August 10, 2014

The Pedalshift Project 005: The Border to Border Tour from San Francisco

20 minutes

On this episode…an episode-long mid-tour report on the border to border tour from foggy San Francisco,

Special shoutout to Kevin form Honolulu for reminding my addled brain to include a direct download link to the last show!

And because this is episode 005 all Bond junkies want to know who Agent 005 was... a quick check on wikipedia shows,

"005 Stuart Thomas was 005 until defective eyesight impaired his marksmanship, and he was made head of Station G (Greece) in Colonel Sun."

The Journal

Topped the 1000 mile mark at some point recently.

Potential lesson for next time - if you’re a planner (like me) it’s probably a good idea to “force” a zero mile day in there. I did 1000+ miles on consecutive days (ranging from 33 to 78 miles daily). I burnt out pretty good, and luckily I had a good setup in SF to get an extended recovery.

Highlights

Handling the ferries without feeding the fish

Poutine in Victoria

Friday Harbor

Seeing a harbor seal in the Columbia River as I crossed to Oregon

The entire Oregon coast

Handling the rain

Seven Devils

South Crescent City Hills

Re-defeating Leggett Hill

Making up a day and getting a bonus day in SF

Lowlights

Unnecessary assholery from US border agent in Friday Harbor (#protip - better to let your bike fall than shift your position past an imaginary line that delineates you as a threat or not a threat)

Fatigue towards the end (was ready for a break)

Stolen battery in Oregon

Bad ranger experience in Samuel P. Taylor State Park

No wild camping so far, so I don’t have any good stories to share like I promised last episode

Sidebar - be careful out there

If you followed the @pedalshift feed you saw some mentions of rerouting the tour and going to Calgary… I was about to help out a friend who had a pretty bad accident on tour in Alberta that included some injuries. His helmet probably stopped a concussion, but in his words, he was lucky how he landed (despite the injuries he did suffer, they could have been worse). He has someone else who is better equipped to help him on his return than me (you know, actual medical training) so I’ll be pushing south.

Moral of this story: be prepared for your conditions (he had a device to summon help), and be prepared for bad things to happen. This is not a risk-free thing, but we can manage the risk and enjoy ourselves!

Pushing on

Leaving SF Monday and have an itinerary that gets me to the border with comfortable days (split several longer days in to two).

I will deviate from camping where it’s appropriate and I’ll also use transit if it’s helpful or necessary to increase my enjoyment. This is supposed to be fun! ;)

Follow along the route @pedalshift and on the raw podcast feed Tour Diaries: Pedalshift! I’ll be uploading snippets from the road on this tour, possibly compiling some for the main podcast next episode. I’ll be uploading snippets from the road on this tour, possibly compiling some for a special edition of the podcast when the tour is done at the end of August.

Any questions? I got at least a few on Twitter so far, but feel free to reach out at [email protected] too.

The Lab

Caffeine as a bike touring helper - 200-400mg doses (that’s equivalent to 1.5-3 cups of coffee). These are the capsules I've tried.

Personal Locator Becons -PLBs - if you are doing remote touring or bike packing, this saved my friend’s ass. Do your research. Get one.

Thinking about the possibility of developing a bike touring app - curious what you think. Probably offline iOS - any thoughts? Shoot them to [email protected]

Pedalpreneur

Rental revenue going up at least another $1000 and possibly more for the trip, but I think my costs for food have been higher than I thought.

Total net revenue after cleaning is 4236, making the 42 days that I now know are the tour average $101/day. Not bad.

Only two hotel nights so far, and one pricey campground. I expect this to go way up.

Likely going to be in more hotels or AirBnbs from L.A. to SD and I plan on renting a car for my final day to make getting to the airport for my early flight easier and saner.

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Reach out on Twitter @pedalshift, or [email protected]

Next episode: a border to border tour wrap up… some day trip biking notes from northern New Hampshire… and much more… on the next pedalshift project.

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By Tim Mooney

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