One Size Fits All

EDIT: Post reads poorly because I’ve quit coffee and am very sleepy. 

I’ve purchased pretty much all the stuff on our list that we need for the trip. I’ve accounted for it all in Quicken, but I have not been able to get it together to post how it tallies up with my Riot 4 Austerity goals for July.

Bicycles - The bikes we bought were Surly Long Haul Truckers.  Although the bikes were designed in the US, from what I understand, they are manufactured in Taiwan. When I originally began researching bikes for our trip two years ago, I didn’t think about manufacturing processes like I do now. Nor did I understand things like the trade deficit or how to begin doing my bit toward purchasing from businesses that have sustainable business practices. I have no idea how the LHTs are manufactured or under what conditions. However, I’ve been reading the cyclosource blog and have learned that there are custom frame builders that are based in the US. However, these frames along are very pricey for someone like me (affluent, but without much money in the bank). But its good to know that such options are available.

Its true that I could have purchased a used bicycle, but since this will be our first long distance trip, I didn’t want to deal with multiple bicycle issues since we’ll be dealing with a variety of unknown factors anyway.

Camping Gear - We bought pretty much everything from REI. This includes our tent, sleeping bags, cooking stuff, waterproof sacks to hold things in.

There are sleeping bags manufactured in the US, but again, they’re really pricey for me. I had asked around about the benefits and downsides to owning used camping gear and I was told that UV protection tends to go down with time. This is one of those things that I have to trust on faith because I don’t know how to check whether something is effective in protecting me from UV rays. In a previous life, I would have gone ghetto and just stuffed everything in plastic trash bags. But now that I’m classy, I’ll use the waterproof bags that are reuseable.

I also bought some klean kanteens to hold water and a bear proof container just to make it difficult for any critter to get into our food.  

The sleeping bags we bought were synthetic (as opposed to down filled) because I read that a down filled bag can lose its effectiveness if it gets wet.  

Since all our kitchen stuff weighs a ton (cast iron, stainless steel), I got some titanium cooking gear. I hope there isn’t anything wrong with cooking in titanium because my other option is aluminium. 

Panniers  - The big debate on what pannier one should purchase is mainly centered on whether a pannier is water proof or not. There are also panniers that look classy and are made using sustainable practices and what not, but their carrying capacity tends to be a bit on the small side. I purchased Arkel Panniers, which  are manufactured in Canada and proudly claim that they don’t use any plastic, except for the part that gets clipped onto my rear rack. Which is very nice. They come with a waterproof bag so its waterproof.

Clothes - Over the weekend a friend convinced me that getting padded shorts would go a long way toward eliminating my complaints on our journey. So I will be buying that this week. 

After reading Large Fella’s review about his MUSA pants, I got one for me and my husband. I rode them on our test ride and like them alot. If I work in a casual dress workplace in the future, I might be able to wear them to work. I purchased a goretex rain jacket from ebay for $14 for my husband and as for the rest of our clothes, we’re taking what we already own (enough for 3 changes). Although I did purchase some undergarments after not buying any for about 2 years. I got them in fancy colors from decent exposures and title nine. I realize that title nine has their stuff made in Honduras and other places (where their business practices might be iffy), but this purchase is something I’m going to live with.

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Packaging - Except for our bicycles, I bought almost everything online. I asked every single merchant to ship things with no plastic/styrofoam and as far as I can remember, every single vendor complied and used paper (brown virginish looking paper or newspaper). Some items were already in a plastic baggy (like our handle bar mirrors), and I guess unless the manufacturer gets thousands of emails from irate customers, that packaging practice isn’t going to change. Some of the companies used the paper tape instead of plastic shipping tape. Although most companies used plastic shipping tape.

I had everything shipped to my PO Box since UPS/Fedex don’t operate the way I want them to, and nashbar was the only company to give me trouble about that despite what their website says about their shipping policies.  

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The benefit of these purchases is that we won’t be in any hurry to buy actual furniture when we move into a new place on the West Coast. And knowing us, we’ll probably be sleeping in sleeping bags 2 years after our journey.

Additionally, The panniers are really roomy so I can imagine haulling alot of groceries on them.  

I’ve decided to be flexible with our diet on our upcoming bicycle trip. This past weekend we biked 130 miles (round trip) to the state park in Delaware and back. Although I thought I was eating alot, I wound up losing 5 lbs. I suppose eventually my body will learn to communicate something besides how much pain I’m in, and, I’ll learn how to eat properly when I’m burning a ton of calories.

Although we took food with us (which we re-heated on the camp’s fire pit using branches found near our site, thus avoiding using our alcohol fueled camp stove), we found that we needed much more food that we had anticipated.

