Got to start somewhere...

Well, here goes nothing!

As my entire family and most of my friends know, I have been wanting to ride our beautiful country from coast to coast for a couple of decades now and have always managed to find a way to put it off.
No more!
This year (well technically "next year" because it's still a couple of hours from New Years 2014) I am doing it!
I will be riding with a group which in itself is weird since I almost always ride solo on long rides, like my 2012 and 2013 GAP and C&O rides and my trip to St Augustine from our Ft Lauderdale home.. But those were short trips by comparison. My max ride to date is about 700 miles. So group organization and support it will be.

click to enlarge

Our group will be riding from San Diego CA to St Augustine FL. We plan to depart from Southern California March 8th and arrive in St Augustine about April 25th or so.

I'll be riding my custom built, titanium Habanero touring bike but since it will be a supported tour, with all luggage and stuff transported by vehicle, I won't be doing the whole loaded touring bit with front and rear panniers creating a loaded up bike that weighs almost as much as I do.

To try and keep my wife, kids and any interested friends up to date on my whereabouts and doings, I am going to keep this blog during my trip. I'll try to post interesting photos, musings, and miscellaneous fun stuff (and hopefully little whining) whenever and wherever I can and I'll try to keep the mundane and boring stuff at bay.

As computer literate as I like to think I am, please don't expect "nightly builds" from this blog! To avoid as much automobile traffic as humanly possible, the route we will take relies on riding little used roads and passing through and staying in mostly very small towns. This mean the route offers scant cell phone connectivity and even less WiFi so posting might be sporadic, at best. When I do manage to have some time at a decent hotspot I'll try my best to keep it up, but only if I have something interesting to report. I will try to not bore you... too much....

For those of you who are cyclists I'll post a page with a gear/equipment list and gear comments along the way and I'll also try to give each day's posting a title that states that day's destination and mileage, but I'm really not sure if I would post "daily".  The truth is, I don't think there will necessarily be anything exciting or worth posting on a daily basis.

This shouldn't be a daily documenting of each of the three thousand poorly maintained asphalt miles between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. It is, though, all about the people you meet and the experience of pedaling across our beautiful United States of America using only your own power. And as many times as I have driven across the USA, I really want to do it by bicycle at least once in my life.

I do like to ride....

So on with the show!
er, uh, maybe that ought to read:
So, on with the slow!

Doug