Total distance: 3,431.14 miles
Total elevation gain: 107,642 feet
Total moving time: 229:58:10
(That comes out to 9 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes and 10 seconds.)
I am so glad that I did this. This may have been the coolest, most amazing thing I’ve ever done. At the very least, it is the coolest, most amazing thing I’ve ever done on a bicycle.
There are so many people to thank. Thank you to the amazing staff of Crossroads Cycling Adventures for everything you did to make this trip possible. Your mechanical and logistical support made this possible in a way that I was willing to undertake this. (I’m not one for camping or self-supported long-distance tours. If that is your thing, more power to you, but it is not for me.) Speaking of mechanical support, thank you to everyone at Jay’s Cycle Center in Westfield, NJ for doing such a great job supporting me in my training, for getting my bike ready for the trip, and for helping to make sure my bike made it safely to California for the start. Thank you to Helen’s Cycles in Manhattan Beach, CA for putting my bike back together for the start of the tour. Thank you to Larry (my manager at work), and to everyone at my job who made it possible for me to have this much time off so that I could make this dream a reality. Thank you to my kids for your support, and for rooting for me every step of the way - to Norah for seeing me off in California, and to Zach for visiting me in Crawfordsville, IN. Most importantly, thank you to Teresa for indulging me in this insane adventure. Thank you for coming out to Champaign, IL and staying with me on my rest day there. Thank you for driving up to Boston to be with me for the conclusion of the tour. And for all the time in between, I missed you an incredible amount while I was on the road, and I know you missed me as well. Going forward, let’s try to take our vacations together!
This is a big country. A REALLY big country. I know my son Zach knows this firsthand, having driven coast to coast twice. Imagine doing that on a bicycle though, completely under your own power. Take another look at those totals at the top. Those are some really big numbers. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! (That’s actually a Dave Ramsey quote - I need to give credit where credit is due!)
During this trip, there were some long, hard days, and there were some short, easy days. (And yes, there were even some rest days as well. Five of them, to be exact.) Overall, we averaged about 80 miles of riding per day (not counting the rest days in that average). Yes, I covered that distance during my training. More than covered it - I had a few 100-mile days in training, and I had long rides strung back to back. With that said, nothing in my training quite prepared me for stringing quite so many long rides together, day after day after day. All that riding has a cumulative effect on you. Your muscles. Your joints. Your skin. (Sunburn, saddle sores, etc.) Also, any issues you may have and not know about WILL come up on a trip like this.
Proper hydration is so important. Part of the hydration puzzle is electrolyte replacement. Before the tour, I bought a bottle of Endurolytes capsules from Hammer Nutrition. At the time that I bought them, I thought it was going to end up being a waste of money, but they were on the packing list from Crossroads, so I bought them anyway. All through my training, part of my hydration plan was to use Nuun Sport electrolyte tablets, which you drop in a water bottle and they quickly effervesce and dissolve. In addition to a water bottle with Nuun Sport, I would fill my Camelbak with plain water. This worked well for me during training, but during the first week of the tour I found myself getting painful cramps in my hands and forearms after each ride. This made it difficult to write up my notes for recording the voiceovers for my videos. Suspecting that the cramps might have something to do with electrolyte depletion, I started taking the Endurolytes each day after the ride. (Some days I would take two capsules, some days I would take four - it depended on the length and difficulty of the day’s ride.) Well, it worked for me - the cramps almost completely stopped for pretty much the duration of the tour.
Speaking of hydration, since Crossroads provided us with Gatorade at the SAG stops, my original plan was to use the Nuun Sport for the first bottle of the day, and use Gatorade for the rest of each day’s ride. On the very first riding day, however, I found that the Gatorade was much sweeter than what I was used to. I ALSO found that the top of my water bottle leaked. How did I discover that? Well, unlike Nuun Sport, Gatorade is quite sticky. So by the end of the ride, my bottle was sticky, my hands were sticky, my gloves were sticky, my bike was sticky… you get the picture. I had ALSO brought two full boxes of Gu energy gels with me, since I thought that my fueling strategy was more important than my hydration strategy. As it turned out though, Crossroads provided Gu gels at the SAG stops, so I didn’t need to bring quite so many of those with me AFTER all. I ended up bringing home most of my gels at the end of the tour, and ordered more of the Nuun Sport tablets while on the road.
