This Guy Loves To Party

I spent the month of August this year on a bicycle trip down the Pacific Coast.  Now I’m going to spend the next 30 minutes writing about it.  This write-up is intended for anyone interested in doing a bike tour themselves, since I found bike tour write-ups really helpful when I was preparing.

Sometime in March 2009, I came back to my apartment in Medellin, Colombia to find my good buddy and roommate, Derek, psyched about something.  “I’m riding my bike across the USA, dude,” he exclaimed amid frantic typing on his laptop.  “I ran across some guy’s web site about it and it sounds awesome.”

“Can I come?” I asked.

And thus was born The Tour de Force 2009: The Pacific Coast.

The back story

I’m generally in pretty good shape, but that shape was never a product of bicycling.  In fact, I had never biked more than about 5 miles at once in my life when I agreed to a bike trip across the United States.  Double fact, I didn’t even own a bike.

In our Medellin apartment that day, Derek and I quickly agreed to do some kind of cross-country bike trip before summer was over.  We would research the details of the trip shortly before leaving for the trip.  That way we had a rough plan of action, but wouldn’t psych ourselves out over the details for months before leaving.

Flash forward a little more than two months later, to early June.  Derek has just purchased a bike from craigslist for $350, and I’ve taken my dad’s extra mountain bike for a couple of 10 mile spins.  After a bit of research, we find that the best route for us, time-wise and health-wise, is the Pacific Coast route, from Vancouver, Canada to the Mexican border in San Diego, California.  We don’t set a specific date until mid-July, when we decide to just go for it and book plane tickets to Seattle 10 days away.

Preparation

This should help out anyone who’s looking to do a bike tour themselves and don’t know what it takes.

Like I said, I had never ridden a bike more than 5 miles at a time in my entire life.  I don’t think I had ridden a bike at all more than 10 times in the last 15 years of my life.

For about two months before leaving on my trip, I rode every other day for about 15 miles.  About three times I threw in a 30 mile ride, but I generally stuck to the shorter 15 mile trip.  The 30 mile ride was hard and I didn’t want to do it too much.

In late June, I sprained my ankle pretty badly playing basketball.  (My ankle was still pretty badly sprained throughout our trip, but it didn’t affect my riding at all.)  I didn’t ride at all for about a week and a half after that, and had to work up to my usual 15 mile rides over about an extra week or two.  This meant that, in the month before leaving for my trip, I wasn’t on my bike much at all.  I didn’t do a single 30 mile ride this month because of my injury and because I didn’t want to.

In other words, I wasn’t biking very much at all before our 2,000 mile trip.  Did my lack of preparation make the trip more difficult?  I don’t think so.

Gear

Amazing technology 40 years ago.

I didn’t want to spend a lot of money for this trip.  I found out my dad still had his old touring bike torn apart and in boxes, and a friend of his was willing to put it together and refurbish it a bit so I could ride it; this meant a nearly-free bike.  I should mention that when I say “old” touring bike, I mean “old as shit”.  It was originally built and purchased in 1969, and it still had most of its original parts.  When I pulled out its hideous, worn-out strapped pedals in front of Derek for the first time, he laughed and said, “Hey, the junk yard called.  It wants its pedals back.”  I responded with, “1998 called. It wants its cliche back.”  I think in reality I botched the delivery, though, plus my pedals were still crap, so Derek won that round.

My bike didn’t use clips, and I figured it was best to avoid installing clips and buying the proper shoes for them shortly before leaving.  I think my rationale behind this is that I didn’t want to spend more money.  My biking shoes ended up being a pair of Puma sneakers I bought in Colombia about six months before, and which about two weeks before leaving were my only pair of shoes.

Solid biking shoes.

Originally I stored all my stuff in a raggedy, dying red sack strapped to my bike’s racks with shoelace (I wish I was kidding), but after the shoelaces snapped and the bag broke a spoke in my back wheel, I decided it was time to invest in new panniers.  I went with the cheapest, smallest panniers they had at my local Performance Bikes, which were TransIt bags.

For camping, I had a Big Bertha insulated air mattress, an REI compact sleeping bag, and an old bivy shelter.  All three were chosen because they were small, compact, and either cheap or free for me to borrow from family.

Clothes-wise, I had two biking shirts — and just one after I lost one in a spill two thirds through the trip — that I alternated every day.  I wore some cheap “century” biking shorts with extra padding every single day that I picked up on sale.  When off the bike, I had one pair of thin pants and one Icebreaker shirt.  I also only had one pair of socks that I washed every night in sinks.  They were dress socks I stole from my dad’s closet that I think he originally got in a bulk pack for about three dollars; specialized bike socks are expensive and unnecessary, in my opinion.  Surprisingly, Derek reported I only really smelled bad on one day.  That’s the magic of good clothing selection and being me.

