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How to Bike America
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How to Bike America
How to Bike America
Published by Smashwords
Copyright 2014 Martin Krieg
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How to Bike America
In Memorium
Skot Paschal
A man whose humor, creativity and quick
intellect inspired countless of his students and enriched
our Mayors' Rides far beyond what we could imagine possible.
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How to Bike America
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Why TransAm
3 TransAm Mindset
4 What I Ate
5 Deprivation Training
6 The Great Pannier -Trailer Debate
7 Recumbent or Upright?
8 Training Overview (With Fall program and word on safety and tailpipe
emissions)
9 Winter Training
10 The Performance Box
(Using it to commit, achieve, and break free from your ties)
11 TransAm Road Food: How, What, Where, When
12 The Psychology of Now
13 Summer Training
14 How to Break Free from the Ties that Bind, Part One
Meditation, Visualization, Writing a Proposal for your Employer
15 How to Break Free from the Ties that Bind, Part Two
Magnetism, the Philosophy of 2nd Hand and the War Chest you will Need
16 Still Undecided?
Appendix:
The Gear you will Need
The Attitude you will Need
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How to Bike America
Introduction
Welcome!
You have volunteered yourself for a transformation of a most indelible nature. To
TransAm on a bicycle separates you from the crowd. It's an achievement that will
be with you every day of your life and will be the benchmark by which you judge
the ease or difficulty of any project which presents itself to you.
Soon, you will speak a different language and inwardly walk a different walk as
those TransAm vets amongst us know that the sky is literally the limit!!
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Why TransAM?
As you begin to talk about your proposed TransAmerica bicycle ride, the
reactions you can expect will range from supportive to discouraging. And if
you can't seem to explain why you want to cycle from one coast to the
other, some well meaning people will even try to solve that riddle for you. If
you agree with the ones who try to convince you that you want to ride a
bike across the United States simply 'because it's there', you will have
shrunk both in your eyes and theirs. Unless you want to minimize the
importance of such an accomplishment while assigning absolutely no value
to how you allot the time, energy and other resources that will be required
in order to make your all consuming trek happen, I suggest you don't
acquiesce to such words..........................
It is important, then, to know, even if only for yourself, why you feel so
drawn to make such a ride a part of your life experience. And since over
the last 32 years since my first TransAm I am still getting answers to that
question as the dividends continue to accrue, I will prepare you for that
query as well as show you what to look for once you are finally enroute.
Probably the single most important benefit one can derive from a
completed coast-to-coast bike ride is the tremendous sense of
accomplishment you will have derived from it. You will be able to look at a
map of the United States and know that you used only your own two legs to
cross it. No task will seem too big because you will know that, just like your
successful TransAm, which was not one big leap frog from one point to
another but a daily progression of advances, that any seemingly grand
success is no more than a collection of small sometimes hardly noticeable
steps that march you toward your goal.
When you realize that crossing the US is no more than making it to the next
town or park on your map on a day in day out basis, you will see that any
grand achievement is no more than somewhat small accomplishments held
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How to Bike America
together by a common thread; the Goal, the Dream, the Vision, the Unifying
Purpose. And as you kept your goal in mind, amidst all of the setbacks you
can be sure to expect (our purpose here, of course, is to minimize them
first in thought and then in deed), you will have learned a lot about the
dynamics of success -- of being able to overcome the "bad", even making it
work for you at times, in reaching your ultimate desired outcome .
Knowing all this, you will then have a base upon which you can readily
build other large accomplishments. The awareness that the hardest part of
any noteworthy achievement is in just thinking about it will become your
own inner mantra. You will know to break any large undertaking down into
it's smaller component pieces, bite sized chunks that you can handle, so
you can just begin. And in this way, as we say in the chapter entitled
"TransAm Mindset", you will really KNOW what the shoe manufacturer,
Nike, means when it says "Just do it!".
In getting to this awareness, you will have gotten to know yourself pretty
well. Within the miles and miles of the solitude of the prairies and desert
and forested back roads that will lay ahead of you, a best friend will
emerge. Yourself! And as you learn your limits together, you will learn that
the way to conquer fear (the opposite of love) is to do what you are afraid
of; to expose it with the tremendous light of the love and respect you will
have acquired for your very own you.
Your journey will teach you a lot about people and yourself as you relate to
the inhabitants of the lands along the way. Here, a tremendous opportunity
will exist for you to take any of your exchanges with such natives out into
the quiet of the open road where you can then see your part in their
success or failure. And as you do, you will see how it is really you and not
anyone else or anywhere else that makes you happy or sad in all of your
dealings in the bigger game of life.
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Taken a step further, you will learn that strangers are no more than friends
you just haven't yet met as it becomes easier and easier for you to open up
to new people. Soon, you will discover that you can influence the outcome
of your exchanges with not only those that you've not before known but all
people, whether on the road or off.
If yours is a life in the city, you will greet the proliferation of mirrors that at
first astound you upon your return not as blandishments for the ego but as
tools to remind you to keep shifting your gaze inwards. You will stop
looking to others for approval, joy or support as you realize that it all begins
and ends first with you.
And wherever it is that you end up, having then internalized the sayings,
"After we leave school, the people we meet become our textbooks" and,
"Every person met, makes you that much richer", you will welcome both
familiar and unfamiliar faces as never before. You will find yourself less
willing to take anyone for granted. Your newfound desire to overcome the
fear of the unknown will find you reaching out to others with a far higher
degree of frequency.
Time will then show you how it was the victories or the losses with the
people along your route, that will help you remember or forget the various
areas you will have passed through; that give them any charge. For
example, when I am asked what my favorite state was, I don't think about
flora and fauna but automatically begin to think about how the people of
any such territory helped me to enjoy their lands. My mind shifts into an
analysis of that region's shopkeepers, the people I met in its stores, those
who played in its parks and how the drivers of its roads treated me.
You will learn a lot about resourcefulness and the value of recycling those
things that had at one time seemed expendable. Finding that that rubber
band you saved can be used to hold your tent stakes together will be cause
for celebration. When that zip tie from your last loaf of bread effectively
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then silences a rattling bike part out in the middle of a prairie, you will know
you are on your way to assigning a different value to how you view garbage
and junk. Heck, you may even find yourself, as did I, with a new
appreciation for yard sales and flea markets once your ride is completed.
You will learn appreciation for little things. Whenever in transit, you will
celebrate a good tailwind and understand the importance of cool days
mixed in with those that are hot . A good road surface for your riding efforts,
no matter where they may be, as well as a wide shoulder will show you why
we need the National Bicycle Greenway and cause you to bubble up with
joy as never before. You will welcome the occasional downpour and see
how it is a needed component in the bigger picture of things.
Upon your return, no longer will the ringing telephone be seen as an
annoyance but as the miracle it really is. You will marvel at the
phenomenon of the postal delivery system whenever letters with your name
on them appear at your doorstep. And after all of the lukewarm bottles of
water you will have hydrated yourself with as well as the detours your trips
for food will have taken you on, you will appreciate a refrigerator filled with
your favorite food and beverage in a way you had not before known.
Water will take on new meaning for you. No longer will you take it for
granted either. You will see how it gives birth to life and the green parts of
America that were so soothing to your eyes. You will savor a cool glass of
the stuff as you find yourself in even greater awe of the modern miracle of
refrigeration.
You will find yourself looking for essence instead of style and form. In other
words, you will become more real as a new importance will be assigned to
how well the tools you will use to get through life get the job done instead of
how they may look to others. When you learn that only one extra clean
change of clothes is all you need to happily cross this great land of ours,
you will see the folly of maintaining a big wardrobe. Quickly, you will find
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that others accept and love you for who you are whether or not your clothes
are ironed or designer labeled, your hair is freshly barbered, or if the bike
you ride and the gear that outfit it don't keep pace with the latest such items
found in the bike shops or on magazine pages.
Not always having to be on the move will become a welcome relief for you.
A home base with a familiar toilet, shower and readily accessible toiletries
such as that bar of soap, tube of toothpaste and bottle of shampoo that you
don't have to rummage for will make for a most grateful heart . A
comfortable easy chair will almost seem like an extravagant indulgence
while switches for lights and plugs for other conveniences will remind you
how easy your life away from the road really is.
Your ride will also have brought you closer to nature. The smell of rain, and
prairies and deserts and forests will remind you what your real roots are.
The sound of crickets at night will remind you that life is so much more than
machines and deadlines and what the media is or isn't saying.