In terms of physical (and mental) conditioning, I would say that getting through this trip was about 80% physical preparation and 20% just plain WANTING it. If you don’t want it badly enough, you won’t complete it, no matter how much you trained.
During my training, I discovered saddle sores for the first time ever. As a result, I somewhat expected them during the trip, and had at least SOMEWHAT of a plan for dealing them. What I did NOT expect was a sore on the top of my left foot. My strategy for tightening my cycling shoes has always been to make them as tight as I can get them. Well, about two months before the tour, one of the Velcro closures on one of my shoes started to rip, so I bought a new pair of shoes - my first-ever shoes with BOA closures. Although they worked great for me in training, I managed to get my left shoe a little TOO tight one day during the first week, and by the time I realized my mistake, the wire that the BOA closure cinches down to tighten the shoe had managed to cut into my foot - even though the tongue of the shoe was there! For the rest of the tour, I wore the right shoe REASONABLY tight, and the left shoe as loose as I could possibly get away with. Still managed to ride EFI. (Every inch. You figure out the “F” for yourself.)
On the subject of wanting it badly enough, one member of our group had a stomach bug at some point in the tour, but he still rode EFI.
There were a few days during the tour where I did not feel like riding. Didn’t feel well, and/or my legs were heavy and tired. Still got out there and rode. Not because I wanted to ride that day, but because I was determined to ride EFI.
With all of that said, there were people in the group who wanted it every bit as badly as I did, and may have even done a better job of preparation than I did, but encountered one or more serious issues that either prevented them from completing or just from riding EFI. In addition to preparing physically and mentally, and WANTING it, there is definitely an element of luck involved. Luck was on my side, that is for sure!
Speaking of luck, on a tour of this length you WILL encounter weather issues. You WILL face strong headwinds. You WILL deal with rain. You WILL experience the cold. And the heat. Incorporate as much of this into your training as you can. With that said, for the most part we were VERY lucky weather-wise. I rode in more rain in training than I did while crossing the country.
Some training days will be physical. Some will be mental. Some will be a combination of both. Both are equally important.
You will also experience mechanical issues on a tour of this length. The most frequent mechanical issues we experienced were punctures. I had a total of 11 flats during the tour. Ended up buying six additional tubes. Fortunately, Crossroads made them readily available to us, at their cost.
Equipment I wish I had:
There was one day where my GPS froze on me. It’s never done it before, and it hasn’t done so since. None of the buttons seemed to do anything, so I pulled over and got out my cue sheet. Velcroed my cue sheet holder in place, but as I was about to start riding again I realized that I did not have a good solution for measuring distance, which is a crucial part of navigating with a cue sheet. If I were doing this again, I would have had another cycle computer as a backup, one that used a wheel sensor to measure speed and distance instead of GPS as a backup. I realize that I had my phone with me, but I did not have a phone holder with me, and I’m not sure my phone battery would have lasted long enough anyway. (Fortunately, if you hold the power button on a Garmin device in long enough, it forces the device to power off, and rebooting it solved the problem.)
Some things I brought that I didn’t use:
I never used my spare spokes, or my emergency tire boots, or any of my first aid supplies that I carried on the bike. I’m glad that I brought those things with me nevertheless.
Before the tour, someone recommended a specific pair of tweezers. Someone else recommended a pair of locking forceps, also for pulling stuff out of your tires. They meant well I’m sure, but I never once used the forceps. The tweezers proved to be sufficient.
Top tube bag? Turned out to be a must-have for carrying everything I needed. Could have picked a better one though. Maybe. The one I had was too small for tools and spare tubes, so those still resided in my Camelbak. The strap that secured it around my bike’s headset ended up tearing the rubber boot on my bike’s Future Shock though. (Don’t know yet if I need a new Future Shock or just a new boot, as my bike is still in the shop as I write this.)
