The Ride
Please Help!
I made a classic mistake, and counted my chickens before they hatched. I have a client who has decided that they do not intend to pay for some 470 hours of work. My contact at this company is someone I have worked with many times over the last 15 years, and it never really occurred to me that I would run into this problem. I intended to pay for the entire ride using the money from this job, and to make that my donation to the JDRF. Well, that’s not going to happen now, at least without a protracted fight, and I am out of resources to keep the ride going.
As a ride for the JDRF, the Big Dummy Project has been successful. Every day, I meet someone who has been affected by diabetes in one form or another, and many of those people turn into blog readers and donors to the JDRF. For those reasons and many more, I don’t want this ride to end after only 1000 miles. It needs to continue. So, as hard as it is for me, I am asking for your help to keep it going. To succeed in that goal, I have set up a paypal donation system to make it easy to contribute to the ride. Please help keep the project alive. Thanks!
Update *** I’m starting in Olympia, instead of Astoria. Due to the short amount of time between bicycle delivery and departure date, I won’t be able to do the shakedown tour I had planned when the bike was due on August 27. I’m taking the opportunity to ride from here so that I will be close enough to get easy support for the first few days. That should be enough to iron out any obvious bugs. The other factor was just the trouble of transporting everything to Astoria. Might as well ride it there. : )
I’m officially starting in Olympia on September 15, 2008. I’ll be following the ACA routes, which are all well marked and mapped. Check here for more information.
I’m following the Pacific Coast Route down to San Diego for about 1580 miles. Then, I’m heading east on the Southern Tier Route, through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, a bit of Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, to St. Augustine, FL. The Southern Tier Route is 3159 miles. From there, my brother, Bill is riding with me to Key West for the final 521 miles, and a grand total in the neighborhood of 5250 miles. I have a few short side trips in mind, and I’m sure more will present themselves along the way. I think I’ll ride a few extra miles here and there. Here’s a picture of the route.
I’m hoping I can average 8mph. With photo stops and rest days, I figure 120 days should get it done. Maybe I’ll surprise myself and get the average speed up. I’ve never ridden a loaded tour before, so I really can’t say. But, I think 8mph is a reasonable guess. Maybe some of you experienced touring guys want to tell me how it really works. Thanks!