With regard to the media, you will have successfully extricated yourself
from its hold on you. You will have proven to yourself that America really is
filled with beautiful people who want the best for you and not the isolated
troubled ones that the television and newspapers march through our
frontrooms on a daily basis. Your ride will have shown you how much more
peaceful you are when not being continually bombarded with the problems
of the world. There is a high probability that you will come away with an
understanding of the fact that a happy you is the most important gift you
can give to this planet and that you don't need the media to continually rain
on that parade.
In minimizing the distraction that keeps you from knowing your own
thoughts, you will also learn how it is the very thoughts you think on a daily
basis that shape and form your experience of life. In 1979, for example, I
wanted to prove how tough I was, how much adversity I could withstand in
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crossing the US on a bicycle. And that is exactly how my ride showed up. I
had innumerable flats in desolate areas. I ended up on those tar and
graveled roads that left stains on my bike's undercarriage and fused my
shoestrings and shoes into one inseparable glob. I found myself so sick on
certain days that I couldn't even ride, etc.
In 1986, however, I wanted to do it differently. I am now able to see how,
just slightly beneath my conscious, I first wanted to earn the bike that Via
Cycles provided for the ride and then I wanted ease. In order to fulfill this
wish, I arranged to ride from California to Houston, as part of a "shakedown
cruise" on the loaner recumbent package they had shipped to me. In their
Texas town I would get the bike they built just for me. And sure enough, I
found a way to make my journey to Houston a worthy "shakedown" indeed.
In hindsight, I can see how the bike and trailer problems that I talk about in
my book "Awake Again" could have been avoided; how they were a direct
result of my faulty thinking. Once I then made it to Houston, having
brainwashed myself into believing that any trouble with my bike would only
occur wherever help was readily available, things changed for the better.
For example, having made up my mind that if I got flats, they would only
happen in front of bike shops when I needed to replace the tires anyway,
that is what happened. From Houston on, I worked hard to convince myself
that my ride would be one moment of magic after another. And it was.
Consistent with the spiritual teachings found in ancient books such as the
Bhagavad Gita, you will also have learned a lot about detachment.
Because you will not be able to fully savor all of the great people,
experiences or breathtaking views that will make up your ride if you want to
make it all the way, you will find it easier to just let go as you keep moving
on. Just as your ride will reinforce the notion that as certain doors close,
new ones open, this lesson really began as you started releasing people,
places and things back when you were preparing for your ride.
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Looking back you will have seen that all of those things which you gave
away or sold, even the people you said good bye to had to be released in
the faith that what you were endeavoring to do was more important. And as
you did, the challenge and excitement of what you found while enroute then
served to keep you only in the adventure of the present. You will continue
to know that you did the right thing when upon your return everything you
ever let go of is replaced by greatly improved renditions of that which you
left behind.
It is this whole process of release, of surrender, that is important if ever you
want to strike a powerful alliance with the only thing that is permanent in
the midst of it all: your true self, the spiritual being that you really are. The
pace with which change will have occurred, moving from one experience
(where you are totally immersed; seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling a
land and its people) to another, will help you understand the temporary,
ever changing nature of all that you will have encountered. And as a result,
your focus will shift away from the world and all of its illusion. You will find
that home in the greater journey called life, the place all of us are trying to
get to, is our individual highest selves where we are all just one.
Whether you know it or not, this experience of the sacred, of the
omnipresent God within, is what you are seeking and what you will be
touched by. I feel blessed to be able to share in this joy with you as bikes
keep traveling across the US, because, for all of you reading this, your ride
has already begun!
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TransAm Mindset
Enjoying, or for that matter, just completing a bicycle ride from one coast to
the other requires a strong mind and a positive attitude. If you lack either
quality coming in, you can expect to fail unless you develop these attributes
as you go, especially as you deal with the people that will be an inevitable
and crucially important part of your ride.
Transecting the continent is also an opportunity to learn about the inner
workings of success as they apply to any endeavor because that is what a
completed coast-to-coast bike ride will have taught you. So, now that I've
given you a limited overview of the kind of person you will need to be (if
you're not already), let's see what's required in order for you to show up
that way when you begin your ride.
Because the challenge of making a TransAm bike crossing will likely
produce an audience of instant naysayers, getting and then staying positive
and mentally strong are a lot more difficult than you would first allow
yourself to think. Sprinkled through out the chapters ahead, then, I will also
suggest books that you can use to ward off the negativity of the world. In
addition, in learning to be able to overcome the disapproving tone that such
contradictory people and their words can avail, we, as TransAm cyclists
and Greenway builders (really, everyone in a perfect world) need to be on a
PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) program. It's just not enough to say, 'think
positive' because my every achievement, for example, has shown me that
keeping one's 'chin up'; staying upbeat in difficult situations, is a very
tenuous science -- a most tedious balancing act. As a path, it is all too easy
to fall off of if we don't know how to protect the steps we take along its way.
If you're wondering why being positive is such an important part of
TransAm success, here are a few examples. You will need to have the right
attitude when it's approaching dusk and the next campground is still ten
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miles away, you're tired and you've been ready for a shower for the last few
hours. And then when you finally get to that shower, you find out there is no
hot water left. Or when you get a flat tire on a mountain pass, it's boiling
hot, the flies are biting your arms as you mend the puncture and you still
have 3,000 feet of climbing before you even reach the summit. Or when a
motorist (Tip: never trust a car driver for road condition or mileage) gives
you directions for a road that is filled with one rolling wall (read steep hills)
after another where you had been led to believe there was only a small
amount of climbing and your destination was 'just a little ways down the
road'.
Be forewarned that a bike ride across the US is filled with surprises like
these. No matter how experienced you are, you can always expect the
unexpected. Our purpose, here, however, is to help you ward off a lot of the
faux pas that you otherwise would have made while making you better
prepared for ones that will still show up.
Success teachers in every field of endeavor long have coached the
importance of repetition in cultivating the correct attitude for the task at
hand. This principle has its basis at the very root of thought itself, our
subconscious. In making our base thought forms work for us as they relate
to a successful TransAm crossing, then, we can make use of a simple, yet
powerful tool that won't let us forget this new mindset we are trying to
develop: Affirmations. Here are some examples:
Do it Now
I ride strong, confident and with purpose
Expect the Best
Look for Good
I always make my mistakes work for me
I Laugh at Myself
I am getting stronger and more fit every day
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I suggest that you take some of these sample pronouncements and
conspicuously locate them in areas that regularly get your attention such as
on light switches, handlebars, mirrors, refrigerator doors, computer
monitors, etc. Make up your own for whatever mountains you may need to
climb in your own life whether on the bike or off. Designing your own is
easy. Just follow these guidelines: Never state what you don't what to
happen -- state what you want to happen in positive terms. Keep them
short and always write them in first person. Put them on little slips of paper
that will be big enough to get your attention and yet small enough so that
they are not intrusive.
I hope you can see by now that in developing a proper mental attitude, the
only difference between successful people and those who do not make it to
the winner's circle is that those who come away victorious simply did what
unsuccessful people didn't want to do. Unsuccessful would be TransAm
cyclists, for example, pack it in after two or three days of headwinds where
their road speed never climbs above ten miles an hour. Those who reach
the other side of the continent, however, expect the next day to be a better
one or the one after that, etc, until things do change for the better. They
always know to take the bad with the good.
There are as many excuses for a failed TransAm as there are successes in
this undertaking. When asked the question "How bad did you want it?", one
can see that there is no one to blame but oneself if failure should result.
Any finger pointing, then, when honestly scrutinized always brings one
back to mindset and thought forms.
Winners in this game know always to "Press on" in the face of adversity.
They know the truth of Calvin Coolidge's famous words:
Press ON
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Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not: Nothing is more common
than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will Not; Unrewarded Genius is almost a Proverb.
Education will Not; The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and Determination
Alone are Omnipotent
One issue that many of us will have to overcome in getting to the starting
line for any long distance trek we may envision is fear. Even now, many of
you are still bombarded with doubt. Can I do it? What would happen if my
body just said no more? What will my friends think? My co-workers? My
Family? What about a job when I come back? Will I be able to find one
upon my return? Will they keep my existing one open for me? What If I
didn't train enough? Will I have enough money? How can I create the time,
the money (we will talk about this last issue in a later chapter)? Etc, etc,
etc........
If this describes you, brainwash yourself with the following affirmations:
Do what you're afraid of and the fear will be overcome.
Nike, the shoe manufacturer, says it differently:
Just Do It!!
Either phrase, when made a habit knit part of your life, will turn you into a
mountain mover beyond compare.
