Although the ride doesn’t start from Chicago until the morning of Sept. 12th, Linda and I will be leaving for New York at the end of August. And then we fly to Chicago where I will start my ride. A little panic is starting to set in when I think about the fact that I will be gone for over two months and I still have a lot to do!! That said, I am ticking through my ‘to-do’ list.
I have installed a link to a Google map that shows the proposed itinerary of the ride and where we will likely be staying each night. There is some flexibility in the schedule so we’ll see how close we come to this schedule in the end. I will begin populating the map with more info and hope to update with photos along the way.
Zippy and I will be heading down and over Palos Verdes tomorrow on a 50 mile training ride before I jump on the train and head to San Luis Obispo next Wednesday for my three day ride home. If that ride is successful I will declare victory and feel like I’m ready to go.
Some of the other riders are quite experienced at this sort of thing and have been a great source of info. For example, I have learned a lot about ‘goatheads’ or ‘puncture vine’ which is a weed that grows in New Mexico, Arizona and arid parts of California and is notorious for causing flat tires on bikes. Solution: extra heavy duty tires, puncture resistant tubes and possibly even gooey tire sealant inside the tubes!! More about this later.
More to come!