Sunday, 23 December 2012
Hints & Tips...
So you’ve
decided you want to ride across America, your wife / girlfriend has given you
permission and for odd reason you’d prefer to spend weeks on the saddle on
scorching tarmac instead of lying on a beach in South East Asia. Well it would
be only fair and generous of me to offer a few small pieces of advice. Some of
this advice will only be relevant to riding across America, other bits might be
helpful where ever you are riding. Nothing is more annoying than someone
telling you how to plan your trip, so I’m sure you’ll make some mistakes like I
did; take them on the nose, improve and write them in the recommendations
section at the end of your blog!
Maps
I didn’t buy one
until the second day, well at least for Washington State. I would strongly not
recommend that approach. One thing I must stress is that in at least the
Western part of the states all roads that go anywhere will appear on a state
map, so that’s all you really need. Any ‘county’ roads not on the map are
likely to be gravel and not going anywhere important. I was always trying to
plan around 2 to 3 days ahead with my ride. In terms of a particular type of
map I’d recommend Rand McNally it was quite a bit clearer than some of the
others. Its always worth asking in bike shops for specific bicycling maps, a
couple of states had these and these tend to show how busy each road are and
the gradients.
Of course you
might have moved into the 21st Century and got yourself a GPS. In
fact I now have one too, although there was something a little more rewarding
by navigating by paper and pen. One thing I did have however was an application
on my Android phone called ‘MapDroyd’ which lets you download maps offline
(unlike google maps). The GPS on my phone would plot me on the map for moments
when my map reading skills masked my glorious history in the Scouts.
Phones & Communications
If you read
through the earlier section of my blog, in fact right at the beginning you’ll
see the setup of keyboard, phone, batteries and chargers that I bought for the
trip. It worked well until I smashed my phone in Nebraska. I then got a tablet
and an LG phone, but technology has already moved on.. I brought my unlocked
phone over from the UK and put an ATT sim. You’ll be limited to either T-Mobile
or ATT if you want to use a European phone as the other networks use a
different mobile phone system from GSM. ATT do a good deal of unlimited calls
for $2/day and I think I got 500MB of data for $25. Most campgrounds / motels
had wifi so I didn’t ever run out of data.
My best advice
is if you are traveling overseas and need to stay in contact is to buy a Skype
phone number and then have this forward to the ATT phone. This means for $2/day
(the ATT fee) and 1p / minute (the skype charge) you can chat to people in the
UK. The only catch is they will need to call you to get routed through. It’s a
good way to spend a few hours on a quiet back road chatting to one of your good
friends whilst burning down the miles. By the way pay-as-you-go ATT wasn’t
setup in Wyoming or Idaho when I was there, so you might be on your own there.
Air Mat
Lets face it,
once you have been on the bike for hours on end one of the most important
things is being able to have a good nights sleep. I did quite a bit of research
before making my purchase. I started my camping career with a thin foam mat
before upgrading to a therm-a-rest in my teens. I have to be honest both of
these really felt like sleeping on the floor with tiny bit of padding, a big
stone would easily disturb your sleep. I found a company called Alpkit, they
make a range of sleeping mats, quite a few are like the therm-a-rest but the
make one model called the Numo:
This folds down
to a tiny size to attach to the bike and is incredibly comfortable. I cannot
recommend enough. You need to realize that you do have to blow it up (normally
takes 3 or 4 minutes).
Rims & Panniers
I learnt this
the hard way, strong wheels are good, especially when you are loading them with
lots of weight. The Jamis Bosanova I bought came with standard 32 spoke wheels,
you’ll find more expensive touring bikes come with 36 spokes per wheel, the
standard road bike will come with 32 spokes. You can cycle with 1,2, or maybe 3
spokes loose anymore then you are on the downslope towards wheel collapse. A
spoke tuner to try and keep them tight is a good idea. Anyway if you are going to
load a bike make sure you have 36 spokes where the weight is.
This brings me
on nicely to panniers. After extensive research I settled on some rear Ortlieb
panniers. Ortlieb are the gold standard of panniers from my understanding, they
are tough and very waterproof. Nobody wants their belongings getting wet. The
top of the panniers kind of roll close, I was surprised how simple the closing
system was. In addition the material is fairly tough and can take being
scratched or dropped on. The only
thing I will say is that you can’t stick stickers to them, they seem to come
straight off. I selected only rear panniers as I could get all my stuff in
them, I’m a bit intrigued when people have front and rear panniers, maybe if
you are cycling across Siberia or Africa but I’m not sure why you’d need them
across the United States. I was a bit suspicious of steering with front
panniers, I’d imagine it makes the bike less responsive – but I’m only
speculating.
One more thing
to add – Kevlar tyres. They are great – less punctures, harder wearing, worth
the money.
Blinkey
If there is only
one thing you take away as a cyclist reading this blog, I hope its this piece
of advice. Buy a blinking rear light and use it all the time, regardless if it is
dark or not. I’d recommend a specific kind of blinkey which magnifies the
flash. My favourite is now the Raleigh Astrum ( I didn’t have this during the
ride). The red flash is so bright that even the most day dreaming driver would
see you. Pam confirmed this sometime afterwards driving behind me, saying she
could see the flashing a quarter of a mile away. It must be said someone
crashing into the back of you is unlikely but I’m going to do everything to
minimize it. The fact that more people don’t have them on during the daytime
(especially when you can disappear in a dark shadow of trees) amazes me. I have
to say I felt safer on my ride when I had it turned on, this might just be a
placebo effect, it would be good to have some empirical evidence to back it up.
Anyway I suggest you ride with one.
Hotels, Camping, Coupons
Somewhere to
sleep is obviously quite important when you have been on the bike all day long.
Whilst I did have a few nights being a lone ranger engaging in wild camping;
lets be honest its nice to have a shower at the end of the day. Roughly I did 60%
in the tent, 30% in motels and then 10% at friends’ houses. One website I must
mention before going on is warmshowers, sadly I only found out about this
towards the end of my ride but basically it’s a couch surfing website for
touring cyclists. I didn’t use it but apparently its rated.
I’d recommend
when staying in hotels or campsites that you negotiate, with my key bargaining
point was that I was riding for charity. The average motel was around $40-$50
and camping was $15 a night. I was generally getting a discount of around $5
when camping and $10 in motels. Occasionally I’d be allowed to camp for free or
asked to donate the fee to charity. With hotels I had two other tactics: the
first was to find coupons in coupon magazines from gas stations usually for
motel 6 or super 8. If I was looking for something up market then I’d go for
priceline, ‘name your own price’. You select a city, a hotel rating and make an
offer at a given price. You can typically stay in a 4* hotel for half price
(you just don’t know exactly where although you can specify an area).
Be aware that
not all campsites have moved into the digital era. Some of them don’t have
websites or aren’t on google maps. There are a couple of good RV park review
websites floating about which have a pretty comprehensive listing. I also had a
few stays at KOA (kamp grounds of America), these were a mixed bag as they
could be expensive for what they were. That said my favourite camp ground was a
KOA in Wyoming.
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