I’ve been reading up about how to eat nutritious meals when doing long distance bike trips and one temptation that I should avoid is eating the same thing day in and day out. Its something I have a tendency to do which is probably okay when I sit in front of a computer all day, but its a different thing when my body starts to demand more nutrition because of what I’m burning up.

So…how many among you would be interested in receiving postcards from me when I’m on my cross country bicycle trip ? I am not exactly a social butterfly, but I do love receiving and sending mail. So if you are interested, leave me a comment and let me know whether you’d like to receive only happy news, or all news including complaints (or as much as I can fit onto a postcard).

I will contact you for your mailing address within a week or two.

If you’d like added duties of posting here to let my legion of fans know how I’m doing, let me know that as well. As I mentioned before, I do plan on blogging, but if its too hard or inconvenient to do so I’m not going to stress out about it too much.

If you live outside the U.S. and would like to receive a postcard from me, you too are welcome to leave me a comment. 

EDIT: Arduous brought up a good point. How do you send me mail? I’m going to have a mailing address at My Dakota Address, so that will be my mailing address. I will know what that address is in about a week since I just sent my application in. The company will be forwarding me mail once a month so everything will be a tad slow.  And yes, this does mean that I’ll be a South Dakotan resident for a few months.

Image credit: Cmdr Gravy

Well with both me and my husband having years of experience in a variety of fields that indicate our brilliance and flexibility, not to mention degrees in fields that are supposedly desperate for employees - we’re both still unemployable. Or at least, no one want to bother hiring people 3000 miles away. I feel like I should have just gotten a Literature degree like I wanted to, and I would have at least enjoyed my college experience.

So I’ve decided to turn this realization into something positive. One reason why we would eventually want to go back on the job market will be to pay off our student loans and save up to buy some land. I will continue to pay my student loan while on the cross country trip, since the monthly payment is a bit less than $80. I’ll start paying more than the minimum once I get a job on the W. Coast. Husband’s student loan will be on deferment for  roughly 3-4 months. His next payment’s due date is sometime in 2010 because we’ve been paying two to three times more than the minimum during the past year which keeps pushing the due date forward.

Because we’re leaving in the Fall, we might run into rough weather somewhere in the middle, and I’ve been playing around with some ideas.

One idea was to hang out with friends in Colorado being the dirty, smelly, unemployed bums that we will be. Maybe we’ll get some temp jobs, but if the economy is heading south, who knows how the temp market will be. This will mean that we’ll just be burning through our savings. 

Another idea was to head south into New Mexico or Arizona and work on a farm in exchange for room and board. This will give us some useful skills and knowledge and we can keep our savings intact. But are farms busy in the late fall/early winter in the South West? One farmer that I contacted said that there would be work to do, and he wants a 2 week minimum committment. But then what do we do during Christmas season when everything shuts down? Enjoy the desert scenary? Peak into Mexico and hope the border patrol ignores me? Continue to San Diego and then head north?

Some of the farms in the Northwest that need help all year round are located on islands. Which would be a bit of a problem since I can’t swim. I know I should have learned to swim all those times my husband dragged me to the public pool or the beach, but not only does water scare me, but I also find it icky - and the Atlantic isn’t exactly clean either. And I have issues with wearing a swimsuit.

Then of course is the Greyhound option. Some of my readers are getting a bit too excited about my trip and I need to manage these expectations. So please calm down and remember that I am really wimpy and a scaredy cat. We can all celebrate my accomplishment and get excited after I wind up on the Pacific coast in one piece. 

Edit: Another option is house sits. Pick up dog doo and mail in exchange for a free room and/or board.

I’ve been doing nothing but reading and planning for our bike trip for the last several weeks now. I’m still leaning toward putting together my own route, but if for whatever reason that’s not feasible I’l use the Adventure Cycling (ACA) Routes for the entire trip.

This is my (our) ideal trip:

Very little automobile contact and most of our journey will be on rural roads and bike trails.

Farmers’ markets along the way. I am hoping not only to find farmers’ markets but find them open all the way until Thanksgiving.

Inexpensive campgrounds/motels/hostels. Or just warmshowers hosts for the entire length of the trip.

Nice people who will either leave us alone (if they aren’t nice) or somehow help us by giving directions or water or permission to pitch our tent somewhere decent.

Good weather (har! har!) 

No aggressive animals 

The less we spend on the trip, the longer will this vacation last. I am expecting to reach Southern Colorado (CO) in November and the plan is to stay there until Spring (if the snow season has begun) or continue on using ACA’s Western Express route to reach San Francisco.  If we stay in CO, we were thinking of getting some temp jobs to last until Spring and then continuing the journey. Of course, I might just get sick of everything on our second day of riding and decide to get on a Greyhound and be done with this nutty plan. But I’ll try to be optimistic for now.

