Bags ! Lots of Bags !

     Larry - The new panniers (2) have arrived.  Ortlieb Bike Packers.  Got them from a very friendly distributor in Fort Collins, Colorado.  Thank you Wayne!
     Martha chose the color (from choices of red, yellow, black, graphite or hazel).  She's all about color and matching up 'just right'.  Here though, she wisely went with yellow to enhance our visibility and safety.  Thank you Martha for another great color decision (she also helps dress color-challenged me most mornings for work).
     Of course, we already have two other sets of panniers that I've used for years.  They are Performance house brands in larger and smaller sizes.  The larger pair have been on several multi-day tours and have held up just fine.  The Ortliebs have a larger capacity, which is important for the extra stuff THE BIG RIDE will require.  And the other thing is the old panniers are not really waterproof, which requires ziploc bagging your clothing within the bags and still using the now tattered rain covers.  We'll still be taking one set of the old bags with us as we'll need to use both front and rear bags for this trip.  The Ortliebs will be in back and I'm hoping that the smaller bags for up front will be sufficient, but really won't know until we get all our stuff into a pile and see which bags can hold it all.
     I also bought an ever so slightly used Arkel handlebar bag from EnduroDoug through the classifieds on the Adventure Cycling Association website.  Again, we're looking for increased capacity since, unlike past tours, we're taking camping items (a tent and sleeping bags) as insurance in case we can't score inside lodging.
     We've attached a picture of Baxter with the panniers and handlebar bag.  Baxter doesn't look happy.  He's not.  He hates bags.

Baxter has the Bags Blues

    

Barney - The Big Purple Bike

Larry - Our ride for THE BIG RIDE will be, of course, 'Barney' the purple Santana tandem. 
     Barney was purchased from the Gertzs' of Tandems, Ltd, down in Birmingham, AL in the late '80s.  Wow, how time flies!  With a limited selection of tandems that would fit our team, Barney, in all his purple splendor, became our choice more of necessity than preference. Barney's an Arriva, made of that famous Japanese Tange steel like they talk about in the 'Kill Bill' movies (some of my favorites! Martha hates 'em both).  Anyway, Bill McCready, my acquaintance and the founder and owner of Santana Cycles, probably didn't have loaded touring in mind when he designed the Arriva (he always talks about how fast and light his bikes are), but it has done just fine on several tours which include the KATY Trail, Natchez Trace, Michigan, Utah, New York, Nova Scotia, DelMarVa,
GAP/C&O, Washington and the list goes on.
     Barney is, of course, so-named in honor of the purple dinosaur of children's play fame.  I don't think Santana kept that color on its pallet for very long.  We rarely come across other Barneys when we tandem rally.  Purple - it might not have been my first color choice, but after 20+ years, it's starting to grow on me.
     Our Arriva, I would say, is sort of the Buick of tandem bicycles.  A high quality machine, but no Formula One race car.  That suits us fine, because we certainly have no Formula One type cycling motors.  Barney is a reliable, stable touring platform.  He has had many upgrades over the years and I know Barney won't let us down.
     Barney's in our LBS right now getting prepped for THE BIG RIDE.  New cables and housings, chains, a bottom bracket, handlebar tape, a new Old Man Mountain rear rack, front rack mounted, fenders, cassette, captain's stem, drag brake,  brake pads, tires and mounts for the handlebar bag.   That's a lot of new stuff to break in, but we'll have plenty of time for several shakedown cruises before we push off for real.
     We've given a lot of thought to our tires, brakes and gearing.  We'll discuss those things another time.
     A couple of Barney pics follow.  Barney has done some miles and has the battle scars to show for it.  That's okay, Barney's a real bike, not art.  He's like a Hattori Hanzo samurai sword - lethal.  Look out any members of the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad or the Crazy 88 crime gang!!
    

Barney on a sport ride and creekside !!

