How to bike across the country

I made similar experiences - some also through hitch hiking. One major takeaway for me was how often my "flash judgements" are wrong or unfair. I'd also say that asking for help and trusting is more of a strength one has to develop and nurture than a sign of weakness, which is what I used to believe.

Thank you for this. You gelled several ideas I was ruminating on over my morning tea -- my aloofness and my sneaking suspicion that self-sufficiency is isolating from society at large.

I still pull over to help motorists. You've inspired me to look for more opportunities like those. :)

> Now I stop to help anyone who's broken down on the side of the road

I have a certain amount of fear about doing this sort of thing. I am ashamed of that, too.

When I was in college (this was in a small city), I was walking at night by the library and I saw someone trip and fall in front of me. I asked if they were hurt and if I could help. He hobbled up and said yes, one leg was injured, but he just needed some help to get back to his car. I helped walk him four or five blocks, supporting his shoulder. In a darker bit of street, his friend tackled me to the ground and threatened to kill me with his gun. He took my wallet, ordered me not to stir from where he pushed me under a car, and they ran off. To be explicit here, the tripping and falling was fake.

The campus police took me to the student health services; my knee was banged and slightly scraped from the tackle. I related the story to the doctor and he said, "Well, you can't stop helping people." On the other hand, the cop just said, if anything like that ever happens, I didn't have to handle it myself, just call them, they were happy to come and assist anyone who might need help on campus.

I still help others when I can, but I am always cautious about my environment and assessing the circumstances

"we tend to live pretty high up the economic value chain, which can abstract us a bit from participation in the more grassroots co-operative aspect of society."

I really don't see this as being directly true. Most sorts of interactions where we would depend on others/strangers would happen outside of a job, just like all the examples you give. Maybe there's some truth to the stereotype that us IT guys are nerds and participate in fewer IRL group hobbies, which could make your statement indirectly true. However, there's still communities build around stuff like MMORPGs, FOSS, etc where people are from different backgrounds and regions. But then again, maybe I'm the odd one out as a middle class developer with everyone making more than me.

I hitchhiked Mainland China in 2019, and it's true that you are constantly relying on the kindness of other people.

But I would argue that the type of person that does this kind of thing is very independent and thrives in an individualist environment.

After all- it's you that's inserting yourself into an environment of strangers.

When I was in China, people were bewildered as to why anyone would ever hitchhike. Whereas in America, a 5 year old knows what hitchhiking is.

I feel like this comment and the article itself together in context have kind of a sour taste for me.

Just the fact that it takes such a great effort to experience first-hand how poorer people just help each other out because nobody has money, so they help. But for a tech bro to do that they have to engage in a self-indulgent hobby and cosplay as poor like they're on Undercover Boss.

Ironically this effort to relate to other real live humans with normal incomes is only possible by indulging in the ultimate luxury, which is taking major time off of work rather than being stuck working a shit job.

This is all done with a straight face while jamming a sentence full of words like "paraglider" and "packrafting."

This whole subject is all so stereotypical tech bro in such an unappealing way.

Maybe this sounds unnecessarily bitter, but I think a valid alternate take on this is that privileged people are taking advantage of the kindness of others to get a bunch of help they don't need to help them achieve a goal that is a frivolous luxury. It's great we all get to feel warm fuzzy gratitude but it seems like the NPCs in this main character syndrome story are the people inconvenienced by the OP.

Example: asking the fire department for a place to sleep, they probably feel bad so they let OP sleep in the fire department. But as a tech startup founder and software engineer, OP could have almost certainly afforded a basic motel each night with minimal to zero planning and effort and not resorted to inconveniencing other people.

It feels a little bit like your CEO going to the food bank doesn't it? The median firefighter earns under $60k and dude who has probably outearns that salary in passive investment income is asking for a place to crash. I bet if the firefighter knew that they'd surely still be nice on the outside but they'd probably have a negative story to tell their spouse when they got home.

I completely understand that not booking a motel facilitated human connection and all that loveliness but I sense that the benefit is very one-sided. In Zuckerberg-esque style, the tech bro gets to cosplay as a human with real emotions, while on the "normie NPC" side they get to deal with a tech bro on a bicycle asking for weird shit while they're just trying to get through a shift.

I did it this way back in 2007 when I didn't even have a smartphone, you can develop an eye for it at the ground level as well. I camped 8 nights without paying once and never had an issue. The only time I had to resort to help was in suburban Cleveland area, it got dark and it was too built up to stealth camp anywhere, so I ended up stopping at the fire station and they let me camp in their yard. They are there all night anyway so they are usually fine with it.

The weirdest spot was in another suburban area, I camped behind a row of shrubs next to a cellphone tower installation haha. Wasn't the best setup but places like that usually don't get any traffic until business hours, so as long as you're in late and out early, you're fine.

