Hello, my name is Dan and this blog is a recap of the bicycle tour that my friends Will, Goody, Pete, Aidan, David and I went on in the summer of 2010. My friend Will began to vocalize the idea to ride across the continent in late 2009. Will and I grew up in Potsdam, New York, and had biked and ran together from time to time in our youth. It was just after new year eve dinner in 2009, that we first starting looking at google maps that I became excited by the prospect this journey over land. It took me a while to commit to the idea, but I made up my mind in late spring and was on board along with Goody, an all american middle distane runner in high school and environmental studies major at Binghamton, Pete, a history and russian major at Binghamton and high school rower, Aidan, Pete's cousin, musician and biology student at University of California, Santa Cruz. Additionally Will's father David, an author and librarian in Potsdam, would ride for us for a section in Canada and New York. I knew Will and David well, had spent a little bit of time with Goody and have never met Pete and Aidan. The tour was setting up to be a good mix of old friends and new companions.
I graduated from University of Portland in May after another lackluster year of collegiate running and was ready to do something new. My Dad owns a bike store in Potsdam, NY, the Treadmill, and I grew up around bikes, but I had never done any touring before. Although I did some duathalon and mountain bike racing in middle school I became a runner in high school and didn't do much bike riding In the summer of 2009, before my senior year at UP, I began to use my 1993 Bridgestone MB-4 to commute to an internship in Beaverton over Germantown Road from North Portland. This got me excited about riding again and lead me to my decision to ride across the country. For my graduation present my Dad gave me a 59 cm Salsa Casseroll outfitted for touring. On my first ride on the Salsa in early May, I redlined up McNamee Road on a ride with my friends and was real spaint after a 25 mile ride. I was a long way away from being able to do any serious touring. I trained for 3 weeks, riding 20-50 miles a day on the hilly slopes up to skyline rd, running when I could, and replenishing my body with oatmeal heavy with maple syrup and hemp powder, and the tacos and burritos of the many fine taquerias of North Portland. I looked online at biking forums and found a group of two young women who were looking to travel from Seattle to New York at around the same time as our tour. We contacted Carrie and Ashley and planned to ride with them for a while. They were leaving a little after we had planned to start so this gave us time to do a counterclockwise loop around the Olympic Peninsula and get to the "real" Pacific Ocean. My plan was to meet Will, Goody and Pete around Olympia on the night of the June 3rd, before we would loop around the Olympics. To view June 2 and 3rd to see Will, Goody, and Pete's journey from Seatac Airport to Mima Mounds, and my trip from Portland click older posts. To view June 4th and beyond click newer posts.
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