What we ended up doing is popping off the front tire and throwing the bike in the back, and my coworker gave me a ride home (20 minutes out of her way as well). I felt like a giant tool and a huge hassle for everyone involved. If I'd known beforehand, I could've figured something else out. But with a bike, it's admittedly more difficult to just make spontaneous plans like that.

The hassle is still worth it though, I feel. If I still had my car, instead of having several months of training under my belt, I'd probably STILL be putting it off. Or maybe biking once a week and thinking that'd be sufficient "for now". And when the weather starts heating up, I'd CERTAINLY give it up then, instead of preparing myself for what promises to be a pretty scorching path from San Diego-Tempe in August. Getting rid of the car took my own propensity for laziness out of the picture, which, trust me, is only a good thing.

In closing, check it out, I decided I'm not done posting awkward Sesame Street shit.

Am I the only who finds this to be earth-shatteringly weird? Isn't Sesame Street supposed to be about counting and spelling and how peanut butter is made or something? Honest to God if I'd watched that when I was 3 or 4 I would've thought the mom was trying to smother that kid to death.

*Alternate discussion I considered for this joke:

Me: Hey baby, want to go back to my place and annoy the neighbors?
Girl: Sure! Where's your car?
Me: Funny you should mention that. Are you sober enough to keep your balance on my handlebars?
Girl: Well I'm offering to go home with YOU, aren't I?
Me: Dammit. I'll call a cab.

Awesome!

2009-02-11T23:07:00.000-08:00

So due to a combination of a weird-ass work schedule (Hey, come in at 6 AM, Tucson's going to get hit with like 10 feet of snow and we're not sure everyone will be able to make it) and being too lazy to go to the grocery store, I haven't eaten much over the past week or so. Maybe 1000 calories over the past 4 days or so. Now, anyone who knows me knows quite well that I could stand to miss a meal or five, so I certainly didn't worry about it much.

Today on the way home from work, I was feeling pretty good. About 6 miles in, nice steady pace, I was certainly not prepared for what came next. I felt sluggish, like WICKED suddenly. My feet felt like they weighed a million pounds, and the bike was pedaling through Strawberry Jell-O. I don't know why it was strawberry, feel free to substitute grape or lime if that makes this work for you. My eyes got heavy, it was hard to keep them open, like when your girlfriend drags you to see Wimbledon on her birthday and you don't want to but you go anyways because deep down in those dark places you don't talk about you think Kirsten Dunst can be kinda-sorta attractive when she dyes her hair red in the Spider-Man movies.

Anyways, so I pulled over real quick, grabbed a quick drink, and then tried to move on again. Still nothin'. Now knowing how one of my cars feels, I wandered into the nearest Wal-Greens and grabbed some Gatorade, thinking maybe that'd help. I gulped it down and 5 minutes later, I felt fine again and went home.

Curious about what happened, I checked WebMD, then Wikipedia, and found it. I apparently had a "bonk". Or "bonked", it can apparently be used as a noun or verb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonk_(condition)

Awesome, right? Firstly, "bonk" is a pretty awesome word. Plus my biker vocabulary is going to be all impressive now.

Guy #1. Man, I need to work on my cadence, I was spinning like 50 RPM going up that last hill.
Guy #2. Yeah dude I was totally going to say, you should maybe practice on some 5-3's and do a quick dropout run on the way home.
Me: I know, right? I totally bonked on the way home today!
Guy #1. What? Who the hell are you?
Me: I'm Kyle!
Guy #2: Well go fuck yourself Kyle, get outta here.
Me: Cool, good talk guys! Wheeeee, I'm an athlete!!

Anyways, apparently the trick to avoid Bonkitis while on a tour is to simply

A) Eat often
B) Eat a lot

I know it's going to take some serious dedication and perseverance, but I think... I think I might be able to do that. Seriously probably 85% of the reason I'm doing this is knowing I can eat Baconators for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner for 2 months and still end up healthier than when I started.

Training progress report

2009-02-09T00:53:00.000-08:00

Today marks the end of my 16th week of training for this tour. That's roughly 4 months of hardcore, smashmouth, in-your-face exercise designed to push your body to the limit.

