More preparation for the ride

The yaks aren't shaving themselves

Touring bikes

Despite really wanting them to, and giving them several tries, we realized (sad trombone) the Fitzes weren't going to work for this tour. We hadn't really planned on buying more bikes - not that there's anything wrong with that - so for a minute we were thinking of taking our Jones SWB/LWB bikes. They would totally handle the load, be very comfortable, and ... be very much overbiking. But run what ya brung, right?

Then Eric saw that Velo Orange was having a sale on their Polyvalent framesets. Woohoo! So yeah, we have matchy match bikes now. Well, at least the same type. They are different sizes, and the builds are not exactly the same.

We got them in July 2024, had them built up by late summer/early fall and started riding them. Besides the bikes themselves there were also the racks and luggages, and ... super deluxe ... KICKSTANDS!!! No more kickstand envy here.

We also started doing some overnight campouts to practice with all the luggages and our gear setups. Photo below is of our bikes in Duncans Mills, on the way back from a campout at Bodega Dunes on the Sonoma Coast.

The bikes

The Route

We are using a combination of routes from the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) and some DIY. We'll start on the ACA TransAmerica Trail, which will take us from Florence, OR, to West Yellowstone, WY. There we'll switch over to the ACA Parks, Peaks and Prairies, which will take us through the Badlands and Black Hills (which Eric went through on a (car) road trip and thought would be a cool area to ride bikes in) of South Dakota to Minneapolis, MN.

From Minneapolis it's the DIY. There are a couple museums in Wisconson we want to visit, then a ferry across Lake Michigan, across Michigan (the mitten part), a sliver of Canada (if they're still letting USAmericans in), and back into upstate NY where we'll get on the Erie Canal trail. Final destination, for the moment, is Brooklyn, NY!

For those of you keeping track at home, we'll actually only be passing through 9 states: Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York. That's kind of amazing.

Ride with GPS has the whole shebang at 4,249.3 miles and 146,018 feet of elevation. It will be interesting to see what we actually clock in at. Our current thoughts are to do 50-60 mile days, 5 to 6 days a week, but we want to keep it as much Type I (fun in the moment) fun as possible. Although we have the route, we don't have a spreadsheet plan of "MUST BE IN TOWN X ON DAY 15 AND TOWN Y ON DAY 31 AND etc." or anything like that. We're keeping it open to how we're feeling (and what the weather is doing) as we go.

We are taking camping gear, but don't have a set percentage of time that we'll be using it. (See keeping as much Type I fun mentioned above) One advantage to touring as more "mature" (er, yeah, older) folks is that we can afford to spend some of our nights in hotels. It will also be interesting to see how much we camp vs. stay in hotels or other arrangements.