Barney loaded up and on tour

    

The Whistle

     Larry - Shortly after its publication in 1996, I read David Lamb's 'Over the Hills:  A Midlife Escape Across America by Bicycle'.  Lamb was a professional writer, about to turn 50, and looking for an antidote to a looming midlife crisis.  Though not a cyclist, he bought a bike and rode it solo on a transcontinental ride from his home near Washington, D.C. to Santa Monica, California.  He then wrote a very interesting book about his experience,  more about his inner thoughts than the usual travelogue of weather, sights and eats.  (In the small world category, I chanced to meet David's sister-in-law while having a mid-ride snack at a little marina on a tour near Williamsburg, VA very shortly after having read his book.  She thought he was crazy for riding his bike all that way when he had a perfectly good automobile.)
     These many years later, the thing I most remember about Over the Hills is the author recounting of all the states he pedaled across, Tennessee had more dogs running at large than all the other states combined. 
     That might be true.  Having ridden myself in about 26 different states, I must say it is quite unusual to have chasing dogs.  We rode for a week in the N.Y. Adirondacks and had only one chaser.  Same with most states.  Not so here in TN.  We have lots of dogs and most of them are on the loose.  Cyclists are big fun for the TN canine set.  We've got one local loop that Martha has dubbed 'The Hundred Dog Ride' (and it's just a 40 miler!).
     I've seen/tried all kinds of anti-dog tactics:  Water bottle squirting/throwing; shouting (No!, Go Home!, Get off the Couch!, etc); spray (that stuff just blows back into your own eyes and those of everybody with you); even dog biscuit pitching (they always get distracted for eating). 
     But I discovered many years ago that my best dog deterrent is a whistle.  A Fox40 whistle to be exact.  The Fox40 is a basketball referee's whistle, available at most sporting goods stores.  It was invented by a couple of bb refs (Ron FOXcroft and Chet Forte -40!, hence its name).  Long ago, I ran across one of those guys, can't remember which, and he wound up giving me my first Fox40 (lost it when I left it hanging on the bear guard fence at an Appalachian Trail hut - duh!).  The unique feature on a Fox40 is that it has no pea, just flukes, meaning that you cannot over blow it.  The harder you blow, the louder it gets.  And the pitch is very, very shrill.  Dogs hate it.  You can tell from the way they flinch and squench up their eyes that the sound offends their delicate little doggy ears.  It's as if they're saying, "That hurt!  Please don't blow that thing anymore.  I'm turning around right now and heading back to the porch".
     My Fox40 is getting a little age on it.  It started out bright red in color.  Now with time and lots of UV rays, it's more of a dusty pink (see photo).  No matter, its stored in my helmet, so it goes around my neck every time I ride.  Whenever its not repelling pooches, it makes a great horn for alerting inattentive riders/drivers of my presence.
     My Fox40.  It's definitely going on THE BIG RIDE.

My Fox40

Are We There Yet?

Larry - Having decided that we were doing THE BIG RIDE, the next question was where were we going on THE BIG RIDE?
     I've used Adventure Cycling Association maps/routes for several tours and have always found them to be excellent.  ACA is a small outfit based in Missoula, MT that maps bicycle friendly routes all across the country.  40,000 miles of routes and still expanding!  ACA is really much more than just a mapping service.  It is an advocate for bicycle touring.  They have a quarterly magazine and a cracking good website (adventurecycling.org). 
     If you check out the ACA Route Network (http://adventurecycling.org/routes/network.cfm), you immediately see they have three main transcontinental routes: The Northern Tier, The Transamerica Trail and The Southern Tier.  The names are pretty intuitive, the NT stays mainly in the northern tier of states, the ST in the southern tier and the TA goes right across the middle of the good ole U.S. of A.  We decided that the NT, with significant modifications, would suit us best.
     The next fundamental question was West to East or East to West for direction of travel?  We first thought we'd go in the traditional West to East direction, but Martha correctly pointed out that if we did that we'd almost certainly miss out on one of the anticipated highlights of the trip, same being the famous Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, which isn't usually cleared of snow until mid-June.  A little internet research revealed that the prevailing wind theory which mandates cycling W to E is more myth than fact.  So we flipped the route around so's to ride west, keeping the morning sun out of our eyes and making the Sun Road being open a virtual certainty.
       As mentioned, we're heavily modifying the NT route.  The NT runs from Bar Harbor, Maine to Anacortes, WA.   We're going to start in Washington, D.C. and ride the first 380 miles or so of our journey on the C & O Canal/Great Allegheny Passage trailways.  These are trailways open only to hikers and bikers.  We did most of these routes a couple of years ago (West to East) and had a great time.  The GAP will take us into Pittsburgh.  From there it's the Pittsburgh Spur to the south shore of Lake Erie where we will first catch a short section of the NT before jumping onto the ACA Lake Erie Connector route, which will take us through Detroit and on to Ludington, MI where we'll ferry (on the S.S. Badger!) across Lake Michigan.  Then we'll be on the North Lakes route until we get near Minneapolis where we'll finally get on the NT for good, taking us across 5 states to journey's end at Anacortes (We'll touch 12 states, total, along the way).
     That'll be a lot of pedalin'  We haven't ordered all of the ACA maps just yet.  Once we have those in hand, we can figure out exactly how many miles our trip will be . 
     More on that later.