In moving beyond the crippling indecision of fear, one can also expect any
journey of this magnitude to bring one closer to his or her True Self. As an
inquisition, then, most any long distance bike tour will teach you to become
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your own best friend. It will teach you to learn how to trust yourself - to be
able to count on yourself, to know what you're capable of and what your
limits are. In so doing, you will learn that your deepest inner self comes
from the one place that is shared by all, that of the God/Goddess that all of
us are. And as our TransAm shows you that we are all Creator Gods,
spiritual beings merely having a human or physical experience,
TransAming the US will give you a working understanding of the famous
words Nelson Mandella borrowed from Marianne Williamson:
Our Deepest Fear
(Marianne Williamson in a "Return to Love")
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and
fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure about you.
We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
If you're not hamstrung by fear, even if you really do know yourself, and
you still are not sure if our ride makes sense for you, maybe your level of
commitment needs to be examined. An inability to commit (perhaps not just
to our ride but anything for that matter) is another stumbling block which
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undermines many a would be TransAm cyclist. If your level of commitment
lacks the fire it will need, then, here are RR Murray's words that powered
me into my last 1986 crossing. You might try posting them in a place where
you will see them regularly:
UNTIL ONE IS COMMITTED, THERE IS HESITANCY
THE CHANCE TO DRAW BACK, ALWAYS INEFFECTIVENESS.
CONCERNING ALL ACTS OF INITIATIVE AND CREATION,
THERE IS ONE ELEMENTARY TRUTH,
THE IGNORANCE OF WHICH KILLS
COUNTLESS IDEAS AND PLANS:
THAT THE MOMENT ONE
DEFINITELY COMMITS ONESELF,
THEN PROVIDENCE MOVES TOO.
ALL SORTS OF THINGS OCCUR
TO HELP ONE THAT WOULD OTHERWISE
NEVER HAVE OCCURRED.
A WHOLE STREAM OF EVENTS
ISSUES FROM THE DECISION,
RAISING IN ONE'S FAVOR
ALL MANNER OF UNFORESEEN INCIDENTS
AND MEETINGS AND MATERIAL ASSISTANCE,
WHICH NO MAN COULD HAVE DREAMT
WOULD HAVE COME HIS WAY.
I HAVE LEARNED A DEEP RESPECT
FOR ONE OF GOETHE'S COUPLETS:
WHATEVER YOU CAN DO,
OR DREAM YOU CAN,
BEGIN IT.
BOLDNESS HAS GENIUS,
POWER
and
MAGIC
IN IT.
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And once I finally hit the road, the tricks my mind had fun playing on me, all
melted into the road never to be considered ever again. I now understand
the meaning of:
Do the thing and your will have the power!
And you will too!
I hope, by now, you have no doubt that you're 'gonna make your TransAm
happen and you're 'gonna make it happen Strong!!!
A Few Recommended Attitude Books:
"How to Win Friends and Influence People", Dale Carnegie
"Success through a Positive Mental Attitude", W. Clement Stone
"Real Magic", Wayne Dyer
"How to Manifest your Destiny", Wayne Dyer
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What I Ate
In 1979 I did my first TransAm on an upright bicycle. On that ride I did just
about everything one could do wrong in the interest of acid testing all the
known (which there were few at the time) and unknown axioms about
cross-country cycling. One of the most dramatic improvements I made
(besides riding a recumbent) on my second crossing, was how I nourished
myself.
In the 7 years between those two rides, I learned a lot about food. So much
so on my second ride, in fact, that even though the route I chose was
nearly one third longer, I towed a hundred pounds more gear, had hit my
early 30's and had a much more rigorous schedule with my public speaking
and the articles I wrote from the road, I cycled and played strong on a
consistent predictable basis. That, of course, couldn't be said about my first
ride, when my moods were all over the map, thus altering my performance,
It was also in ’79 that I relied on the sheer forces of will to ride through
many a stomach flu and even experienced several days of down time
because I finally listened enough to my body to know that it couldn't take
any more.
As such then, if we want to go beyond just getting through a day, to
demanding TransAm performance from ourselves, we will need to exercise
special care in how we nourish ourselves. If your are still not convinced this
is so, consider a race car. Such a vehicle cannot come out to the track and
expect success if it has been fed a diet of second rate gasolines which we
know will leave deposits in its carburetor (heart), gas tank (stomach) and
fuel lines (arteries/veins) that slow the passage of fuel to the combustion
chamber (muscles). With that in mind, in your regular practice of life, long
before you head off on that century or tour, eat as simply as you can. In a
perfect world, an example of eating as close to nature as possible (eating
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simply and organically) would be the third world diet of rice, beans and
vegetables 1.
On your daily rides, (See Chapter 11 "TransAm Road Food: How, What,
Where, When", for a more complete discussion for once you do hit the long
distance road), you will do well to get in the habit of avoiding refined sugar.
Stay away from such quick burn fuels as donuts and candy bars. Replace
them with nuts, raisins or carefully selected energy bars (see my
suggestions at the end of chapter 11 as most of the commonly available
energy bars are tainted with some of the more dangerous sugars such as
high fructose corn sweetener). By eating right on a daily basis, you won't
need the sodas, other sugar waters and many of the simple sugar energy
bars and liquids on the market today to excite you to the winner’s circle
once you do hit the road. A person putting the proper fuels in their body
before, during and after their rides, doesn't "bonk" or "hit a wall", nor do
they need sugar food or drink, to power through obstacles, they just ride
and ride.
An analogy might help illustrate the problem with simple sugars. If you walk
into a cold house and try to heat it with a wad of newspapers, what do you
get? A lot of flash, tremendous heat and then what a few minutes later?
Nothing, except a room that feels colder because the intense heat sucked
in the outside cold air through every crack and hole it could find to fuel the
fire.
If instead you walk into that same cold room and start a log to burn you get
a fire that burns slow and steady and clean. And it burns for a long time.
The body is the same way. Feed it foodstuffs laced with simple sugars and
you can expect short-term power that leaches reserves from those parts of
your body that are not even being used. Feed it slower burning fuels in your
daily meals such as vegetables, fish, organically grown poultry, beans,
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miso seaweed soups and the whole grains (which form the basis of a diet
that is going mainstream) you can buy in bulk at a health food store like
rice, buckwheat and millet and it will reward you with great endurance and
unwavering performance when you do begin your ride.
As you shop for the simpler foods you will need, you must also read labels.
This is so because the number one energy thief, simple sugar (also called
sucrose, dextrose, corn syrup, maltose, glucose, saccharine, sorbitol,
Sucanat, Nutrisweet, high fructose corn syrup, etc.) is also a preservative.
And it seems to find its way into everything from bread to ketchup to certain
brands of nuts and many "natural" jams and jellies. Be also forewarned that
honey and dehydrated cane juice are simple sweeteners that place your
body in unnecessary overdrive.
Worthy sugar substitutes include:
Xylitol recommended by dentists of which Lo Han sweetener is a good
source
Stevia extract
Agave nectar
Barley Malt
Brown rice syrup
Fruit juice sweetener
Occasional
-
Molasses
Pure maple syrup (not the formulated kind)
Maltitol (don’t overdue as can cause diarrhea)
Since this whole topic is confused by the marketing forces of this world (the
word “natural’, as it applies to food packaging, for example, does not mean
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that sugar has not been added to the product in question or that is
organic) you will need to do lots of homework to know what really is right
for your body in the way of sound nutrition. To get a good understanding of
the basics, when to eat, what not to eat and why, etc,I heartily recommend
books about Macrobiotic nutrition. As well, it will serve you to learn about
the perils of sugar. A powerful book, once a best seller and now considered
a classic, that speaks to this is "Sugar Blues" by William Dufty.
Having been Car Free since 1989, instead of having to train many weeks or
months for a long distance ride, my body now always feels conditioned for
the long distance road. So much so that I’ll get out and occasionally roll the
big miles without doing any advance preparation. Staying keen in such a
way, however, requires more than just my hundred plus miles a week bike
to live habit. I am very conscious about diet. My disciplined (discipline gives
me freedom) weight lifting practice, not to mention the daily yoga or the
dance that I also regularly engage in, demand that I be even more careful
about how I nourish myself..
And it has been pushing the physical envelope in this way that once forced
me to begin taking vitamins when my long time vegan version of the
Macrobiotic diet forced me into a meltdown. The lack of bio available
protein in my ever higher concentrations of seaweed, soy products and
other legumes, and grains had left me with arthritic elbow and shoulder
joints. Finally, however, I discovered that instead of spending a hundred
dollars a month on supplements, that animal proteins such as eggs, fish,
whole organic milk and the occasional range fed chicken made my body
whole once again.
With the exception of milk, these are suggested as occasional foods in the
macrobiotic diet, but I have found that when you are pushing the body to
perform at higher and higher levels, one needs to increase their frequency
and amount. However even those augmentations started to lose their
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effectiveness over time. The fact that this was due to our depleted and
compromised planet made sense to me. I knew however there was a work
around. So I kept looking for answers as I prepared to take the Eagle
across America, Fortunately my prayers were answered when I discovered
Sunfood. And talk about rocket fuel.
