Hello all! Now that we have this blog up and running, I figure it's time to give an overview of this trip we've been alluding to in conversations and postcards. This is Katura typing, and I'll see if I can get Chris to chime in with his views as well once he gets home.

I'm going to structure this Frequently Asked Questions list like an interview--imagine someone from National Public Radio asking these questions in an erudite tone, if you would. (And if you have additional questions, leave them in the comments section and we'll keep the "interview" going!)

So what is this I hear about you taking a big bike trip?
--K: Well, it started out simply enough. Years back, Chris was daydreaming about riding his bicycle all the way across the country. I joked that there are a million ways to ride "cross country," and how come people don't cross the country on one of the short angles instead of going the long way? Well, that got us started thinking about what a nice ride it could be from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, here along the west coast where we already live. Then we found a book written by someone who had done that specific ride before. The more we studied it, the more excited we got. So, starting early Sept of 2007, we're going to ride our bikes from border to border, starting near Vancouver and winding up near Tijuana.

What route will you take?
--K: We've got copies of three different published versions of the Canada to Mexico ride, upon which we'll base our ride: Kirkendall & Spring's Bicycling the Pacific Coast; the Adventure Cycling Association's series of west coast route maps; and Lonely Planet's Cycling USA West Coast (which is out of print, so we photocopied all the relevant sections from the local library copy). With that as a nice solid base of information, we are then modifying the routes so we can see some places (and people) that we want to visit who aren't included on the official routes. Most of the ride will be along the Pacific coastline, though we'll detour inland in stretches where that route simply isn't safe. As Chris says, "Go to the first ocean and turn left!"


How long will the trip take?
--K: Most tour books say that the trip can be done in about 35 days. People who ride crazy fast and go 120 miles per day can do it a lot faster, but that's not our goal. We are building in time for lollygagging and sightseeing, so we're aiming for about two months on the road. We should be wrapping up in mid-November. But we don't have a deadline per say on when we have to be done--we will ride till we get to the end, or get sick of it, or until we run out of money! The approach of wet winter weather and the steadily diminishing amount of daylight will conspire to keep us moving along south at a steady pace, however.

Why now?
--K: I'm finishing up a grant-based project at the botanical garden where I work, so my job evaporates at the end of August. That also coincides with Chris completing two full years of being a professional bike mechanic. So work-wise, it's a perfect juncture to take a long vacation/sabbatical. It happens that Sept is one of the best times to do this particular ride, since tourist season has just ended (meaning traffic is less dangerous) and we should have tail-winds pushing us south (meaning we might not have to work quite so hard to travel the distance!) Big-picture-wise, we're both daydreaming of moving to the Pacific Northwest someday, so this will be a good chance to explore the area and see if we like the climate and culture enough to relocate that direction. Looking at the even bigger picture, we are at kind of a magical point in our lives: no debt, no mortgage, no children, no pets, all in all very few responsibilities. This is kind of a Peter Pan trip, celebrating the relative lack of grown-up responsibilities in our lives at this rare juncture when it's actually easy to just pack up and go on a bike ride for two months!

You two must be really good cyclists, then?
--K: [insert a nervous laugh here] I'm not a brilliant cyclist by any means. I ride my bike to work nowadays, but was recently stuck car-commuting for about a year and a half and I have some catching up to do. We do go for fun social rides around town and when we can get the time off, Chris and I have been doing longer training rides together--30 or 40 miles a day, Santa Monica-to-Pasadena sorts of things. (We'd been hoping to do more extensive training rides but have been busy packing up the apartment!) Left to my own devices and challenged to do a fancy trip, I probably would have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail rather than riding a bike coast to coast. But I'm an OK cyclist--not fast, but steady and diligent, and I have been specifically practicing carrying heavy loads up steep hills for this trip. Now, Chris has been bike-commuting for about 3 years solid and is a thing on beauty on his bike. He's even won some street races hosted by Los Locos Armadillos in Highland Park...though that might just be that he was the only <i>sober</i> person in the race!