Martha and  Baxter studying the Map

Bulldog Baxter

Larry - Many, many questions came up early on when we first started to get serious with THE BIG RIDE.  The usual suspects were, of course, can we make arrangements with work to be gone for two months plus?  Can we afford it?  Are we physically up to the challenge?  With aging parents, would it be okay to be gone that long?
     Overcoming the preceding questions, we ran into the toughest question of them all.  What will we do with Baxter?  Baxter is Martha's eight year old Olde English Bulldog.  He's a member of the family.  He and Martha are extra tight.  It's a mutual lovefest.  We were going nowhere until Martha was well satisfied that Baxter would be safe and have the best of care during our absence.
     To the rescue comes a cousin-in-law who is a genuine dog lover, who already knows Baxter and keeps a pretty good pack of 6 or 7 dogs that Baxter will get to live and play with and get back to his wolfen roots with.  (Say it again Martha, "My dog is just a dog, he's not a hairy baby").
     So, with Baxter in good hands, we'll be able to push off without any concerns for his welfare.

The LoveFest

Technology

     Larry - Technology is going to play a big role on THE BIG RIDE.  As a man now in my seventh decade,  I'm ever amazed at the new things that make our lives different (but not necessarily better).
     That said, technology has certainly made touring easier.  My first multi-day tour, we only had a state highway road map.  Then we found the gazetteer map books that showed back roads.  Now it's iPhones, iPads, hot spots, dedicated GPSes, laptops, WiFi, Skype, internet downloads and the list goes on. 
     On our last tour we used Martha's iPhone to good advantage.  She found some apps that really helped with finding restaurants, motels, grocery stores, etc along with some navigating.  We also had a Garmin Edge into which we had loaded the route giving us turn by turn directions.  We had maps, of course, but used them more as a backup than a primary source.
     For THE BIG RIDE we've added a dedicated GPS (a Garmin Etrex 20) which has a better system for downloading the route for turn by turn directions - just follow the magenta line!  Adventure Cycling Association is a small company that designs maps specifically for touring cyclists.  You're, no doubt, very familiar with them.  They've been around for 30 something years.  Based in Missoula, MT.  They've got a great website, chock full of tips, blogs, articles and maps.  We'll be again purchasing their maps for use on THE BIG RIDE.  From past usage, I know their maps are well done and reliable.  We'll be using ACA routes almost exclusively on THE BIG RIDE.  Our route itself will be the subject of a later post.
     A neat thing that ACA has recently begun offering is a free internet download of the 'waypoints' along each of their more than 40,000 miles of routes.  That's what we'll be putting into our Etrex for those turn by turn directions.  But even with the increased capacity of the Etrex, there'll be too many waypoints for it to hold all at one time.  So we'll have to reload from occasionally as we go along.  We'll need the internet for that and a laptop (the thing I'm banging on right now).  We've purchased a new laptop and are taking it along for those periodic downloads and so's we can blog and post pretty much every day from the road (or in the motel room that night).
     And oh, did I mention we've got a Solar Monkey thing that's a solar panel array which is supposed to recharge all your e-gadgets as you cruise down the highway.  No more dead phones.
     That's a lot of gizmos.  They can be really handy, but never leave home without your good old fashioned paper map.  The map will not let you down (though I did have a stoker once who somehow lost our only map on a nature break in the woods).
     I've attached a pic of all our electronic aids.  Let's see if we're smart enough to take full advantage of them.