A company begun by David Wollfe, the nation's leading voice in the field of
super nutrition, Sunfood's products are rewriting the rule-book about our
understanding of nutrition. And as such, they are now being discovered by
those athletes looking for an edge. And as I use their products, it is
through Sunfood that I am also constantly learning about new power foods
On the training rides I did for my 2011 ride I hydrated myself with a
powdered drink mix they make called Sun is Shining. A specially
formulated seaweed mix, it not only quenched my thirst but it supplied the
electrolytes that the sun leached from my body. It was by not replacing
them that my urine had blood in it when i cycled the deserts of Nevada and
the Bonneville Salt Flats on the Eagle in 2009.
In addition to what I drank while on the bike, I began my day the same way
I ended it - with delicious superfood shakes. And because they tasted so
great and reenergized me so much, I drank them mostly with Sunfood
supplied ingredients as much as i could. To make them, I added:
- Maca powder - from the Andes, this is an amazing adaptogen that
increases energy, endurance, physical strength and
oxygen in the blood along with a slew of other benefits.
- Kelp Flakes (I get mine from Maine Coast Sea Vegetables), like cacao,
they are extraordinarily rich in minerals, They also contain an abundance of
iron, calcium, iodine, vitamin B6, riboflavin and dietary fiber.
- Goji Berries (which I soaked the night before) are another adaptogen that
I wish I had known about when I undertook the deserts of 2009, I mean,
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besides the fact that they help to keep the body hydrated, the enhanced
stamina and strength they engender are just a few of their many health
improving by products.
- Royal Jelly, an original super food
- Cacao Powder was once so revered by the ancient Mayan and Aztec
civilizations for its power as a food that it was used instead of gold as
money. What is important to understand is that as raw chocolate in its
purest form, it does not have an acceptable taste on its own. Toward that
end, most of the chocolate most Americans consume is cooked and so
processed and so covered up with sugars and other taste enhancers that
its many benefits are negated.
While cacao may not have specific performance enhancing properties like
some of the others foods I mixed it with, it, when viewed as a food, in its
raw form, it is loaded with vital nutrients. It is the highest natural source of
iron, magnesium and chromium. This not to mention that it has the highest
concentration of antioxidants of any food in the world. In addition, it is the
only food that contains the endorphin Anandamide that relaxes the body
after exercise. As such, it was my nightly RAW chocolate bar that rewarded
me well for some of the punishment I pushed myself through. This can be
further illustrated by the fact that for 40 years, starting in the 1930’s, heart
attack sufferers were injected with theobromine, the smooth muscle
relaxant found in chocolate that also dilates blood vessels.
To get all the benefits above, while I can use fruit juice and the Royal Jelly
to neutralize the taste of the cacao and maca, I add cocoanut juice and
bananas to fully supercharge a drink that actually keeps me from thinking
about what I can eat next for hours.
As the anti oxidant that it is, the coconut juice complimented the Sun is
Shining I drank when I cycled so well that I operated at full throttle the
whole way. Another super food, about which many researchers are singing
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the praise, cocoanut's benefits are many. Possibly the king of the
superfoods, its juice is so close to human blood plasma that World War iI
jungle doctors used it to make emergency blood transfusions.
In sum, to show you how powerful my smoothies were, here is the blog
entry I made in April 2010:
I just completed probably one of the briskest 25 mile training rides I have
ever done on this very physically demanding Eagle HiWheel bicycle, and I
feel excellent. Almost full throttle the whole way, I was trying to burn down
the Sunfood super shake that had me so filled to the gills. And here now
almost four hours later, after a very demanding ride, I still feel full!!
Before I went out today, Sunfood nutritional consultant, Eric Pasimio, spent
a worthy amount of time going over all the products he had sent me to
start working with. He gave me a sample recipe for the shake I still need a
blender for. I stirred the concoction he recommended, sans the cashews
and goji berries, all up by hand and drank it down. Too delicious and yes I
was full. But I did not feel the jolt of energy after I also ate the nuts and
berries on the side I was half expecting..
But you know what? The full stomach never went away. Even now, I don't
feel hungry for anything. And for those of us who roll the big miles (25 on
the Eagle is easily like 50 on a road bike) that is unusual indeed!! And if this
keeps up, which I know it will, you are going to see an Eagle HiWheel ride
across America that will set records never likely to be broken. WoW
Soon, as I better dial in the recipe at hand, I will be better able to tell you
how I am using the Cacao powders, butters and oils as well as the Maca
powders, their Sun is Shining sea vegetable drink, the mesquite, and etc,
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that Amy & Brian's coconut juice is holding together, as I snacked on Maine
Coast Sea Vegetables dulses and tasty Kelp Krunch bars to set the stage
for the Sunfood miracle I feel I am about to experience!!
Yahooo!!
Reference: "Super Foods" by David Wolfe
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How to Bike America
Deprivation Training
The deprivation training that I will describe in the words ahead is really your
key to self empowerment. It is an exercise that will not only teach you how
to keep all of your energy focused on the goal, but it will provide you with a
visualization tool that is very active. Just as the astronauts who first walked
on the moon, exclaimed as they did so that it 'was just like drill', deprivation
training will make the long distance bike road seem like a very familiar one
to you. It will prepare you so well that you will then find yourself looking for
ways to engineer similar practice sessions into any of those other
seemingly indomitable big projects that will appear before you.
Once you finally hit the road and leave all the comforts of home behind,
then, unless you prepared yourself to be able to make do with less, as this
chapter will teach you, the beginning part of your ride will likely be fraught
with much discomfort. It is those who fail to complete a TransAm trek who
can often trace their failure back to an inability to adjust to this initial shake
down period. Here in the western world, whether you are from North
America, Australia, New Zealand or Europe, there are so many comforts
that surround our lives that we may have a hard time knowing where our
basic needs end and where the conveniences of modern day living begin.
So, instead of taking a cold turkey approach to TransAm cycling to find this
out, I have found that deprivation training can make all of your moments on
the road ones of joy.
Most of the self-imposed denial I will talk about can wait until the last few
months or weeks before you begin your ride. I'm bringing this up now,
however, for several reasons. First off you need to know that a completed
coast-to-coast is not like a succession of bike rides to the corner store. You
cannot expect the comforts of home to greet you at the beginning or end of
your daily journeys.
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In addition, we will, right up front, need to show you that biking from coast
to coast is far more than how far you can ride a bike in any given day or
how many century rides you may have completed. It is about getting into a
groove, pacing yourself while regularly making do with less until you don't
notice that anything is even missing. When you reach that point, everything
about your ride will be filled with the joy of true adventure.
In preparing for your ride, as you are enduring the self inflicted "hardship"
that I am proposing here, it is important to understand that you must see it
all as a game. A game that you can opt out of or lower the threshold of pain
for at any point. It is also important to see all of this as no more than play
because of the power of visualization. If you invest too much of your
emotion and life force in the drama of some of the fun little exercises I will
suggest that you engage yourself in, they could trigger the fear button. And
one is extremely magnetic to all of that which he or she fears. So like the
game of life, be sure to make this game of deprivation training one of play.
Since it is also my desire to outfit you with the mental tools you will need to
play our game, it is as important to know what you don't need to make your
TransAm a success as what you do. So, as your ride becomes imminent, I
suggest that you come back to this chapter and put the suggestions it
makes into immediate practice.
Sleep on the Floor:
Unless you are an experienced camper, one of the first adjustments you
will have to make is sleeping on the ground. In a sleeping bag. You may
even find yourself looking for ways to cushion the surface upon which you
sleep. Here your options are limited to a Thermorest Pad. There will be
those who take the time to use whatever remaining amounts of energy they
have at the end of a day to blow up an air mattress in their quest to
replicate home in whatever way they can. In time, however, such comfort
devices will often become one more thing in the way as these cycle tourists
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find they are so tired at the end of a day that anywhere becomes a
welcome place to rest one’s body for the night.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are those cross country cyclists
who may have a hard time getting to sleep no matter how tired they are
because they just can't get comfortable outside of a real bed. As they toss
and turn for the first few days or weeks of their ride, inside they dread the
following day's riding. And as a result, they spend most of the first part of
their ride feeling deprived of sleep.
If you don't want to suffer from lost sleep in the ways I have shown, I
recommend that you start sleeping on the floor. In your sleeping bag. At
home. Don't, however, wait until the last few days before your ride is set to
begin. Since you will want to be well rested for your final departure, and will
want to sleep in a bed the last few nights before you leave, I recommend
you do so every other week over the last few months before you depart
with a succession of nights on the floor in the last few days before you then
take off.