Counterpoint on RV centered "campgrounds": they have sweet amenities like a grill, a pool, laundry, and often a building with some air conditioning and some books previous guests have left behind.

Not an every night kind of thing, and you're unlikely to find much in the way of grass to put a tent on, but I stayed at one with another guy who was bike touring and we get like kings for the night.

When you're digging holes in the national forest to shit in, it doesn't take much!

I’ve camped thousands of nights in nearly 70 countries this way.

What's a KOA?

I did 7,000 miles of touring in the US in 2006 without a cell phone, relying mostly on a paper Rand McNally road atlas and partially on Adventure Cycling's paper maps. I did most of the Western Express, and a good chunk of the Trans-Am between where they join and Missouri.

You are greatly overestimating the hazards associated with bike touring.

Folks are decent, and if you're on Adventure Cycling's routes, they are familiar with seeing cyclists. People offer help and stop to ask if you're ok. The route is well travelled by cars; if you passed out from heat exhaustion in the middle of the road, you'd be no more than an hour from being found, and in most places, a good deal less.

Water is pretty readily available, and most of the route passes through populated areas where you're a knock on a door away from a fillup if you're desperate. Mostly, I filled up with water at gas stations or where I camped in the evenings.

If you can ride a bike, fix a flat (you'll likely get a lot. I did), camp in a tent, and cook over a camp stove, you can do what the author of TFA did. Maybe a little/lot slower (75 miles a day is hauling ass fully loaded touring) but it's totally doable.

NB: Trek discontinued the 520 in 2023. Dozens of us are furious. The Surly Disc Trucker is well-recommended for touring, though I haven't been on one personally. Any bike that fits you with relaxed enough geometry, a long enough wheelbase, low enough gears, and the capacity to carry you and your gear will do.

I confess that I am in the camp that is inclined to say, fuck it, throw caution to the wind.

I reflect on the times in my life when I did just that and I have been amply rewarded with a life having been made just a little more worth having lived.

Seeing people holed up because of their fears makes me sad. I suppose the thing that I am most afraid of is finding out too late that I am too old to do these sort of things with the few years that I may have left in the world.

(And that goes as well to spending time with my daughters, wife, family.)

Hmm, this take seems too all-or-nothing to me. (I made a similar trip with similar prep - bought the bike a month before going.)

The first chunk of the trip is very civilized, and you can use that to build skills before you get out in rural Utah.

If you have some experience with dry-country hiking, you understand about bringing water. That's the main threat. Most of the other mishaps you can think of are just inconvenient/unpleasant - "made poor time, got stuck at dusk in the middle of nowhere with only the snacks in my panniers, and had to camp by the roadside".

The author did prep for some other gotcha's, including having safety gear and doing some physical training in advance.

2 years ago, I rode solo from Santa Fe to Seattle (about 1600 miles). The ride crossed some of the emptiest terrain in the lower 48 states of the USA. I have done several significant bike tours in the past, have travelled throughout the west in a powered vehicle and generally know how to look after myself in the wilderness.

I fully expected to face several significant sections where risks where high, notably from lack of water but also just general remoteness.

The reality was quite different. Just the distribution of gas stations meant that water supply was rarely a problem (though I did have a fancy australian 4 liter bottle on my bike and water bladder on my trailer). There was one day when I came close to running out and that was a little scary, but tiny sips and another 12 miles got me to a gas station.

But it wasn't just gas stations. There are not many places in the lower 48 where you can go 40 miles without passing some sort of human habitation if you're on a paved road. The Mojave and parts of Nevada might be an exception. I didn't need to get help from any such places, but I was always aware that I was passing by them.

In addition, sure, some of the most back- of the backroads I took got very little traffic, it was still the case that there would be at least a car every 2 hours or so.

My point is this: if you're travelling on paved roads in the lower 48, you are extremely unlikely to die from mistakes arising from unpreparedness. You might suffer a bit, but you will encounter someone who is very likely to be willing to help you.

One thing I would say, however: in years and decades past, I would never have had any hesitation riding or walking down a farm/ranch driveway if I needed water or help. News events over the last few years involving shootings of "strangers" in driveways now make me extremely reluctant to do such a thing. I contemplated this often on that ride, and if that situation had arisen, my plan was to stay on the road and make as much noise as I could before being OK'ed to cross their property line. A sad change for me, and for the country.

Author was in the middle of prepping for the NYC marathon, so they were in decent shape physically.

My fat ass would have given up before I even reached the Bay Bridge.

That reminds me: the author did not mention how they crossed the Bay Bridge. There is no cycling path from SF to EB AFAICT.