Other random thoughts:
Chamois Butt’r. That stuff is amazing. Having had saddle sores has made me a believer in this stuff. Also, I was initially just putting it on my skin, but putting it on my skin AND my chamois was a game-changer! Having small packets of the stuff to bring along on the bike proved to be unnecessary, however. Not once did I reapply the stuff during a ride.
A “slow leak” is never just a slow leak. Don’t assume you can pump the tire back up and it will hold, because it won’t. Change the tube. Especially if you’re at a spot that’s relatively convenient, because when it finally lets go, it may not be in a “convenient” place.
We stayed in a LOT of hotels, from a variety of chains. For the MOST part, I really liked Drury Inns. My second favorite was Holiday Inn Express, with their pillows labeled for firmness. (I learned that I prefer a firmer pillow over a softer pillow.) My LEAST favorite was Best Western. (Never really COULD figure out the difference between Plus and Classic.) With that said, I think one of the Best Westerns we stayed at was actually pretty nice, and one of the Drury Inns was not so much.
The Crossroads poster that got put up in each hotel lobby: I was re-reading my blog posts and saw that I took a picture of that poster when I arrived in California. I wish I had taken more pics of it. They filled in the line as we rode, and put pictures of us all over it. Would have been nice to document it as it got filled in.
By the way, I mentioned the steps challenge that my job had going through the month of May earlier in this blog. Well, HR reached out to me to let me know that I could either compete in the individual competition or the team competition, but not both. I decided to stay in the team competition, as I didn’t think it would be fair to my teammates to abandon them. The end result? My team ended up running away with first place!
Streaming services? Just before the trip, I subscribed to Paramount Plus so I could keep up with some of my favorite shows. (I was already subscribing to Peacock, Netflix and Prime Video.) Turned out to be completely unnecessary - between my blog and my YouTube channel, I barely had any time left to watch any TV.
Speaking of my blog and my YouTube channel, I am so glad that I had both to document this trip, despite all of the time they ate up. I will always be able to refer back to both of them to relive all of those moments of this trip that will slip from my memory. If you ever undertake a trip like this, I highly recommend keeping a blog at a minimum.
One last thing - remember my saga earlier in the blog of my forgotten stuff and my experience with dealing with FedEx? (Just to give a short recap, the first time they were supposed to pick up my package, the hotel told the driver they had nothing for him. The next two times they were supposed to make the pickup, the driver cancelled because it was inconvenient for him. I ultimately ended up having the package shipped priority overnight with Saturday delivery, which costs a small fortune. Despite the added charge though, FedEx didn’t deliver my package on Saturday… or Sunday… or Monday even. It didn’t get to its destination until Tuesday.) Well, FedEx refused to make good on their service guarantee and refund my money. They didn’t even offer me a PARTIAL refund, despite the fact that this meant losing me as a customer forever. Well, in the end, I got the last laugh. I disputed the entire charge through my bank. The bank immediately issued me a credit for the full amount of the shipping charge. They did their investigation, including asking me to supply them with FedEx’s service guarantee in writing, which I did. When I read the actual service guarantee, I was shocked and surprised to find that FedEx actually says that they can suspend the guarantee at their discretion, with or without prior notice. I guess either that disclaimer is not legal, or my bank felt that FedEx was not acting in good faith by putting that disclaimer there, because they ultimately decided to make the credit they issued permanent. So in the end, I got the last laugh!
Well, I guess that’s pretty much all there is to say. I plan to make a video version of this post, for those who followed me on YouTube and not on my blog, but I don’t feel any reason to post that video here. What’s next for my YouTube channel? I’m not really sure. I will continue to make videos of any rides I take that I think may be of interest, but I suspect that after this trip, everything else will pale in comparison. I hope you have all enjoyed following along, and I hope I may have inspired some of you to do this (or something like it) yourself!