Cold Showers:
Because a hot shower can sometimes become an endangered commodity,
I suggest you at least finish the warm ones you take at home with cooler
and cooler water for more and more of the time. Besides being healthier for
you, this will help to temper the level of what you can expect from this part
of your personal hygiene program. You will also want to take them quicker
and in the evening hours.
This last thought is so because you will want to get as many miles as you
can, especially in more urban areas, before the cars and the sun get out on
the road with you. You will also want to condition yourself to stop thinking of
the shower as a meditation or place to relax. Because there will be so
much to do in the remaining hours of light after you get off your bike each
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day, you will need to learn to get yourself quickly clean so you can move on
to the next thing. Viewing the shower as a work station in the way I am
proposing will also have readied you for the many different showers you will
be using on your ride as well as the different levels of warm water you can
come to expect from them.
Cook on your camp stove
It is helpful to get used to eating more simply in preparation for your
TransAm a few weeks before you begin. One of the ways you can do this is
to start preparing your meals on a campstove. Breakfasts as simple as a
bowl of oatmeal where all you have to do is heat up the water and pour in
the contents of a small bag can get you used to such road food in the
morning. A can of beans when heated up, along with a few slices of good
healthy bread can make for a great evening meal in this way as well.
The Toaster
I know one TransAm vet who when asked what she missed most about
home when she was on her ride answered with one word. Toast. If you're
someone who makes much use of the toaster, you may want to give up
your warm bread fix for the last few weeks before you begin.
Living out of a bag
Get used to it. Whether sag wagons carry your items for you or you do, you
will still have to get used to doing your life out of bags. There will be totes in
which you stuff your sleeping bag, satchels for the tent you will be using,
even little purses for your toiletries and other personal care items.
Everything you will come to know your very existence as will all be
containerized in this way. Even your on the bike needs will all be fulfilled
out of a bag.
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Cameras, address books, sunglasses, sun screens and snack food items
will be stored away for quick access in the bike's glovebox, your handlebar
bag.If yours is a sag supported ride, you may not want to be dependent on
the base camp once you are actually rolling into your day, so a windbreaker
or a sweater and a few basic bike repair tools might find their way into the
rear panniers you may decide to bring along.
No matter how you do your TransAm, living out of a bag requires some
adjustment. No longer will you be able to leave certain items laying around
for your next day's use. And even if having small children already forces
you to keep certain items out of sight, you still won't be able to return them
to their familiar hiding spots. Not at all. Your new bag life will require an
even more heightened presence of mind - an awareness that often doesn't
become second nature until your ride is almost done. That toothbrush and
toothpaste that you used after a meal suddenly doesn't just perfunctorily go
back into a familiar cabinet or drawer. Not at all. Since a competent
TransAm'er is always thinking a few steps ahead, you must think about
where these items will go in and amongst all your other gear so you can
access them easily the next time you need them.
Car Free and Ride Lots
When aspiring bike racers used to ask the legendary bicycle racer, Eddy
Mercyx, how to perfect their craft, he answered with two words, "Ride Lots".
While how long it takes you to complete your daily ride should be of no
consequence, his advice can help to make your TransAm a much more
effective and enjoyable one. How do I do that you ask when there are the
realities of your work world schedule, or how you need to dress and look, or
after the job errands to run, or inclement weather, or those long distances
you need to cover, or a whole litany of other "valid" excuses you can
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make? The answer is simple, substitute as many of your car trips for bike
trips as you can.
Don't just always do so only when it's easy, convenient or when the
weather is perfect for biking. Pay particular attention to those times when
the going appears hard because as I'll repeat over and over again
throughout this chapter (and book), it is better to have overtrained than not
to have trained enough. For example, if you've got to be somewhere where
you must look nice and it is windy and cold outside after you took the time
to pack the clothes you will wear the night before and you just get out and
make your ride a reality, this little victory will help you on your bike tour.
Whether it's insufferable wind, mile high mountain passes or the miles and
miles of desolate desert and sage brush that will likely appear before you
on a few parts of your TransAm, you will have a working knowledge of the
fact that the hardest part of any such challenge is just in thinking about it.
You may even consider going car free, if not all the way, at least in the last
month or two before you leave. In the paragraph before the last one, I put
quote marks around the word 'valid' because every one of your excuses is
a lifestyle choice centered around the automobile and not the bicycle. While
it may take time to make the needed adjustments that will be required for
you to do without your car such as moving closer to your work and/or
relying more heavily on faxes, computers and parcel post ("How to Become
More Car Free"), you will have to learn to instantly make do without a car
when you do begin your TransAm. So if you want to circumvent such cold
turkey trauma, try to get as car free as possible.
It is this lifestyle that will teach you how to consolidate trips. Because it is
your legs and not the remains of old dinosaurs that fuel your travel when on
two wheels, you will not make the same kinds of frivolous trips that are
more easily made in a car. When using your own energy, you will begin to
think each trip through in advance as you decide what you can and can't do
without buying, seeing or doing. Training yourself in this way will make it
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easier to resist the temptation of any detour that could lead you away from
your goal.
As the experienced cyclist you will soon become, if your are not one
already, you will know that just as what goes up must come down, that
which leaves must come back whenever going for a bike ride. And
whatever sight, activity or purchase you may want to enjoy has the
consequence of your not only having to get there but your then having to
return from wherever it was that you went. It is this energy that you will
want to minimize as you keep yourself focused and hungry only for the goal
of completing your TransAm ride.
Stop that Air Conditioner
Unlike in your car, as long as you keep moving on a bicycle, you will not be
uncomfortable because of the heat. It is when you stop on hot days,
however, that everything from the flies and mosquitoes and oftentimes
insufferable warmth will make you long for the safety of a cool air
conditioned room. There are ways around this problem. Obviously don't
stop as much during the heat of the day. and when you do stop, try to make
such periods of off road activity brief. But there will be times when you will
have to or want to bring your efforts to a halt.
If your bike breaks down or there are sights you want to see (along the
way, of course) and you haven't prepared yourself to be able to do either in
the absence of a climate controlled environment, your entire experience will
likely be a miserable one. Because such temperatures will also often
continue into the early evening hours when you are setting up camp, one
way to increase your comfort factor before you get out on the open road is
to conduct less and less of your life in air conditioned climates as your ride
date approaches. This includes your car, if you happen to drive and the
house you live in. If your home is shared by others, just spending more
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time outdoors, and sleeping in your backyard or on a balcony or deck can
help you accomplish this.
Watches and Calendars
When you begin your TransAm, in order to get used to the helter skelter
way in which time will seem to pass, sometimes slow, sometimes fast and
never predictable, you will need to make some adjustments. Gone will be
the very signs which before structured your day as you leave behind traffic
jams, coffee breaks, and the crowds busying about for lunch breaks and
then the drive home. You will be on nature's own time clock. You will find
yourself paying more attention to how high the sun sits in the suddenly
massive sky and how long the shadows are that stand in its way.
Before long, you won't even know what day of the week it is. Nor will you
need to unless you are near an urban center (in such a case, rush hour
traffic and the location of nearby recreational lakes and parks which
generate increased road use during the late morning and afternoon
weekend hours are important to be aware of so you can plan your riding
around them). So, to prepare yourself for the time warp you will find
yourself entering on your ride, I suggest that you stop wearing a watch or
carrying around a daily planner. It is in this way that you will learn to have
more of your life in present time; to be in the now, to savor as much of the
now as you possibly can.
In this way, for example, you will have taught yourself to more fully breathe
in the tree covered mountain ascents and awe inspiring vistas that will soon
greet you. Instead of only seeing such climbing as the work required to get
you to the very short term reward, the descent, you will pay less and less
attention to how long it is taking you to get to your destination as you just
let the riding envelop you. You will be less mindful of how others are doing
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the ride, if you are part of a group, as you also make it more of a daily on
the road meditation.
A Different Approach to Hygiene
Because life on the road is so different from the daily routine of any life that
is based out of a home, you won't be able to keep yourself as squeaky
clean as you may have before become accustomed to. In fact, you can
expect yourself to feel a little dirtier by comparison. You don't have to be a
soiled, smelly mess but you can't expect to feel as though you always just
climbed out of your morning shower. In fact you may even find yourself
wearing what used to be yesterday's laundry more than you can believe.
If the thought of putting on the same biking attire more than once is
appalling, learn how to handwash. To see whether you want to go through
the daily effort of having clean cycling wear each and every day, after all of
your future training rides, don't just get into the habit of tossing your riding
wear in the hamper, but wash each article by hand in the kitchen sink.