A very close friend de used to end his freshman year in Western Massachusetts by cycling home…

to Portland, Oregon.

In 1989.

So before cell phones, satellite phones, Strava, electrolyte powders, websites full of helpful tips, Google Maps…

He was likely criminally prepared and yet he says he had a great time. He mostly slept in the back yard of strangers and I vaguely recall that people offered him so much free food that for the entirety of the trip he spent about $35 and went through one giant tub of peanut butter (that he hauled with him). He got some sort of puncture-proof tires and never got a flat.

Skipping the dessert southwest helped avoid the risk of water shortage and she clearly got lucky and avoiding a variety of problems and it’s an n of 1, but it’s a data point saying one doesn’t have to plan to the nth degree.

Life is risk. Compared to journeys undertaken by those in the past, this trip had an extremely minimal chance of disaster. I mean, the guy had a satellite phone! Unless he literally crashed his bike and died on the side of the road, the worst outcome here was a big bill from emergency services when they had to come rescue him from somewhere.

I rode my bike around Lake Erie back in 2007 without even a smart phone. I didn't have a map of places to stay, I just scoped out surreptitious camping sites mostly if I didn't happen past a campground at the right time of day.

Just to be fair, Supertramps are not controversial for those very valid reasons; those reasons require thought, empathy and actual understanding of the situation they are in.

Those kinds of lifestyles generally create a knee-jerk reaction to people merely because they are different than the "normalcy". That is clear because, while some people are indeed being lucky/foolish in their endeavours (totally fine by me unless they don't directly hurt others with their choices), some other people have a pretty solid plan/foundation for being able to handle such a lifestyle and people still give them grief.

My lifestyle is far from an extreme one and I still get puzzled questions and the usual "oh, one day, you'll stop and grow up" kind of comments. Imagine if I had decided to drop everything and start cycling around the world.

Yeah, I'm always amazed what young people can get away with on the spur of the moment.

Was in Kyrgyzstan recently, and there's a popular hike that everyone does (Ala Kul). But it's HARD. And the people that do it are often not hikers. It's 3 days, but it involves a massive climb at altitude, and you have all these random backpackers attempting it because...well, that's what you do. And by and large they all seem to get through it ok.

I’ve bumped into scores of people doing the same around Africa, from Alaska to Argentina, all over Europe etc.

There are tons of people out there having great adventures!

i didn't look into different tires. my hypothesis is that most of my flats can be attributed to all the weight being on the back tire.

favorite part was jumping into extended conversations with strangers. from a scenery perspective, coming down into Lake Tahoe from Eldorado was just absolutely stunning. same when I went past Bryce Canyon.

Not OP, but I also went across America along the Northern Tier in 2023 with Schwalbe Marathon Plus's. I think I got 9 flats total, 7 of which were in Montana for some reason. I always tried to investigate and eliminate the source of the flat, but sometimes you are just repeatedly unlucky (in my experience).

After getting 4 flats in 4 days on a bike trip, I had good luck with anti-puncture kevlar tire liner tape.

It took us ten days.

I often do ultra races, always trying to be at the pointy end. I have all the training, and all the fancy equipment you could possibly imagine. Doing something of the magnitude of this article though still scares the hell out of me. Every year I watch the Transcontinental Race, and every year I say "yeah, would love to do it, but next time". I still haven't signed up.

The gear, the legs, they help with going faster. Whether or not you can finish (barring catastrophical mechanical or injury) is all in your head!

At your fitness level, you're more than capable of doing a long bikepacking trail.

The hard part isn't really fitness (for any moderately experienced biker unless your trip has a specific time or FKT goal), it's the logistics of food + shelter, the mental grind, and dealing with possible repairs.

If you haven't, check out Mat Ryder's videos on YouTube. He's newly retired guy in decent shape from jogging who buys a bike and does the GDMBR while making a bunch of videos. He shows everything and at the end talks about how much he spent and how much less he could have spent if he tried harder to be frugal. You can see how an average guy without any bikepacking experience do it. You can do it too!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3-zVwEVdJ-UbC1DT4tSG...

Yep just do it.

(Gdmbr 2022)

Section hiking on long distance trails is pretty common as well. Most people aren’t in a position to just take off and do the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail in one shot.

> https://youtu.be/8D-S8nYCwjA?si=TZfnb2qrkiZdiYU6

TIL that Pan Am was flying Airbuses!

> It takes about two weeks to totally numbify your backside.

Beat you sit-bones into submission until your pain-reporting nerves give up.. The week-and-a-half before you get there, though.. Ouch.

> https://youtu.be/8D-S8nYCwjA?si=TZfnb2qrkiZdiYU6

Quite a helmet! Cool, eclectic video. With a bit of a teleport jump between the Pecos river and NY. :-)