[soared]

Props to the author for grinding through this, but I think a very strongly worded and formatted warning is needed at the top. Embarking on this trip with so little knowledge meant putting yourself far away from civilizations while criminally underprepared.

I love the energy of Supertramps, but there is a reason they are controversial. It would be very easy to make a mistake and be in big trouble - underestimating water needs in a barren stretch, a hole in your tire (not tube) and not knowing how to fix it, etc. it’s pure luck you didn’t not over exert a small muscle or ligament locking you out of cycling during recovery.

[mauvehaus]

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.

[JKCalhoun]

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.)

[mturmon]

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.

[wyclif]

I'm a long distance hiker. As far as water filters go, the Sawyer Squeeze is a great choice. But—and this is important—do NOT get the Sawyer Mini to save weight/space. Get the full-sized one; you won't regret it. I've tried both and the Mini version simply does not have enough through flow to not be annoying over the course of a major trip.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

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.

[1024core]

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.

[18nleung]

I biked with the author from SF to Sacramento — we went up to Marin over GGB, then over the Richmond–San Rafael bridge to the EB

[1024core]

Ah OK! Thanks!

[troutwine]

It's a fun route! If you give it a shot and have a bike that fits you good you'd be amazed at how quickly you can build up fitness for cycling, heavy or not.

[fransje26]

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

Cycling is a fairly low-impact activity for your body, and is a great way to get some exercise if you are out of shape, with a fairly low risk of getting exercise-related injuries. (Compared to, say, running)

The only thing you'll really need to "train" are your "sit-bones". A good, soft-ish, wide saddle will help, as well as padded shorts. In fact, for your comfort, padded shorts are a must-have.

[kens]

There's a separated bike/pedestrian path on the Dumbarton Bridge, although that's south of SF. (When I was working at Sun Microsystems nearby, I saw the pedestrian path and randomly decided to jog over the bridge. I discovered that the bridge is a lot higher in the middle when you're jogging than when you're driving, so there was a lot of uphill.)

[petersteinberg]

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.

[zhivota]

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.

[xandrius]

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.

[dharmab]

I've done a lot of motorcycle touring and there's only a few things that concern me at all now:

1. The few remaining 100 mile stretches of no services, when extreme weather is possible.

2. Sundown towns, if you aren't white. Yes, they still exist.

3. Running out of water.

Especially nowadays, when cell phone + satellite coverage is nearly universal and affordable, you can run a phone off a small solar panel, and a credit card can fix any fuckup.

[lostlogin]

Sundown town: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

[dharmab]

Nevada had to pass a law fairly recently to ban the still-in-use practice of blaring sirens at 6PM to warn native americans to leave town.

There are still places in the west where the level of law enforcement is similar to Tatooine. Mostly in sparsely populated counties and very small towns, where attention from state governments, mainstream media and the internet is general can be avoided.

[pavel_lishin]

For what it's worth, he did carry a satellite phone. But I do agree - this felt like a wildly optimistic decision to make :P

[dkarl]

He also had experience backpacking, so he had experience managing water and preparing for weather, so I would say it was optimistic, but not dangerous (except for the danger of getting killed by a driver.)

[throwway120385]

IME drivers are by far the biggest danger on the road.

[potato3732842]

The author engaged in a cross country road trip, not a daily bicycle commute in NYC. While I would be very surprised if your assertion wasn't statistically true it likely unwise to take what is typical and blindly apply it into a situation that is a massive outlier without specific reason to do so.

[dkarl]

It's true everywhere. If you're a cyclist you would have to engage in creatively suicidal behavior to elevate any of the other risks of cycling to the same magnitude as getting randomly taken out by a driver.

[0_____0]

I have done a 3000 mile tour (Great Divide). The scariest parts were a highway section in southern colorado, and after I finished and was just biking around in El Paso, both because of cars.

It wasn't the bears or lightning or anything else, honest to god I experienced all that stuff and the scariest stuff was still people in cars.

[yunusabd]

I was wondering how it went for the author. Didn't see any mention of traffic in the article. Probably a lot of open roads, but at least in the populated areas traffic must have been a factor?

[pavel_lishin]

It seems he was following a pre-set route that's been used for ... decades, now? I'm guessing it's optimized to keep cyclists out of high-traffic areas.

[JKCalhoun]

And I consider that people have been crossing the US by bike since at least as far back as the 1970's. In over half the time since then — no satellite phone.

[cynicalpeace]

nope, you really don't need so much prep to do this type of thing. I've done these types of things multiple times and whenever I prepped too much, the experience was actually worse- heavier bags, less spontaneity, etc

[JKCalhoun]

Yep, met a guy who was dragging a whole trailer behind his already loaded bike. Another biker, seeing the setup, whispered to me, "You pack your fears."

[zhivota]

I did a bike tour way back when, I really liked using a BOB trailer. It kept the weight off the bike, so when you weren't going uphill, you almost didn't notice it was there. My bike was clean though, only water bottles on it basically.

[shaftway]

I did the same. It took a couple days to get used to it though. It would throw you off balance on turns.

[em-bee]

keeping that in mind is almost a life philosophy. but also, reducing your fears comes from experience. the more you travel, the longer you live, the more you discover things that you didn't need, if you pay attention to it.

[devilbunny]

> the more you travel, the longer you live, the more you discover things that you didn't need

Thing is, you don’t know what you need until you’ve done this. I have taken a two-week trip out of a carry-on suitcase. You will need laundry service at some point if you want to be presentable in public, but there are companies selling clothes that are designed to wash and dry quickly even with hand soap and a sink, but you have to know they exist and be able to afford a not-cheap new set of clothing.

But I have done this because I started minimalism with trips to places where I knew I could buy whatever I needed within an hour if I forgot something. Do several of those and notice what you don’t use, pulling it off the list unless it’s a rarely-used-and-important-but-not-replaceable-quickly item. Like my contact lenses, which are always a special order. I keep a few in every item of luggage I own. I carry a spare phone, because if my phone dies outside the US or Canada (as my Nexus 6P did) it’s not trivial to get a replacement with US frequencies, and with eSIMs not trivial to swap into something new while still being on my US number (needed for work). I would have to find WiFi first.

And yes, my backup phone has the apps for my service and my wife’s. As soon as I have WiFi, I can be going in ten minutes. It’s currently running a backup of my phone that I update before every trip, but I back hers up too, and while it might take an hour or two to restore and get working again, it can be done easily.

[em-bee]

you don’t know what you need until you’ve done this

well yes of course. that's the other part. you learn what you need that you didn't prepare for too. sometimes through failure.

[Fricken]

Bicycle tourists and Bikepackers generate massive amounts of online content, they can't seem to help themselves, so a great deal of knowledge and experience can be had long before any rubber has touched the open road.

[AnotherGoodName]

I'm from a part of the world where people regularly die by going for a walk unprepared (google 'tourist dies in outback' for a repeated history of such).

Having said that i cycled a fair way across Europe in my youth with nothing but a light bag, water bottle and wallet in my pocket.

So basically it depends. Yes you can get away with it in certain parts of the world but i would never argue for unpreparedness since it's way too common for people to die from lacking the basics of preparation.

[cynicalpeace]

just because you read it in the news doesn't mean it's common