Since you will need to bring an extra change of clothes with you out on the
open road, you can then make your bike a mobile clothes line by bungie
cording your wet wear onto the rear rack until it dries out as you roll into
your day.
Men might want to not shave on weekends of the last month before they
take off just so they can see what it feels like to enter a day as less than
perfect. Women on the other hand might want to follow the same routine for
make-up. In both cases, both sexes might want to think about giving up
such activities once they are actually in transit. Men might want to just grow
beards and women might want to leave their cosmetics behind.
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Start thinking of toilet paper as a necessity instead of a luxury. There will be
moments on the road where bathrooms will not be anywhere to be found
and as you relieve yourself in nature, how you will wipe yourself then
becomes a concern of the utmost importance. It is here that a leaf (make
sure it's not poisonous) can do the job. But most of you will have thought
far enough ahead to bring along, a few toilet tissues. So, in the case of the
paper, since you will want to leave as little of it as you can behind, teach
yourself to make do with less of the stuff while you are still at home.
Don't just unconsciously pull two feet of paper off the roll, try instead to use
half of whatever you used to use. See how little you make can do with.
Since effectively cycling the US is always an exercise in being conscious of
the economy of every movement you make, even something as basic as
wiping yourself needs to be scrutinized in just such a way.
You will also need to get used to basing much of your hygiene efforts out of
one towel. If after a shower or bath, you need to dry yourself with a freshly
washed drying mechanism, do a rethink on that "need" as well. Make
yourself instead reuse the same towel as many times as you can. In the
last few weeks before you take off, you might even pretend you're already
on the road by hand washing it once the smell then goes bad.
Kill Your TV Set!!
If you can't begin or end your day without the daily news, if you like to have
the TV on for background noise or if sports, old movies or certain sitcoms
have acquired a hold on you, you may consider watching as little TV as you
can in preparation for the almost total quiet of the TransAm road. As you
pedal across the US, it is in the silence that you will get to know yourself
pretty well. And as the Greenway builders that all of us are, the job of
selling the world on our vision of a safe, interconnected two-wheel America
means feeling good about ourselves. Since we will want to remove the
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chatter of the world from our thinking in order to develop such a relationship
with self, eliminate as much TV as you can from your life.
Life Without the News:
However it is that you get your news, by radio, the television or the daily
newspaper, try to wean yourself off of it as your ride begins to approach.
What you will be endeavoring to do with your TransAm requires a mind that
only knows good and an attitude that only expects the best. To build a
wave of such impregnable momentum into your ride, you will want to get
away from anything that moves any way but positive. Be like the proverbial
ostrich who buries his head in the sand whenever reports of negativity
threaten. Focus only on the good and in addition to building your leg
muscles, you will be strengthening your consciousness for the Grand
Success that your completed TransAm will mean for you.
There is so much more we can talk about here, but to keep you on
schedule in your march across America, we have got to keep moving. It is
my hope that the preceding words help you to get more of a glimpse of the
size of the challenge you have availed yourself to. Thanks for you!!
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Great Trailer Debate
In 1979 I crossed the US on a 15-speed, state-of-the-art (at the time)
Eisentraut upright touring bicycle. Having sold my car, it was the best such
human powered traveling option I could find at the time. The load I carried
ranged from 40 to 60 pounds contingent upon how much food and water I
carried as well as any purchases I may have made along the way. For the
load that I hauled from one coast to the other, I ran a set of rear panniers
(the best Eclipse brand I could find) as well as a front handlebar bag.
I will NEVER tour in such a way ever again!!
The bike wasn't a bike but felt more like a Sherman tank. Holding down the
front end, actually increased the size of my arms (I'm not complaining mind
you but it does make a point). All of the handling characteristics that one
can attribute to the joy of being on a lightweight two wheeler vanish the
instant you start adding luggage to the bike itself. They just were not built
for that!!
In fact, the first few times I rode without a load, after my tour, the bike was
so responsive that it actually scared me. Over the years since that ride,
many of the other TransAm cyclists who I have met have related the same
experience to me. (Living here in Santa Cruz, on the Pacific Ocean, I get to
meet those on two wheels out for the long haul on a somewhat frequent
basis.)
When you choose the pannier option, there will still be things that you
cannot fit inside of them. Most tents and sleeping bags, for example, just
will not fit inside of even the biggest pack. This is inconvenient because it:
- Requires the use of bungie cords to strap them over the top openings of
the panniers making those items inside of your bags less accessible.
- Requires that you will have to run your load higher and farther away from
the hub making the bike less stable when you are moving.
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- Makes these articles easier prey for theft (though I've never heard of this
happening) making you feel less secure should you have to leave your bike
behind for however long for whatever reason.
- Exposes them more to the elements should you hit inclement weather.
- Exposes them to ripping or tearing from crashes or sharp objects (in 1979
I tore a troublesome hole in my tent when I slid out on a rain soaked
downhill in the Appalachians near the end of that TransAm).
With all the additional weight on your bike that panniers will require, your
tires wear out a lot faster. If you think that healthy tread is only needed for
those performance aspects of cycling such as cornering and speed that
you as a cycle tourist are not concerned with, think again. Since worn tires
make you far more susceptible to punctures, putting as much rubber
between you and the road is important to keeping you on the bike and not
fixing flats.
And should you flat, fixing one is a lot harder when panniers stand in the
way. As will be any of the regular upkeep that will be required such as
keeping your chain clean, brakes and derailleurs adjusted and wheels
trued. Instead of just unhitching from a trailer (which on most commercial
brands is a several second operation), with panniers, such repair requires
that you unbungie and unhook your carefully arranged load as you then
rummage around for those tools you will need. And since these items are
heavier, you will have wanted to pack them as low and as close to the axle
as possible. Burying them in such a way, however, puts that many more
steps before any work that can take place on the bike's rear anatomy.
Not only can a simple rear wheel flat become a huge project but broken
spokes are also far more likely when you run panniers. It is for this reason
that strengthening methods such as heavier gauge spokes, four-cross
patterns, and 40 & 48 hole rims and hubs (the standard is 36) have come
into existence. And unless you go through the trouble of bullet proofing
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your back wheel in such a way, you run the risk of having to go through the
trauma of pulling your freewheel to replace a spoke somewhere on your
ride. Since a large part of your TransAm will find you far away from tools
too heavy to bring along, this becomes a concern. Especially if the cog is
frozen in place and would benefit from the use of a vice.
It is harder to keep your bike looking fresh and ready for its daily job when
you run panniers. Not only do they fade in the sun but they also get dirty.
While this may not seem important to you at first blush, it is helpful to
remember that you will be on center stage as you pass through those
innumerable small towns that make up this America. And if you want a
favorable reaction and the support of all these new people that will be
vicariously sharing in your ride with you, you will want to make a good first
impression.
And even those extra clothes you bring along will be hard to keep fresh and
clean looking if you store them in panniers. When they live in such cramped
quarters with your tools, extra tubes and camping supplies, not only will
they begin to smell like the rest of your gear (the storage capacity in a
trailer is generally greater meaning your things don't have to be so tightly
packed together) but you can add the musty aroma that will result from the
inevitable downpour you almost can't avoid on a long ride.
Faced with having a hard enough time keeping yourself looking clean and
crisp, when you then roll into town on a dirty bike, made to look even dirtier
by oil stained and sun faded packs, people may more try to avoid you than
to welcome you into their daily maneuiverings. On both of my rides, what
were once strangers brought me into their homes for dinners and lunches
and gave me new t-shirts and hats, and even offered me rides (which I
didn't accept of course). This was so because I didn't look like the nomad
that I really was.
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Not a one of them had any idea of my story before we met (as future
Huckleberry Finns we can endear ourselves to those along the way with
interesting stories either about ourselves or those tales from the TransAm
road that we can't help but collect) and if I had looked (and/or smelled) like
a homeless person, they surely wouldn't have wanted to know anything
more. In keeping such doors from closing on me, I cleaned the bike, my
helmet, my packs (at a laundromat) and on the second ride, my trailer,
once a week. So just as on the road you will always want your person to
look the best, so too do you want to keep your bike and all of its gear
looking as good as it can. Toward this end, if you still feel compelled to run
panniers, at least take the effort (and trouble) to wash them every few
weeks while on the ride at commercial laundromats.
With panniers, rain can make your ride a nightmare. I will never forget the
hapless cycle tourist I met in Nebraska in 1979. I rolled into Cody Park
happy to see what looked like another overnight visitor camping in a town
park. Brightly colored shirts, a tarp and sleeping bag were being aired out
in the small trees that surrounded a bright blue tent. No one, however, was
anywhere to be found.