For water, I had a Camelbak that, as you may have guessed, I got on sale at a bike shop.

All our food was bought at grocery stores along the way, and I usually just bungy-corded extra food to the top of my rear rack.

That’s really all the gear I had.  Beyond that, I had my iPhone, a pair of headphones, and my digital camera which, I regret to say, was stolen just a week before our trip was up.

Both Derek and I packed very lightly.  Most people who saw us asked where the rest of our stuff was, since it all neatly fit in just two small rear panniers.  We often wanted to ask other cyclists — some with four or five large panniers filled with stuff — why they had so much.  We never did, though, because that seems passive aggressive and weird.

For Derek’s packing list, check out what he wrote up on his blog.

Lodging

I slept in the green mansion, Derek slept in the red cocoon

We stayed at state campgrounds every night.  Many camp sites have hiker/biker space, which does not require a reservation and costs less than $10.  Almost all of these sites had showers, too, usually costing about 50 cents for a little less than ten minutes.

The only exceptions were when we found ourselves in a town at the end of the day that didn’t have anywhere to camp nearby and a nice family ended up letting us camp on their lawn, and when we stayed with friends and family for two days in San Francisco.

Food

I ate it all in one sitting. You can see the passion on my face.

We had no cooking gear, and bought the majority of our food at supermarkets throughout the day.

I tried eating healthier on our first day — relying mostly on protein bars, fruits, almonds/almond butter, and other “smarter” choices — and felt like I was going to die.  By about the 40th mile, I was dizzy, had little energy, and by the last two hours of our day I had developed a horrible cough.  I really felt more physically ill and weak than I’d felt in years.  At first I thought it was maybe because I hadn’t prepared physically enough for the trip, and thought that my food choices weren’t the cause since I was getting enough calories.

But after we stopped at a supermarket near our campsite for the night, I caved and indulged in a big bag of candy corn, a couple sugary drinks, and some candy bars.  Literally within minutes I felt amazing and full of energy; just minutes before, we had been sitting outside the supermarket and passers-by had commented that I looked like I was about to die.  Fueled by crap food, I was rejuvenated and could have biked an extra few hours if the sun hadn’t been setting.

After this experience, I never looked back and I thrived off junk food the entire trip.  While I struggled to pull off about 50 miles on the first day, our second day was an effortless 80 miles thanks to my new diet.  I was probably getting in about 5,000 calories minimum a day, and most likely more normally.  Every day I put back three or four donuts, one or two cinnamon rolls, humongous 14″+ deli sandwiches, an assortment of fruits, a few peanut butter sandwiches, some kind of meat or other protein source, candy bars, and much more.

For the first two weeks of the trip, I lost weight while eating this way.  Derek and I learned that the secret to weight loss is simple: bike six to eight hours a day.  You can send me donations through PayPal for that tip.

I was dropping more money than I expected on food, though.  I probably spent about $30 a day or so to eat the way I was.  But I got to eat all kinds of foods I love and don’t normally get to eat without the hassle of putting on weight.  I’m sure my insides were dying, but I still looked great so I was ecstatic.

The pace

We finished the entire 2,000 mile trip in a little less than four weeks.  We averaged a bit over 80 miles a day, and had two “century” days, our highest mileage being about 120.

We took three days off to rest, one of which was forced on us due to broken bikes and closed bike shops.

I don’t know what our average pace was on the road, but we only ever got passed by one other bike tourer (tourist?), and often were moving faster than people just out for rides around the town.  We know how bad ass we are, and you don’t have to comment on it, but you can leave me PayPal donations in recognition of it.

The physical side of it

Yes I knew the dinosaur was there.

For the first week or so of the trip, my lower back was killing me.  It would get very sore very fast, and I had to stop to stretch (and crack) it every couple of miles.  After that first week, though, I adapted to it.

But then my focus was on my butt.  Man my butt was sore.  I adapted to the sore butt after about two and a half weeks.

Beyond that, I didn’t really have any discomforts.  Like I mentioned before, with hardly any biking experience under my belt, I was able to crank out at least 80 miles a day by the second day.  This meant we had to bike all day with maybe two and a half hours of rest interspersed throughout the day, but it was still done pretty comfortably.

Would I do it again?

I would do a trip like this again, and in fact will likely do a true across-the-USA trip in the near future.  It is the best way for me to justify a diet of donuts and cinnamon rolls.  I wish I were kidding about that but it is honestly one of the best motivators for me, especially the “fancy” cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting on top.  Absolutely fantastic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 3:30 am and is filed under Traveling.