Thursday, November 20, 2008
Inspiration
When we originally decided to do this whole bike ride as a honeymoon thing we thought we had a completely original idea. Then I started reading travel journals by other bikers, looking for ideas.
It wasn't long before I came across crazyguyonabike, which hosts more than 2900 travel journals by cyclists. These journals cover every continent on the planet and some of the journals make me want to do nothing but climb on a bike with my camera and never look back. Naturally, I did a search for honeymoons. Soon I was reading Fine, It's a Honeymoon! by Sean Copans and Margaret Garnett, who rode across the southern part of the country in the spring of 2005.
Over 70 days, Sean and Margaret rode 59 days for a total of 2789 miles, averaging 11.16 mph for roughly 7 hours a day. At their best, they did about 50 miles a day. Impressive numbers. But there are some other, more interesting ones that I won't be mentioning to Jillian: they spent 1.5 days vomiting, they spent 6 days riding in the rain, and Margaret had 7 flat tires. Sean had none.
Their journal really is fascinating to read. I read it start to finish, over a period of a few days. But they took solo bikes. We're taking a tandem. I wanted to hear about how tandems are different.
For comparison, I'm hoping Jillian and I can average close to 100 miles per day, every day for a month. Sadly, faster touring = cheaper touring.
This weekend I'll start Sean and Erin Barkley's journal, as they ride for 505 days through most of Eurasia. Now, if only I could find a way to read these while I ride my trainer in the living room...
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| posted at: 21:59 |
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