skinnyhips

My best laid plans did not come to fruition.  I had intended to write in quasi-realtime about my bicycle adventure, which, when I initially set up this blog in December 2015, was intended as a west coast tour from Canada to Mexico.

Now that the trip is well into the rear-view mirror, my new intention is to re-count the trip, the planning and the experiences.  This blog is largely for my own edification, to make a written record of the trip – hopefully to be enjoyed by my riding partners, Bob and Tim, and possibly friends and family.

The tour morphed into “Northwest Adventure”, which became a month long ride from Vancouver, BC, to San Francisco.  My friend Bob West and I had been talking about doing a longish bike tour for a while.  We kicked around a few ideas – toying initially with a cross country, then looking at the Great Divide Route.  We settled on the ride down the west coast, intending to ride from Vancouver to the Mexican border.  For two old farts, we didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew on our initial foray into substantial loaded touring.  The west coast ride had the promise of a significant undertaking without ever being far from “civilization” – good food, beautiful scenery and cell phone coverage.  As we began to get serious about detailed planning, we realized that a) we wanted to stick with roughly a month of riding, b) we did not want to over-estimate our average daily mileage capability and c) we did not want to be a slave to schedule.  We wanted to have the flexibility to more fully explore areas that intrigued us, and we wanted adequate schedule reserve (read “rest days”).  We settled on the ride from Vancouver to SF, allowing ourselves time to make side trips in the San Juan islands and to make a side trip up the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon to visit friends in Hood River, noodle around a bit in the Cascades and add variety to what would otherwise be a purely coastal ride – “ocean on the right”.  We were also juggling the rendezvous plans for meeting up with our third riding partner, Bob’s riding buddy Tim, who could only join us for the two weeks that it took to ride from Eugene OR to SF.