
Two-thousand miles. The distance from Los Angeles, California to Charleston, West Viginia. As the crow flies.
Seems like a long ways, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s what I wanted to do. Two thousand miles. On my bike. In the course of one year.
Motorcycle? Easy. Vroom vroom and then you’re there.
No. Bike. Bicycle. Two-thousand miles. Not so easy.
I hear you saying, “Yes it is! That’s just 5.48 miles per day, every day. For a year.”
It was 2014 and I was feeling out of shape. I had been carless for a decade, but had recently gotten a car. It spoiled me. Whereas before I was biking all around town, now I was lazily using my car to go even the shortest distances.
I was out of the habit of riding most days.
So, I decided I wanted to rack up 2,000 miles on my trusty Specialized Globe Vienna 2 (similar model pictured above).
But how? What was the best way to put 2,000 miles under the tires? I wasn’t going to go cross-country because I couldn’t afford to take months off from work. I needed long distance trips, but short duration trips.
That’s when I thought: well, I’ll just go on long camping trips. I’ll ride my bike far, camp, and then have to ride all the way back.
Sounds good. But I wasn’t going to do it alone. So I recruited a friend.
At the time, I was living in California, so there was no shortage of places to go and the weather was amenable to going year round (although riding in the rain sucks big time, but we’ll get to that eventually).
I had only ever ridden my bike around town on errands or to and from work. I’d never done an overnight camping stay somewhere. Actually, I hadn’t been camping all that much at all, and usually when I did go camping I slept in my van, not in a tent.
So there were questions.
Where to go? What to bring (see bike camping essentials checklist)? How to prepare? Was weight an issue? Should I bring a tent? How was I going to sleep? In what? And on what? How (see hammock review)? How much gear was needed? Did I need a backpack (see panniers)? A map? How much water should I bring? Tools? Would my phone work in these remote state or national parks? How much should I prepare for different weather conditions? How much food to bring? What to eat? How much to eat?
And others. I had a lot of questions because this was something I had never done before and had no experience with.
I researched. I bought gear. I bought things I thought I would need and ended up never using them. I bought things I thought I wouldn’t use that I would then use each trip until they fell apart. I didn’t know what to expect that first time out and so my clothing was ridiculous, my bike too heavy, laden with too much crap. It was my first time and I didn’t know what to expect.
But a year later my bike’s odometer read: 2104 miles. Not bad.