What a fantastic journey and adventure this has been!!! I’m extremely lucky for the opportunity of
pursuing this dream cycling trip.
Thank You!: I’m blessed to have a strong and supporting
family. Thank you to my loving wife for
her amazing support of my taking the time to do this ride and also to my two
children for their understanding and love.
A huge thank you to my father who has helped me in every step of the
trip and nearly every day over the past 1.5 months from planning to watching
the weather and helping me determine my routes as well as discussing various
issues (bike, route, sites, etc) along the way and helping me resolve
them. A thank you also goes to my friend
Craig who picked me up in St Augustine and will get me to the airport in
Orlando tomorrow, along with an appropriately sized bike box, which is
key! I also wanted to say thanks here to
Steve Garufi (http://bikeacrossamerica.net)
for his inspiration in cycling cross-country twice (many of the stages I chose
in the Western states were based on Steve’s routes). Finally, thank you to each of you following
this blog for all of your interest in the trip and following along with me as I
pursued a really unique journey.
For those cyclists out there that find this information
helpful and motivating to your future trips, I hope that I’ve helped inspire
your trips, as other cyclists had done for me through their journals. If you have any follow-up questions as you
prepare for your trip, please feel free to email me at: jfarmer191@gmail.com.
A few summary thoughts and pieces of information on the
trip:
Cycling statistics:
1.
Full trip - Totals
a.
Total miles: 2,863 miles
b.
Total time on the bike seat: 200.8 hours
c.
Total # of riding days/stages: 38
d.
Total elevation climbed: 59,045 ft (2x Mt
Everest!)
e.
Total pedal strokes: 744,936
f.
Total number of heart beats on the bike: over
1.5 million
g.
Total calories burned: well over 100,000
2.
Full trip - Averages
a.
Avg speed: 14.2 mph
b.
Avg heart rate during the trip: 125 bpm
c.
Avg miles per riding day (taking out touring day
miles): 73.6 miles
3.
Single day records:
a.
Total miles: 121 miles (stage 35 – Panama City
to Crawfordville, FL)
b.
Highest Avg Speed: 19.8 mph over 64 miles (stage
10 – nice tail wind – Lordsburg to Deming, NM)
c.
Most climbing: 6,030 ft (stage 1 – climb to
Julian, CA)
d.
Most descent: 5,000+ ft (stage 14 – descent from
Cloudcroft, NM)
e.
Flattest stage: 1.8 ft climb/mile avg (stage 36
– Crawfordville to Perry, FL)
f.
Slowest stage: 8.3 mph (stage 13 – climb to
Cloudcroft, NM)
Some other notable statistics:
1.
Number of visits to the blog: well over 4,000 –
thanks for everyone’s interest and support!
2.
Total flat tires (not bad given the rough roads
of TX and all of the junk along the highways in the Southwest!): 7
3.
Number of rattlesnakes seen (dead or alive): 0 –
I never did see one!
4.
Number of states: 8
5.
Amount of time I was rained on: just 1.5 hrs
during the whole trip. Absolutely amazing. I was incredibly lucky with great weather the
whole trip (maybe one day of snow in AZ would be the exception!!). That is less than 1% of the cycling time in
rain – wow!!!!
6.
Amount of road construction I had to ride
through: almost none – I estimate about 10 miles out of the total of 2800+
miles – nice!!!
7.
Items I brought with me but never used on the
trip: 1) raincoat (great!), 2) mace (I had plenty of dogs chase me, but none
too close). Basically, everything else I
brought with me was used at some point in the trip.
8.
Number of motorists that honked at me in a way
that suggested they didn’t like my presence on the highway: just 2. (pretty good – I’d estimate 20k cars/trucks
passed me on the trip)
9.
Number of motorists that were helpful (stopping
when I had a flat tire or in most cases just moving over a few ft on the road
as they passed me) – 100s.
10. Most
useful cycling item that many cyclists may not use today: rear view mirror (if
you don’t have one – get one – they’re incredibly helpful).
11. Highest
elevation during the trip: +8,600+ ft (Cloudcroft, NM)
12. Lowest
elevation during the trip: -200 ft (near Brawley, CA)
13. Number
of items I forgot in my hotel room in the nearly 40 checkouts I did: ZERO! (perhaps the statistic I’m most happy with…).
Awards I’d give to each State (applicable only to my
trip/route/timing of the ride):
1.
California: Best breakfast and coolest motel
room (Julian B&B – they won by far)
2.
Arizona: Most beautiful landscape (I like desert
mountains)
3.
New Mexico: Best mountain climb (up to
Cloudcroft)
4.
Texas: Roughest roads (by far – it shook my bike
apart in ways that should not happen!...) and most “dead stuff” laying along
the road
5.
Louisiana: Best motel location (in New Roads –
right over an oxbow lake)
6.
Mississippi: Most logging trucks coupled with no
riding lane (cyclist’s nightmare…)
7.
Alabama: Best “water crossing” = the ferry
across Mobile Bay was really cool.
8.
Florida: Smoothest highways with most consistent
use of bike/breakdown lane (by far over the other states)
For cyclists who may take the type of route that I did:
1.
I’ve included a summary of the stages here.
2.
Back on Day 0 I had also included a list of the
equipment I brought with me.
Final thoughts:
One of the most interesting aspects of the trip that I had
not expected is the fantastic ability to see a broad swath of our beautiful
country up close and personal. Seeing it
for sure, but also hearing, smelling it (for better or worse), feeling it
through the bike every pedal stroke of the way and even tasting it (in the case
of air near the TX oil fields). The
transitions in geography, climate, social characteristics, pace of human
activity, accents, smells, sounds, humidity, sites, etc are incredibly diverse
in the US. The awesome aspect of seeing
these on a bike trip is that you experience them in a continuous spectrum (as
opposed to flying in/out of each of these areas) and get a great sense of how
the transitions occur across the country.
In many cases these transitions are dramatically quick (e.g. the end of
the lower Rocky Mtns in New Mexico, the southern accent appearing almost
immediately when you cross the TX/LA state line) and others are more slow but
in all cases you get to experience the transition in a very direct way –
OUTSTANDING!!
Keep inspiring and being inspired! It was fun to have conversations with folks
in hotels, restaurants, stores, along the road, and even kids in parking lots
about cycling. Answering their questions,
talking about exercising, riding bicycles and hopefully in some ways inspiring
each of them to take extra steps to do some new things in their lives, perhaps
exercise a bit more as well and find new journeys in their lives to pursue.