Since we’re wimpy and cheapskates, we plan on cooking nearly all our meals on the road and riding very little every day. So this is basically going to be the Snail Express route to the West Coast.

I’ve been reading that riding every day gets one’s intestines in tip-top shape - so that means that our chance of getting colon cancer is even less and our time spent hunting for toilets will be greatly increased. I’ve also been thinking of using the diva cup for the trip and am wondering if I should get this device called a freshette.

I bought our tents and sleeping bags (which can be zipped into one large bag for warmth and snuggle purposes although other activities might be dicey), and a stove that claims to use alcohol but is very flammable (so this might be a 100% fossil fuel-free trip).

We bought our bikes (Surly LHT) over the weekend. So I guess there is no turning back now.I also have sold our chest of drawers our futon (which was our bed) and other miscellaneous items. For now we’re sleeping on a foam pad until I buy us sleeping bags.

I also signed up for a 0% interest credit card. The introductory interest rate expires in August 2009 so I can rely on it if I really need to. The card has a picture of the U.S. flag to show my patriotism. The catch to the 0% interest rate is that the billing cycle is 25 days and when I made the call to activate the card I got connected to a live, loud, human being from Utah who was very determined to sell me my own peace of mind that cost only this or only that. He detailed a long list of horrible events that could go wrong: death, dismemberment, accident of other types, and so on. And he went on to say how sad it would be if my loved ones were relying on me for their livelihood. Yes it would be sad, that is why I expect my husband to fend for himself and I don’t have anyone else dependent on me.

I was in a good mood so I let him go on and on about how some customer thanked him because he broke his hip falling down the stairs and thanks to this program that cost so little he now is happy (with broken hip) and less stressed.

O well. I’m still a bit stressed about the trip mainly on how much we have to get done before we go.

So I’ve been spending most of this long weekend planning a possible trip by bicycle to the West Coast. Whether this is still going to happen is still up in the air. But I thought we may as well plan as though we’re going to do it by bike. The good thing about the planning is that nearly all purchases can be used after we move (example: the panniers can be used to haul groceries). We still have to get rid of (by giving away and selling) all our stuff so that exercise will not be wasted.

Since this is the sort of thing I find exciting, I’ve gotten together our gear list and am now mapping out our journey. The purchases will start in about a week or two…we currently have the money to do the trip, but I want to have a bit more gravy so that I can relax a little bit after we reach our destination instead of going out on job hunts rightaway.

I’ve gotten an account on CrazyGuyOnABike.com and if we do do this trip, it will be blogged about on crazy guy.I’ll link to it if and when we do leave.

Anyway..about the actual journey. Most people whose accounts I’ve read about did the coast to coast trip by relying on maps from adventure cycling. Looking at the maps and reading accounts doesn’t make me too thrilled about the trip. For one I don’t want to head south, then west, and then north in order to get to where we want to go.  I also don’t want to deal with dogs that chase me trying to bite my ankles, or dour townspeople and aggressive auto traffic. This sort of excitement I want to keep at a very minimal level. So I’ve been putting together my own little route just to see if its any better than the Trans-Am trail (which goes from Virginia to Oregon).

The idea for cobbling together my own route really came from an adventure cycling event I attended earlier this year. One of the proposals that the organization is putting together is to establish an official (DOT approved, If I recall correctly) bicycle pathway across the country. This would connect all the bike paths from all the states up with each other.  It would be like the interstate highway system, except its only available to bicyclists and no motorized vehicles like ATVs. In Pennsylvania there are a few bike paths one of which is the Route S which goes from Philadelphia area to Pittsburgh and hits West Virginia. Then in this proposed bike path system, a bike path from W. VA would link with Route S. Since that map doesn’t exist I am putting it together myself. Our desire is to experience as little auto traffic as possible. And many bike paths tend to ban automobiles and other motorized vehicles.

The good thing about not being a pioneer is that someone already does all the hard work for you. So I am relying on google and bikely.com to get everything together.

I also spent most of the weekend (in addition to celebrating freedom) reading journals. My biggest inspiration is Heidi Domeisen. She finished her first trip from North Carolina to Alaska and back very, very frugally. She camped every single night and cooked almost all her meals every single day. So…since we plan on being as thrifty as possible I took alot of notes of her experience when I read her account 2 years ago. Yes, this trip has been on my mind for over 2 years. My second inspiration is the founder of crazyguy, Neil Gunston. He used the Trans-Am trail to bike from NYC to Oregon and has a sense of humor that is very appealing to me. And since he is married to a brown skinned Asian lady, I’ve been very interested in reading about their joint bike trip experience. And my third inspiration is Tzuo because he too was very frugal on his trip in addition to possessing a very good sense of humor.