Lots of electronic gizmos

Camping

Larry - And on the subject of camping, though not our intention, the more touring journals I read (and I've read a lot), the more likely it seems that camping will be an important part of the BIG RIDE.  Don't tell Martha I said that.
     Martha and I have each been backpackers.  We've got all the backpacking stuff, albeit unused for several years. 
     Time to get out tents for evaluation!  Sunday afternoon was relatively warm and sunny, so up went the tents.  See the accompanying photo.  We got the tents assembled and found both in good shape, except for very minor needs.  We decided Martha's tent (the gray one), being a little smaller, lighter and more efficient would best fit our needs.  Into the BIG RIDE staging box it goes, hoping never to be used for the duration of our 3,200 mile journey.
     Likewise we did a camp stove evaluation, finding Martha's propane burner preferable to my white gas rig.  Into the box it goes.  
     That box is already looking heavy (and we're just getting started).

We're taking the grey one on the right.

Cheap Insurance

Larry - Since deciding last Fall that 2013 would be the BIG RIDE year, the BIG RIDE has become mine and Martha's prime subject of discussion. Hardly a day goes by without us talking about some facet of our oncoming adventure.
     Lately we've been on the topic of sleeping bags.  Although our plan is to motel/B&B each day, we know that the further west we go across Wisconsin, North Dakota and Montana, the more likely we'll have limited services.  Hence, we need to be prepared to camp!
      Camping in the great American West at those latitudes, even in late June, could see overnight temps in the low 40's! Maybe we better bring our winter weight sleeping bags? We're trying to keep our loaded weight down and hoping never to have to pull those bags and our tent out of their sacks. It's frustrating to carry a bunch of stuff that you hope to never use. That said, insurance is never free. On a given day, we may find out that hauling all that camping stuff was the best decision we ever made.

Not a sleeping bag, but Martha and Baxter in repose

    

It's ON!

Larry - Wow.  This is starting to feel real and that it's really going to happen.  I've talked about a transcon trip for 20 years.  More a fantasy than a true goal with little things like a job and bills to pay interfering with fun.  Finally decided I'm not getting any younger and before long I might not be physically able to enjoy the trip, so let's just do it.  Still a few important details with Martha's job to clear, but it looks like we'll be on our way by the 1st of May 2013.  That's only about 120 days!
     Since deciding back in the Fall that 2013 would be our year, we've done a ton of things to get ready and still lots to do.  I'll talk about some of those in later posts and also the route we're planning to take and lots more, too.  Martha and I have sort of divided the oncoming responsibilities.  She is really good with technology - the iPhone, the laptop, the GPS, so she's taking care of all the downloads/uploads/searches/reservations/etc.  I'm old school.  I'll have a paper map and a not-smart cell phone that you just talk on.  I'm also in charge of the bike and all the stuff that goes on the bike and keeping everything rolling and being prepared for anything that breaks - and security.  Again, I'll talk more about that stuff in upcoming posts.
     120 days will speed by.  I'm just a little nervous that it already seems so close.  As always, almost half the fun of an adventure ride is the anticipation and planning.  Well, we're having big fun with that.
     More later.

On the GAP

The Tandeming Tolberts

Martha - Here's a picture of Larry and me and our tandem.

Getting Started

Martha - Larry and I intend to start our cross country tandem bike tour in May 2013.  We're setting up a blog to keep track of our adventure.  Not sure it will be as good as my sister Leslie's blog, but she's the inspiration.  Can't wait to start our trip!

The T's on tour at Mt Vernon