No, not really. I'm sure freaks like this guy train like that, and in a few more months I may have to start as well, but for the past 4 months or so my training has mostly been comprised of biking back and forth to work. Unless you don't count December, during most of which I ate 30-40 years worth of Chinese Food, reduced my life expectancy 6 years, and I'm pretty sure at one point in there my heart stopped. I also was taking days off work fairly regularly so instead of "biking 20 miles" my exercise mostly consisted of "waving my laser pointer at my cat".

Since I'm always running late (my roommate has a bad habit of constantly making me delicious tea in the mornings so I'm loathe to leave) biking has actually been pretty effective training. It's 9.5 miles each way, so 5 days a week I bike about 19 miles, so over a typical workweek I probably bike about 100 miles.

When I first started back in October, man, it was brutal. It took me about 60-65 minutes to make the trip and I would show up badly winded and out of breath. One day there was a bad headwind and I was 12 minutes late for a shift starting at 12:30 PM. I'd left at 10:45. Goddamn headwinds, man. You could have Elmo fight Mr. Mr. Snuffleupagus in a cage match and the fight would be less one-sided. Cripes.

Incidentally, did you know Mr. Snuffleupagus's first name is Aloysius? And was there a more confusing character on that show? The other muppets were at least fairly identifiable. Oscar was a particularly ugly homeless person, Elmo was a brain damaged infant, Big Bird was a... big bird. Hell even Bert had a unibrow. I could identify with those things, they were vaguely recognizable. What in the HELL is this?

It looks like a cross dressing Wooly Mammoth with a severe spinal injury. Oh and let's not forget the fact that he's imaginary. I bet you don't remember that part, do you? Big Bird would always be like "Hey look there's that giant creepy elephant I always hang out with" and then when the adult turns around Snuffy's using magic/ninjitsu to hide behind a telephone pole or something. There wasn't a single non-terrifying aspect to that monstrosity. *

Wait, where was I? Oh right, biking. So now the same route takes me maybe 35-40 minutes. I'm not tired at all when I show up, and when it's cold out (both days of the year!) I'm not even sweaty. I've gone from averaging maybe 9 miles per hour to right around 15. And this is with 6 months left to train. I mean, don't get me wrong, I realize there's likely going to be a noticeable difference between "biking 10 miles, taking an 8 hour break, then biking another 10" and "Biking 80 miles in 6 hours" but at least I'm making forward progress. The only other thing I've trained for 4 months to do was get a date, and if my biking stuff was going as well as THAT little mission I'd be trying to go to work and end up biking backwards on a unicycle and falling into the Grand Canyon **.

There's still 4, um, let's call them checkpoints to cross. I've set up some completely arbitrary goals for myself and they look a little something like this.

#1. Bike 60 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#2. Bike 80 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#3. Bike 100 miles in 8 hours without being exhausted
#4. Bike up Mt. Lemmon

If I can do those 4 things before I head out, I'll be sitting pretty. Or sitting, at least*** Goal #1 is coming up within the next month or so, and probably the Mt. Lemmon one too.

Don't worry next post I'll review a tent or my new GPS or something, it'll be funny I promise.

* I'm assuming the Children's Television Workshop is too cash-strapped to be able to afford decent lawyers, but just in case: The writer of the referenced sentence above does not actually feel the copyrighted character Mr. Snuffleupagus is an unstoppable, mystical killing machine.

** "But the Grand Canyon is really far away and riding a unicycle is hard that's a terrible comparison-" Shut up and just go with it!

*** BA-ZING!!!

January Progress Report

2009-01-31T00:50:00.000-08:00

Hey so check it out, I've been a busy little bee. My list of stuff to do in January is already done.

By the end of January:

~~Buy a bike~~
~~Pick an NPO to start talking with about sponsorship~~
~~Plan a rough budget for the next 10 months~~
~~Decide how I'm going to pick a route (Whether I use ACA maps, Google Maps, releasing from San Diego a pigeon captured in Boston and following it, etc...)~~
~~Sell car~~

Task 1 was done in style way back in the first week of January.

