(Posted by Jeremy, a.k.a. Yama)
On October 19, 2010, The Border-to-Border Ride begins.
That's when I'll start riding my bicycle down the West Coast of America, from Canada to Mexico, alongside, ahead of, and sometimes probably after three other guys, only one of whom I know:
Joe, a friend of mine who also lives here in Japan and who got me started riding; Jody, from Los Angeles, a friend of Joe's who sounds like a freak on wheels; and Tom, from Detroit, another friend of Joe's who I know nothing about.
(Tom shouldn't really be allowed to join us unless he changes his name to something with a "J." Maybe during the ride I'll just call him Jack. Or John. Or Jed. Yeah, Jed sounds good. Then again, "Three J's and a T" kind of has a cool ring to it, don't ya think? We could open up a coffee shop and... Oh, never mind.)
Jody has a particular adjective that he uses to describe our upcoming ride; he keeps saying the ride is going to be "epic." I think he's right. We only have 15 days to cover roughly 2800 kilometers (1750 miles), so we're going to have to cover roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) per day. That's no joke.
The most I've ever ridden in one day is about 185 km, with Joe in Taiwan last year around Xmas. I'll certainly break (or should I say "shatter"?) that record during this ride: There are a couple days when we plan to ride about 250 km! Yikes!
Our route will mostly hug the coast, as much as possible, and we tentatively plan to stop in such places as Lake Crescent, Washington; Tillamook, Oregon; Brookings, OR; Fort Bragg, California; Tomales; Monterey; Santa Barbara; and Oceanside.
I'm starting my ride in Vancouver, whereas the other three guys are starting at the U.S./Canada border town of Blaine, Washington. We plan to meet up at the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal at around 10:00 a.m. on the 19th, so that we can catch the 11:00 ferry to Swartz Bay.
From there, we ride south to Victoria, where we catch another ferry back to the United States (Port Angeles, Washington, to be exact).
Once we land, we'll be heading west for about 50 km (35 miles) to our first destination, Lake Crescent, which probably means we'll be riding a bit at night.
This kind of ride is a "toothbrush and credit card" ride, which means we travel really light: No sleeping bags; no tents; hardly any clothes besides what we ride in; very few luxuries, if any. We'll each basically just have a small rack bag attached to our bikes to carry our supplies. That's it.
Anyway, I'll post a few more stories before the ride gets started and I'll do my very best to write daily updates and post pictures as we go, so you can follow along nicely.
Wish us luck!
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