Sensing that I wouldn't have a problem spending the night here, though, I
happily set up my tent close by. Then Steve came "home". After we
excitedly introduced ourselves and talked about where our rides would take
us, Steve told me why his campsite looked the way it did, "Man I got
dumped on by the most hellacious rainstorm two days ago and I'm still
trying to dry out."
"Two days ago?" I asked.
"Well yeah, I had two things working against me", Steve surmised as he
stroked his beard. Looking at his makeshift clothes lines, he continued,
"First the damn storm got my panniers wet when I was riding and that got
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everything inside of them wet and then the rain fly on my tent didn't hold
the water that dumped down here last night. Man you wouldn't have
believed that storm. I pretty much had everything dry like it is now," he said
as we looked around at the gear that the sun had once again dried, "and
then I heard thunder and then the rain started in again and then my tent
started leaking."
"So couldn't you at least run out and save all your stuff from getting wet
again?" I asked.
"And put it where? The floor of my tent was like a little river and I never
would have had the time to get all my stuff into the panniers. I just had to
gut it out."
We both shook our heads laughing at the helpless situation Steve had
found himself in. That was 1979. Hauling our gear in a trailer just was
something neither of us had even considered back then. They were not
promoted as an option nor, did we know of any that were even
commercially available.
Steve's entire situation would have been completely different had he run a
trailer. He also could have water proofed his panniers but you never know
how good of a job you did until a storm hits. In the first place, with the
exception of the BOB orKool Stop Kool Mule (which give you a place to
mount your panniers while the BOB also offers a giant duffel bag for
storage as an option), most trailers feature a waterproof top covering so his
gear wouldn't have gotten soaked while he was pedaling. And then when
the skies exploded later that evening, he could have quickly gathered up all
his dry things and just threw them inside the trailer, covered it and worried
about organizing his load the following morning when the storm ended.
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Here in 2003, Steve could have just spent a little bit more money before he
hit the road and bought waterproof panniers but the plight he endured does
make a point. One must always expend more of his or her precious riding
time reloading an emptied set of panniers. With a trailer, you can be a lot
less careful about how you configure your load.
Parking your bike is always a problem when you run panniers. Anything
you lean it against has to first be load tested to make sure it will hold your
bike up. Or in some cases, such as store windows, to keep them from
breaking. Thirty to fifty pounds on any bike turns one into a whole different
animal once it is stopped. Because the front wheel wants to turn when the
bike is leaned against anything, causing it to topple, there are even devices
made that lock the wheel in place. Nor will a kickstand support all this
weight.
None of the above concerns exist when you do a trailer. While the
convenience of a kickstand is something you and your bike cannot enjoy on
a pannier laden two wheeler, two trailers, the BOB and the BicycleR
Evolution, even go as far as to double as a kickstands when you jackknife
the bike against them. With any brand of trailer you choose your bike will
always be able to enjoy the dignity and functionality of a kickstand.
Before you laugh kickstands off to low tech department store bikes,
consider this. A kickstand on a touring bike gives you an added element of
freedom. There will be times, should you choose the pannier option, when
you can't just lay your bike on its side if there is nothing nearby to lean it
against. And instead of biking the extra 50 feet to the nearest mile marker
or barbed wire fence post when you are in a prairie, for example, you can
stop anywhere if your pannier-free bike is outfitted with a kickstand.
I remember one time, for example, when leaving Yellowstone National
Park, a pack of giant moose appeared near a creek adjacent to the road.
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How to Bike America
By the time I found something strong enough to lean my bike against so I
could photograph them, however, enough cars had stopped and taken
pictures of these beautiful creatures for them to be scared from my view.
This would not have happened if I had had a kickstand. In fact, there were
a lot of pictures I didn't take because a satisfactory leaning post was not
located nearby.
And even the best leaning post still won't let you go off and explore a new
area like you would really want to explore it. On your bike. Free of Gear.
Nor are quick gear free errands practical when you run panniers.
Suppose for example that you have set up camp (there were also a lot of
places I didn't even consider for camping becaus e there was no where to
lean my bike when I ran panniers) for the evening and you want to bike into
a nearby town to get a newspaper, an ice cream or something special to
eat. With panniers this is not even a consideration because you know that
your pannier laden tank is just too cumbersome for such a quick spin or no
match for any kind of traffic, lights or tight roads that could result. Nor will
you want to expend the time or the energy to download and then upload
your gear carrying bike. With a trailer you can just unhitch in seconds and
head off for a joy ride on the lightweight bike you knew before your tour.
At the campsite itself, your trailer can serve many uses. One, the BicycleR
Evolution, has a hard plastic lid which lets it serve as a picnic table upon
which breakfast can be had, a game of cards can be played or tools can be
rested. With a small amount of jury rigging, such counter space can also be
made available with most of the other two wheel trailers (the BOB, Kool
Stop Wilderbeast and Kool Stop Kool Mule are one wheelers) that are on
the market. A small load of firewood can be rounded up with an emptied
trailer while a still full trailer can serve as a clothes closet which you can
locate right next to your tent. In such a way, you can have your belongings
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a lot closer to you, immediately adjacent to your tent door, when you sleep
at night and then awaken in the brisk air of the following morning.
This is important because it lets you access everything you have along for
the ride without having to climb out of the comfort of your tent. Once you
climb inside, you can stay inside. Should you forget a flashlight, want to
write in your journal or munch on something you didn't bring in with you, for
example, you don't have to go outside to get it. With panniers, however,
such convenience is not possible since you cannot lean your bike against
the entrance (or any part of the tent for that matter) of your mobile home
without blocking your way or collapsing your shelter.
You don't have to be superman to be able to pull a trailer. If anything I
always felt like some ancient gladiator athlete climbing aboard a Trojan
Horse when I ran panniers. The bike felt enormous and my balance skills
were continuously challenged -- all the micro adjustments required of my
arms only added to the demand my saddle bag laden bicycle was placing
on me.
As on a pannier laden two wheeler, just getting the machine started is also
the hardest part when you tow a trailer. And once you do overcome inertia
with either option, the pedaling becomes easy again. With a trailer, unless it
is an older one that makes noise while in transit, more often than not, you'll
even forget it's back there. Until you hit a hill. And yet, any ascent, when
carrying a load, whether it is on the bike or behind it, will slow you down.
How slow will only depend on the amount of weight, not how it's
transported.
The only skill you will have to learn with trailers is how to back up your bike
when it is attached to one. And even this is an easy feat to master. If you
just lift the front wheel of your bike off the ground as you reverse your
direction, your gear carrying conveyance will go anywhere your direct it.
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Some people worry that the shoulder upon which they are forced to ride is
not wide enough for a trailer. With a one wheel trailer, this is not a problem
and yet I found on my ride across the US in '86 with a two-wheel trailer, that
motorists seemed to give me a wider berth whenever they passed me. Not
only did the slightly wider profile that I offered make me more visible, but
car drivers seemed to associate my trailer with work and respected me as
someone paying my way through their lands -- I wasn't seen by them as
just another tourist cluttering up their roadways.
With the many different trailers on the marketplace now, all of them have
advantages and disadvantages when compared to one another. The ones
that we feel are the best in each of the niches they serve are compared in
the table at:http://www.bikeroute.com/TrailerMatrix.htm
For lightweight touring the one wheel trailers excel but their limits become
obvious when you try to make them a part of your life at home. For
example, hauling a bike around (especially a recumbent) on them is very
hard if not impossible. Nor will you feel comfortable with heavy objects such
as a beer keg or five gallons of drinking water (I regularly haul four such
containers in my Blue Sky).
While it would also be difficult to transport an extra bicycle on the
lightweight trailers that have two wheels, the BicycleR Evolution and the
Bykaboose , it is still possible to safely exceed the recommended carrying
capacity for other objects you may find yourself needing to carry. (If you try
to do so on the one wheelers, the bike itself will end up all over the
roadway.) For example, once in a while you may want to press your trailer
into service as a bike taxi to carry a real person around. Most two wheel
trailers, though not recommended for insurance reasons, can be called
upon to do such a job. Suppose also, for example, that you locate an
oversize, overweight item such as an outdoor table and umbrella at a
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garage sale and you then need to get it home. With a little creativity, this is
not a problem for a two wheeled trailer.
Being able to transport awkwardly sized objects is an important
consideration if you are moving toward a more car-free lifestyle because
the bike trailer is an integral part of living in such way. In this way of doing
your life, even something as simple as whether or not you can haul a bike
in your cart becomes an important consideration.