Task 2, you might notice a big shiny new widget on the side of my blog. While I'm doing this trip for fun, I might as well do something useful at the same time. I'll post in more detail about the good cause I'm riding for.

Task 4, I'm WAY ahead of schedule by already having a rough draft of the actual route.

Task 3 is done but I didn't need to take you with me on that particular journey because have the fiscal responsibility of Robert Downey Jr in a Vegas VIP strip club, so I found myself writing things like "Don't buy magic beans from a strange man on the side of the road" and "At the very least burn 1's senselessly instead of 20's you idiot".

Task 5 I completed as well, and came out of the deal 150 bucks richer. Oh sure, you could look at that and say my car must have been a real piece of crap, but it only depreciated 400 dollars in 4 years. How much money has your car gone down in worth, Mr. Car-Manufactured-Sometime-in-the-21st-Century? Yeah that's what I thought.

I plan to go way more widget crazy sometime soon as well, hopefully culminating with some sort of map that shows a big ugly cyclist slowly moving across the US in real-time.

So here's the rub

2009-01-21T23:12:00.000-08:00

If there isn't a pool going for what day I'll likely die on this stupid, ill advised trip, there really should be. To help the bookies, here's the part of the trip that I'm thinking is going to be where I have to take regular sitting down and crying breaks.

It doesn't look that bad, right? A nice, relatively straight shot. It looks fairly uphill, but that's merely an optical illusion produced by the Mercator projection style of map, and the fact that "North" and "Up" have the same symbol. But, when one looks closelyer...

Now we leave the familiar yellow background and red lines of the political map and venture into the dark, frightening realm of the topographic map. Those dark green areas mean trouble. Let's look even more closleyer.

That brave little blue line has elected to cross straight through the Rockies. I mean just a straight, who gives a crap shot straight into the heart of that evil, wretched geographical feature. I've crunched number and played around with route all I can, but there's just not very many roads in that area, and there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid this route that doesn't add another 500-1000 miles to the route. Want to see how bad it gets? Let's look even MORE closeleyer! (Is this esoteric, obscure South Park joke doing it for anyone else? No? No one? FINE.)

Do you see that? That's called a "switchback". It exists because if you simply had the road continue straight, the elevation change is so steep you'd be driving at damn near a 45 degree angle upwards. It's ridiculous and there's no reason for it. The Rocky Mountains have no reason for existing there I said it.

Hey so here's my new Bike

2009-01-13T21:46:00.000-08:00

Ta-Da!!!

Features Include!

Sexy Aluminum Alloy frame!
Sexy V-Brakes!
Sexy Bontrager Hardcase 700x32mm Racing Tires! (Whatever that means!)
Sexy Jingle bell thingy!!

And let's not forget the sexiest component of all, the strapping Irish lad perched atop it.

It's a Trek 7.3 FX, which is, in Trek's view, a "Hybrid Fitness/Road Bike". Basically this is the third best kind of bike to take out on a cross-continent trek like I intend to. The first two best are, in order:

#1. A dedicated touring bike. These include the Bianchi Volpe, REI Randonee Navarro, and of course the fan favorite Trek 520. I ruled out these bikes for a few reasons. They're built from all steel, heavy-ass frames. While this makes them more reliable and comfortable, it'd slow me down. My mileage goal is fairly agressive, so I needed a bike trending a bit more towards the "speed" side of the bar graph. Also the cheapest ones were 1000 bucks. That was a bit expensive for my tastes. Although touring can be done best on one of these, they're hardly the ONLY option. My way is much cheaper and will, again, supposedly get me there faster at the expense of a bit of comfort.

#2. An old mountain bike frame stripped down to the frame and re-built with better components. I avoided this option for a few reasons. I wanted to be fitted to a specific size and style of frame, which you can't do when buying used. I also would be leery of any used frame, if it'd been crashed it could crap out on me a week before I leave, or worse, while I'm in the middle of desert. I probably could have saved a few bucks going this way as well, but in the end I just wanted something new. Not the best excuse, but there it is.

So there she is. There's some things to be done to it before she's ready for touring.

