Saturday, March 24, 2012

The BIG trip

Steve and I have been planning this trip since April of 2010. I've been warning my new boss since August 2010 that I would be taking three weeks of vacation in April 2012. Who does that? When I say he was new, keep in mind that I work for the military and he is active duty. I had been in the job already for two years, he was just checking in, but I knew he would still be my boss in 2012. So, I warned him on our very first meeting.

And so, here we are, March 2012, one week away from our 19-day trip. When we first planned this, we considered going to Nova Scotia. We were a little concerned about what the weather might be. Last April, we took the family (by airline) to go skiing at Mammoth Lakes, Calif. After that trip, I said "We should ride our bikes to Mammoth to go skiing for two days and ride back. That became the new plan. It changed a couple of times, because we knew this would become a mostly interstate trip. At some point, we decided not to go all the way to California, but to just stop at my Dad's house in Colorado, then down into New Mexico where I'm from and have fun on the backroads. That was actually the plan until about a week ago. Steve's brother, who lives in California, convinced us to go ahead with the skiing in Mammoth plan.

We shipped our skis yesterday to Steve's brother. And now, we are in full plan mode. Seems like we would have had every aspect of this trip planned out, you know, having had two years to plan. Well, I've rough drafted our map. We have a few friends and family we will be staying with along the way. But because of the price of gas, when we are not staying with friends or family, we will be camping.

We are also going to try to do an Iron Butt day across Kansas on our way to Denver. What's an Iron Butt? 1000 miles within 24 hours is the Saddlesore Iron Butt ride. It has to be well documented for it to be official. We will get a certificate from the Iron Butt Association. Look it up.

I will be making blog posts as I can throughout the trip. The trip is about 6250 miles total here's what it will look like.

4 comments:

  1. That's an interesting route for this time of year, when you will ride through all kinds of weather (hot, cold, snow, rain, etc). I did the reverse last June (southern route outbound, northern for return) so will be following your trip to compare notes. Take lots of photos!

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  2. Yeah, we are working to figure out what to take: heated jacket, wind liners, Under Armour, shorts (but not for riding)...

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  3. Early April is still winter in the high elevations.
    D & E can be full on winter that early.

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  4. Have Fun and Be Safe! How exciting???? How crazy??? Excited to follow your trip. See you in a few weeks.

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