Discussion: PNWOF

I see you're signed up for the events in MT and WA. That's an awfully long way to go. I hope you have a lot of M&Ms and Goldfish.

I only wish I were capable of efficiently and practically biking to that event at this point.

Will be so good to see you!! Take care of that back!

Realistically speaking, as an unsupported trip, you'd probably want to plan on a month in each direction. I guess somewhat faster if you stayed in motels every night.

AliC - it will be great to see you, too! It's been too long since I was in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm eager to socialize with everyone. I hope you and your family feel better by then!

JJ - you raise an interesting question; what speeds are sustainable for self supported multiday? My recent enterprises notwithstanding, I like i think I could manage 250 km per day if I had minimal gear and was optimized for speed. What daily distances have you found manageable?

Self-contained (other than food) in the summer of 1983, my friend and I averaged about 70 miles/day for two months (call that 110 km in your terms). We were carrying a tent, sleeping bags, cooking gear, and enough tools for most repairs. Enough clothes to get us between laundry stops, and various miscellaneous items like cameras. (A frequent question was whether we were carrying a gun -- we were not.) These days we'd surely have a solar panel for charging phones. We didn't really have lights, as it was summertime. Front and rear panniers on both bikes, and some things on top of the rear racks. The average gets knocked down by days when for whatever reason, not many miles get covered (e.g. a bad headache, major repairs, or a place to stop for sightseeing). Somewhere I have a list of how many miles we covered each day (measured on a map, because we didn't have any kind of odometer).

What if you used hotels instead of carrying camping gear? I suppose it's less pure, but you could travel much faster.

Right, that was what I was referring to in my comment about allowing a month. If you ditch the camping gear, and stay in hotels and don't do any cooking, that lightens the load considerably. I guess the plan is to wash your clothes in the hotel sink every night as well, cutting down on the clothing required. You still want an adequate tool kit, but that's not so bad. There's a joke about needing just one small bike bag, large enough to hold a credit card. We were college students, short on funds, and managed the whole summer on around $10/day each (no credit cards, we were operating with traveler's checks). Our longest day was about 120 miles, though we had quite a few when we were over 100, I think. Although we crossed the Great Plains, we also went quite a few places where the climb was substantial, which also affects the miles one can do in a day. We did stay in a motel one night (we could tell it was about to rain), we stayed with friends four nights, and there was one night when a guy invited us to sleep on his porch. There are a lot of things about that trip that seem really primitive. Our only news source was the front page of USA Today that was available in vending boxes everywhere, and we'd call Mike's parents from a pay phone a couple of times a week, and they'd relay the news to my parents. And we mailed a postcard to our friends at Senior House every day. Navigated with paper maps that we'd pick up at the visitors center every time we reached a new state. But yeah, certainly much more mileage than we did is possible.

That sounds like an excellent adventure!

It was a wonderful summer, the kind of thing you can do when you're 21. Interesting to think how different it would be now. One amusing change is the vacant lot next to Taco Bell where we camped one night in Castle Rock, CO. I've been by there since, the spot is unidentifiable because it's now in the middle of a city.

I will note that in the spirit of Ian, in terms of being not quite properly prepared, Mike and I started the trip on homemade recumbent bicycles that we had literally finished building the day before we started. They lasted about a week, at which point Mike had his standard bike frame FedExed to him (he had left it in a box with his mother just in case), and I switched to a bike owned by another guy on the trip who decided to bail and took a bus home.