Critical:

New Wheels (The ones on this bike are decent, but I need hand-built eXXXtreme 36 spoke beasts for maximum reliability on this trip)
New Front Crank (Current one bottoms out at 24 gear inches. To get up the evil, blighted Rocky Mountains while fully loaded I'm going to need 19-20, minimum.)
Bar Ends (Flat bar bike = no hand positions to switch to)
Racks front and rear

Would be good:

New Saddle
New Shifters
New Brakes
New Tires

Will probably do, but not a big deal either way if not replaced:

New Front Derailer
Switch to 9 speed cassette

All told with all of those new components, I probably WILL end up spending close to 1,500 on this thing when all is said and done, but that's fine. When changed out this will be a great, fast touring bike, but in the meantime it's also a nice FAST commuting bike when equipped as-is.

(Editor's note: Hey wait a sec, cross country trek! And I'm on a Trek bike! Now I get it! Haha, awesome!!!)

Rough Draft of Routing finished

2009-01-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

So a little bit earlier than expected, the rough draft of my route is set. It looks a little something like this:

San Diego CA - Tempe AZ 411 miles
Tempe AZ - Fort Collins CO 861 Miles
Fort Collins CO - Alexander KS 440 Miles
Alexander KS - Girard KS 335 Miles
Girard KS - Murphysboro IL 411 Miles
Murphyboro IL - Berea KY 410 Miles
Berea KY - Norristown PA 667 Miles
Norristown PA to Windsor CT 317 Miles
Windsor CT - Boston MA 104 Miles

Total = 3956 goddamn miles.

Or, according to Google, 32,000 Furlongs. Or 6.808972e-10 light years.

San Diego to Tempe, Alexander all the way to Berea, and Norristown to Windsor are all ACA approved and mapped routes, so I'll have nicely laminated maps that show me where I can reasonably expect to camp for the night.

Tempe to Fort Collins, Fort Collins to Alexander, Berea to Norristown, and Windsor to Boston are a little more dicey. As of right now I'm going with a simple Google mapping with the option for "Avoid Highways" selected. This means I'm going to have to get a bit more creative with my camping and stopping options. My fervent hope is that somewhere in Fort Collins and Alexander I'll come across some dilapidated farmhouse where the kindly ranch hands offer me a place to stay, while being expressly forbidden to nail the farmer's beautiful daughter. From my vast experience watching TV, this situation always ends well for everyone.

The ride from Tempe to Fort Collins is going to be a nightmare in its own right that I'll address in some other post when I feel braver. Even thinking about it terrifies me right now.

4000 miles is more than I had originally planned, I'd originally figured I'd go with a straight route where I just go from point A to B. This changed for a couple of reasons. A few people have offered to put me up for the night along the way, so with a quick and minor detour in their direction, I'll have a warm bed, a shower, and with the exception of crashing in Fort Collins, the oppurtunity to steal something cool.

There's benefits to be had here, though. People at the Bike Forums rave about the ACA maps and how easy they make it to plan your day. I'll be able to have the company and support of other bikers as well, BUT I'll have nice extended breaks from well-worn biking routes and the people who frequent them. If I'm any indication, bicyclists are arrogant, obnoxious douchebags who are only bearable in the smallest of doses, so I don't want to surround myself with them ALL the time.

It's not the distance that worries me, it's the time crunch. 4000 miles over 59 days works out to be roughly 67 miles per day, which is a pretty easygoing average ride. However, I can't simply bike every single day. I'm going to need the occasional day off. So I'm roughly planning on this schedule:

Crash in Tempe/Phoenix for 1 day.
Crash in Fort Collins for 2 days
Crash in Girard for 1 day
Crash in Berea for 1 day
Crash in Windsor for 1 day
Spend 3 days in Boston visiting friends and family
Spend 2 days at home recovering and peeing blood.

So that's 11 rest days, out of 59 total, which is roughly 1 rest day every six days. That, again, is a pretty normal ratio from what I've been learning. However now we're talking about doing this over 48 travel days, which works out to 82.5 miles per day.

82 miles per day on average is a VERY high number. There are some freaks who can probably do that while weaving a basket with one hand, but for an out of shape slob like myself that's going to be cutting it extremely close. I can shave off a rest day or two here and there, but there's not much wiggle room in that list.