What kind of bikes are you using?
--K: I'm riding a bike by the Electra company, a model called the Townie. (It's the 21 speed 700C model, for the detail oriented). When bike people hear this, they freak out and look at me like I'm nuts. The Townie is a "comfort bike" that is loosely based on a beach cruiser style of frame, only with the pedal placement shifted forward so it's got just a hint of recumbent bike design in it. I like it because (a) it lets me ride with an upright posture, so it's easy to keep an eye on traffic; (b) the upright posture also takes the strain off my tendonitis-prone wrists; (c) the bike is designed to rely primarily on leg muscles, not on shoulder strength, which is exactly where my muscles are strongest; (d) it has a step-through frame, which makes it really easy to mount and dismount, especially when the bike is heavily loaded with gear and therefore more difficult to handle; (e) it has a good range of gears, including a nice low one for getting up hills; (f) the long wheel-base should keep things steady for riding long distances; (g) and amazingly enough, with a simple adjustment of the seat height, my 6' 3" hubby can also ride it comfortably. Disadvantages to this bike are that it's neither super-fast nor super-lightweight; that the long wheel-base makes it a little harder to get it to fit on racks built into a bus or a train; that the upright posture makes it harder to use your arm strength to help struggle up a steep hill; and that "serious" cyclists will simply laugh me off the road for riding a freaking beach cruiser! But it works well for me, so I'm going with it. My Townie is silver with screaming yellow fenders, and we're putting on luggage racks for the front and back wheels as well as a handlebar mounted bag. I'm toying with the idea of naming it Wanda. Chris' bike is a more traditional choice for long bike tours--I'll let him explain it to you himself.

Will you be carrying a lot of stuff with you?
--K: Oh yes! We plan to save money by camping out for most of the trip. We'll be hauling tiny camping stoves, pots & pans, food & water, a tent, sleeping bags and sleeping pads, a couple changes of clothing, wet-weather gear, and so forth, all on the bikes. We'll both have saddlebags on the front and back wheels of our bikes (4 saddlebags each) plus larger equipment lashed to the top of the rear bike rack. We're not using any bike trailers.

Are you taking cameras?
--K: Indeed, our camera will be along! We also plan to practice the ancient art of journal-writing, and I intend to sketch madly in both ink and watercolor. We also hope to write postcards and blog entries as we go. There's a good chance that the haiku-muse will land on my shoulder, so I might find myself jotting endless tiny poems about fungus and redwoods into my journal.

Can I come along too?
--K: You're not the first to ask! Chris and I are thinking of this trip as a sort of "second honeymoon," and most of the way it'll just be the two of us enjoying each other's company. But we totally welcome folks who want to piggyback along short sections of the ride--in fact, we rather anticipate a bunch of people jumping on board when we hit Los Angeles and riding with us for a few days down to San Diego, for example. Drop a note if you find yourself along our route, we'd love to toodle along with you for a while as long as you don't mind that I ride slow!

Will you visit people along the way?
--K: Yes, we are hoping to stop and see friends and family and use their shower facilities with gusto. We can't yet predict exactly *when* we will roll into specific neighborhoods, nor if we'll have the time and strength to make all the social detours that we'd like to. We'll keep the blog updated with our progress so you can tell how close we are to your neighborhood, and our cell phones and email accounts will still be up and running (though we might not be able to check them as often as normal).

Aren't you scared?
--K: Hmm--not as much as you'd think. The steep mountains of Oregon are going to be a heckuva challenge, but my legs should be pretty strong once we get there. I'm going to be in the company of the most wonderful guy on the planet, and I'm quite confident that whatever challenges we run into--giant spiders, hungry bears, aggressive elephant seals, teeny little deadly-poisonous octopuses, hulking logging trucks, dwindling peanut butter supplies--will be managed quite adeptly when we work as a team. (And that they will be really funny stories to share with the grandkids!) At this point I'm just worried about getting our apartment packed up in time.

What happens when you're done with the trip?
--K: Now *that* is a good question. We will need to get jobs again, but part of the trip is meditating on *where* we want to set up our next base of operations. Stay in southern California? Move to San Francisco? Seattle? Portland? Or to some tiny island paradise off the coast of Vancouver? We are both packing resumes and keeping our minds open to see what kind of options are out there. There are open offers of employment down south that we can follow up on if we finish the trip and haven't had any career-planning breakthroughs. But we're giving up the apartment and moving everything that's not on a bike into a storage unit, so we are officially bike-nomads until we decide what the next plan is!

So you must have been following the Tour de France pretty closely, then?
--K: No, not at all, actually. Except for that thing about the dog. Neither the cyclist nor the poor puppy were hurt, amazingly, but the bike's front wheel sure folded into a pretzel! Yeesh.