I have 2500 miles so far this year and could do a century any random day without preparation and I’m doubting whether or not I can do GDMBR, meanwhile this guy didn’t even own a bike, didn’t even do more than 30 miles once he did, and just set off across the country. I guess I should just do it.
How to bike across the country
21–30 of 133 posts
Re: How to bike across the country
#22I think that finding free camping outside when you are in some shit nothing town is probably the most important skill to have, which is easy with satellite maps. Once you get the hang of it you realize that every town has at least one site where you can definitely get away with pitching a tent for one night. I think I have camped this way about 80 times and have never even been asked what I'm doing. That said, state and national park campgrounds are a great deal and you sometimes meet other tourers there, so they're good for a day when you want to take it easy for a morning. I sometimes get a kick out of zooming in on nowhere, USA and looking for spots.
And some advice for anyone doing this for the first time and feels compelled to pay to camp - never stay at a KOA, consider them an absolute last resort. There is no bigger waste of money and RV culture is extremely cursed.
Re: How to bike across the country
#23Props to the author for grinding through this, but I think a very strongly worded and formatted warning is needed at the top. Embarking on this trip with so little knowledge meant putting yourself far away from civilizations while criminally underprepared. I love the energy of Supertramps, but there is a reason they are controversial. It would be very easy to make a mistake and be in big trouble - underestimating wat…
Just to be fair, Supertramps are not controversial for those very valid reasons; those reasons require thought, empathy and actual understanding of the situation they are in.
Those kinds of lifestyles generally create a knee-jerk reaction to people merely because they are different than the "normalcy". That is clear because, while some people are indeed being lucky/foolish in their endeavours (totally fine by me unless they don't directly hurt others with their choices), some other people have a pretty solid plan/foundation for being able to handle such a lifestyle and people still give them grief.
My lifestyle is far from an extreme one and I still get puzzled questions and the usual "oh, one day, you'll stop and grow up" kind of comments. Imagine if I had decided to drop everything and start cycling around the world.
Re: How to bike across the country
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME drivers are by far the biggest danger on the road.
I was wondering how it went for the author. Didn't see any mention of traffic in the article. Probably a lot of open roads, but at least in the populated areas traffic must have been a factor?
It seems he was following a pre-set route that's been used for ... decades, now? I'm guessing it's optimized to keep cyclists out of high-traffic areas.
Re: How to bike across the country
#25Of interest for the HN audience: the founder of grubhub has a memoir that tells the stories of biking across the country and starting grubhub in parallel. I found it an enjoyable read.
Re: How to bike across the country
#26Congrats! It was super interesting to read about the western express, when I did this a few years ago I did the astoria route: https://blaise.bike/ Did you look into different tires? 8 flats seems like a lot. I got exactly one running schwalbe marathon plus tires. Overall what was your favorite part of the trip?
Not OP, but I also went across America along the Northern Tier in 2023 with Schwalbe Marathon Plus's. I think I got 9 flats total, 7 of which were in Montana for some reason. I always tried to investigate and eliminate the source of the flat, but sometimes you are just repeatedly unlucky (in my experience).
Re: How to bike across the country
#27Props to the author for grinding through this, but I think a very strongly worded and formatted warning is needed at the top. Embarking on this trip with so little knowledge meant putting yourself far away from civilizations while criminally underprepared. I love the energy of Supertramps, but there is a reason they are controversial. It would be very easy to make a mistake and be in big trouble - underestimating wat…
Hmm, this take seems too all-or-nothing to me. (I made a similar trip with similar prep - bought the bike a month before going.)
The first chunk of the trip is very civilized, and you can use that to build skills before you get out in rural Utah.
If you have some experience with dry-country hiking, you understand about bringing water. That's the main threat. Most of the other mishaps you can think of are just inconvenient/unpleasant - "made poor time, got stuck at dusk in the middle of nowhere with only the snacks in my panniers, and had to camp by the roadside".
The author did prep for some other gotcha's, including having safety gear and doing some physical training in advance.
Re: How to bike across the country
#28Very nice summary. I did a similar cross-country trip and 100% endorse many of the conclusions at the end. (The Kansas winds and the hills of the Ozarks (central Missouri) were both surprisingly challenging and demoralizing, even after the continental divide.)
Re: How to bike across the country
#29Props to the author for grinding through this, but I think a very strongly worded and formatted warning is needed at the top. Embarking on this trip with so little knowledge meant putting yourself far away from civilizations while criminally underprepared. I love the energy of Supertramps, but there is a reason they are controversial. It would be very easy to make a mistake and be in big trouble - underestimating wat…
I confess that I am in the camp that is inclined to say, fuck it, throw caution to the wind.
I reflect on the times in my life when I did just that and I have been amply rewarded with a life having been made just a little more worth having lived.
Seeing people holed up because of their fears makes me sad. I suppose the thing that I am most afraid of is finding out too late that I am too old to do these sort of things with the few years that I may have left in the world.
(And that goes as well to spending time with my daughters, wife, family.)
Re: How to bike across the country
#30I'd love to do this one day! Curious - after reading, the part about wildlife scares me. Did you ever run into genuinely worrying situations with wildlife? Hearing about Black widow spiders alone makes me want to only do this with a van following behind me to sleep in at night!
Most wildlife is somewhat afraid of humans so long as they are not taught otherwise. They know you are big and don't know if you are going to eat them so they stay away. Mountain lions are the only possible exception. So long as you don't get close and don't give them reason to get close they will generally leave you alone.
The above is why it is critical to keep food either hung in a tree or in bear proof containers. So long as bears don't see humans and think "I've found food near them" they will stay away - but once they realize humans mean food there is trouble. Wild areas rarely have problems - causal campers don't realize how important proper bear protection is and over time bears have figured it out.
The black widow and a few other spiders and insects are exceptions - they will target you. (though mostly spiders leave you alone)