This is a problem I'm not 100% sure I know how to fix. It's an agressive pace, but not insanely so, so I can't just abandon this route and start over. But I'll have no way of knowing if I'm in shape enough to handle it or not until I'm basically out there. In the end though, I think I have to err on the side of Boldness. Worst case scenario if I scrap this route and start over is that the new route is completely unacceptable for unforseeable reasons. The good part of this proposed routing is that most of it is VERY well travelled by bicycle folks and known to be workable. The worst case scenario if I just say "Fuck it" and go with this route is that I go to hell because I swear too much. The second worst scenario is that I run out of time in like PA or something and have to take the train the rest of the way home. It'd suck, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Awww Hell Yeah

2009-01-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

A week ago, big news came down from the glowing, disembodied head surrounded by fire that is my office manager: My request for a 2 month leave of absence was approved from August 20th - October 15th. What do I intend to do with this time? No, not learn how to brew crystal meth out of my car's trunk. I'm going to hop on my bike and travel from San Diego to Boston.

That's a bicycle, not a motorcycle (which would probably make more sense). And yes, that's me doing this, not a person of even marginally impressive physical fitness (that would also make quite a bit more sense)

I requested the time off basically as a lark, I didn't expect for a second they'd actually approve it. My company is pretty cool, but I didn't think they were THAT cool. Usually leaves of absence are reserved for getting married or having a nervous breakdown or something.

So now I've got 7 months to plan this, get into shape, save up a lot of money and vacation time, and settle all of my affairs in case a bear eats me on the way. It's quite the list of stuff to do. I decided to make this my hybrid training/planning journal and journal kept on the way itself. It's not going to be the most updated journal of all time, as there will be months during training where I'd write nothing but "I biked 15 miles today as a test and my left kidney ruptured oh God I'm so doomed" and various points on my trip where even the unlimited, omniscient reach of THE INTERNETS cannot find me. So basically it'll be like that ...other... blog I used to write in, except now when it doesn't get updated for 11 months at a time people can and should assume I died.

I've kind of formed a rough plan of what I need to do beforehand, and in what order:

By the end of January:
- Buy a bike
- Pick an NPO to start talking with about sponsorship
- Plan a rough budget for the next 10 months
- Decide how I'm going to pick a route (Whether I use ACA maps, Google Maps, releasing from San Diego a pigeon captured in Boston and following it, etc...)
- Sell car

By the end of March:
- Decide on how to outfit the bike (Components, panniers vs a trailer, blah blah)
- Have relationship with whatever NPO established so I can start collecting
- Performed at least 1 60 mile day trip

By the end of June
- Have final draft of route planned
- Perform at least 1 80 mile day trip
- Convert bike from commuting to touring componentry
- Start loading bike fully during commuting for practice

By August 15th
- Perform a 100 mile day trip
- Have packing list completed and all supplies purchased/stowed
- Find Cat-sitter
- Invent new breakfast cereal

I'll start by addressing the first "Huh?" response this list likely elicited. Yes, I'm selling my car and going bike-only. There's a multitude of reasons I shouldn't be driving at this point, but I'll focus on two here.

#1. I am supremely, utterly lazy. I can realistically see myself driving to work every day and not even touching the damn bike until August, and then desperately trying to will myself into shape for this. I'm planning on doing 70-80 miles a day, including going straight through the horrible, accursed Rocky Mountains, and I need to get in every single bit of training I can, starting now. With the car still in the picture, that's not gonna happen.

#2. Tucson is rated like #3 or #4 in terms of "bike friendly" cities in the entire country. Getting to work, the store, the local S&M leather hangout, is all very easy. There's no excuse to not ditch the car. I'm going to be biking through downpours, 110 degree heat, and 40 degree cold at various points on this trip, so if I can't hack it for a 9.1 mile commute to work, I'm certainly not going to be able to do it over the course of several thousand miles. Therefore, no car.

Donate here!

2009-01-01T02:49:00.000-08:00

So if plan to donate a set amount per mile (like 1 cent, .5 cents, etc...) please post a comment here letting me know. Thanks!