Should your bike break down in a way that requires you haul your broken
machine to the bike shop for repair, for example, you can still do so with
with the back bike up bike you will already have on hand for such a lifestyle
(see "How to Enjoy a More Car Free Lifestyle": ). And yet there again, if
your resources allow it, you might even want to own one trailer for touring
and one for cargo.
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Bent or Upright?
Having biked across the nation once on an upright and then on a
recumbent, I know now that I will *NEVER* travel long distances on a
conventional bicycle ever again. In the words ahead, in addition to showing
you why the recumbent is a far superior long distance traveling option, I will
give you some of its background and then try to help you understand why it
has taken so long for people to "discover" them.
To begin with, it needs to be known that ever since my car wreck and
subsequent rehabilitation, in starting my life from a clean slate, I've looked
at every sport from the perspective of its ability to be a lifetime way to keep
myself fit. Immediately ruled out because of this requirement were most of
the sports I saw on TV such as football, baseball and basketball. Bicycling,
which I'd done all my life, seemed like a logical choice but as I looked at it
from this new standpoint I didn't see that many older people on bikes. I
wondered why this was so.
Well 4,000 miles worth of TransAm answered my question. Upright cycling
causes pain. Any body who can put in a hundred mile day on a
conventional bicycle without combating hands and genitals (applies to men)
falling asleep, a sore butt and back or tired arms (all parts of the body that
don't turn the pedals around) has an extremely high threshold of pain (like I
did after my car wreck), has desensitized themself to the signals their body
is always sending them or has the resilience that only youth can bless one
with. (We won't even visit the issue of penile numbness, impotence or the
prostrate problems associated with upright cycling that "Bicycling",
"Newsweek" and other notable members of the mainstream press covered
in great detail during the summer of '97.)
Unlike 30 years ago when most people over 30 didn't exercise, more and
more adults are entering mid life with a respectable measure of fitness or at
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least a genuine interest in it. And yet the upright industry still doesn't get it.
It continues to focus it's efforts on younger America. It showcases its racers
and endeavors to make older riders as well as those hurt by the upright
position comfortable with items such as suspended forks, stems, seats and
seatposts as well as with padded gloves, saddles and shorts, etc. Such
moneys if invested in the recumbent solution, however, could provide them
with a needed shot in the arm to send their sales of a whole new bicycle
into outer orbit.
Peugeot, the once proud bike manufacturing giant, saw this as far back as
1914 when they entered the marketplace with a recumbent bicycle of their
own (recumbent bicycle's actually go back as far as the mid to late 1800's
with the Macmillan Velocipede and the Challand Recumbent that are talked
about in the still in print book from the late 1800's entitled, "Bicycles and
Tricycles"). Also during the early part of this century, a Frenchman named
Charles Mochet, was busy making the rounds with a recumbent bicycle that
was literally rewriting all the known cycling record books of the time. When
one of his riders, a second-rate French racer named Francais Faure set a
new world record for the hour on one on July 7, 1933, covering 45.056
kilometers, however, he also wrote their epitaph. This was so because,
eight months later the Union Cyclists Internationale (UCI), banned the
recumbent bicycle from any of the races it sanctioned.
Were Mochet and his riders having too much fun? Had they made it look
too easy? Was the forward thinking Peugeot too far out of balance with the
prevailing mindset of the times? Let's take a look at that era to better
answer these questions.There were three factors working against the
recumbent when Mochet was trying to sell the world on his changed cycling
position. Hero worship, what we will call a global misery consciousness and
a pressing need to conform all worked to keep the people of his time from
accepting anything that was different. And the recumbent bicycle was (and
still is) different!
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How to Bike America
First we will look at the question of hero worship. In the '30 's, even though
the private automobile was just beginning to achieve dominance, the
bicycle was still a strong part of the mass consciousness. Its racers were
the crowned dignity of a very recent past for the people of that time. So for
anyone to upset the accomplishments of the heroes they had once idolized
while doing so in a different position impressed them as nothing more than
an achievement that had to be counterfeit.
We can see an example of this in the world of baseball. When Roger Maris
hit 61 home runs in 1961 to upstage that game's icon, Babe Ruth, America
and the press almost made Maris a criminal. Nor did they accept his record
either. It is only now, four decades later, as the media regularly reduces our
hero's to the mere mortals that they really are to begin with that sports
writers are even beginning to consider Maris for the "National Pastime's"
Hall of Fame.
Also during the '30's, a global misery prevailed because, stuck in the
fighting consciousness that separated the two world wars, the industrialized
nations of the world were busy making themselves strong against attack.
People were no more than the nuts and bolts that made up grand war
machines; all that seemed to matter was if what they did contributed to
making their country strong. Happiness, feeling fulfilled or enjoying what
they did for a living were not even worthy of consideration.
The mentality of 'life is hard and then you die' was the dominant thought
form by which most people during this time governed their affairs. Henry
David Thoreau, a forward thinking proponent of individualism seemed to be
summing this sentiment up decades before when he observed, "The mass
of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is
confirmed desperation."
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It was this feeling of hopelessness and helplessness against an enemy that
was seemingly everywhere that made recreation a distraction from the
quiet suffering that was needed to always be ready for battle. Here,
however, is where a fine line had to be walked. To travel the "Path Less
Traveled" that Scott Peck advocated some 50 years later in his celebrated
book by the same title, imperiled the safety in numbers consciousness that
was so necessary for survival back then. So, in order not to lose sight of
one's adversary, never could one have too much fun no matter what he or
she happened to be doing.
For a cyclist in that era to look happy as he was rewriting all the known
record books of the time was seen as a slap in the face to this unspoken
requirement to regulate the amount of joy one was allowed. For Mochet's
riders to smile and have their arms at their sides in the surrender position
while making the efforts of previous cyclists seem like child's play only
added to the insult that this style of riding was beginning to cause.
Removing such disrespect from public view was almost seen as civic duty.
A decade later, even after The Bomb's decimation of Nagaski and
Hiroshima had made America the unofficial leaders of the world, here in the
U.S., for the next 40 years we still continued to prepare ourselves and our
allies for attack. The fighting consciousness continued as the Interstate
Highway system was signed into law for defense purposes, we built air raid
shelters and the arms race left us with enough armaments to destroy the
world many many times over. As the rest of the world followed our lead, life
continued to be one hardship after another.
It is this mindset that has become a part of our present day enculturation. In
order to insure that we are not alone in our misery, how hard we work and
how well we conform to the code of conduct prescribed by our tribe, our coworkers, the clubs and associations we belong to, even our families, etc,
have become the measure of our own individual sense of self worth.
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Such conditioning even goes so far as to permeate the very way in which
we transport ourselves. How we move ourselves about, according to this
paradigm, is supposed to be serious business, a job. It is never supposed
to be fun especially if we do so in any of those areas where most of the
people on the roads are going to work.
Not only is the group mind telling us that we can't enjoy ourselves when we
are on its roadways, the media constantly reminds us that they are for
moving workers about with its reports on workday traffic, road conditions
and the like. It is for this reason that, here in America, Bike-to-Work Day
has been somewhat successful in bringing older cyclists back to the roads.
It has begun to speak to the inferiority complex that many of us on two
wheels are always working to overcome.
As we endeavor to legitimize our presence on the road's shoulder by
associating it with work, however, we squeeze the joy out of something as
simple as riding a bike. As we learn how to "play it cool" just like the people
of the '30's we talked about earlier, however, we take something that is
supposed to be childlike fun and turn it, too, into work. Here we see
examples of this in everything we do so that we can justify it as grown up
activity. One has to look no further, once again, than the baseball diamond
to understand this last statement.
How many of the men amongst us here in America can forget how much
fun it was to throw a baseball around or to swing a bat at one? When we
were little boys, we looked at the special gloves and the shoes and all the
rules we were required to learn with a sense of wonder and awe. It
astounded us to learn that we could actually get paid to do such a thing.
The few that got to the professional level, however, forgot how to smile
when things got hard.
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At exactly the time when research shows that such athletes need to
surrender to laughter; to lighten up, to not take themselves so seriously in
order to get out of their slump, they take the opposite approach in trying to
show their paying fans that they are not happy with the performance
aspects of their game. They try too hard. And as their woes worsen, they
push even harder. They smile less and less and they make everyone
miserable around them until they somehow break free. While at the same
time such pain unwittingly becomes their future approach to the very game
they once enjoyed.
Whether it's baseball, pounding nails or preparing ledger sheets, on some
level, we forget in the same way that every job we do gives us some
measure of satisfaction. However we tend only to remember the hard times
as a perverse way to insure that others will pay us for a pain we have
projected into the future. As a result, we learn not to smile too much with
pretty much everything we do in life whether it's for money or even just for
fun.
On a recumbent, because they are novel for most and so genuinely
comfortable, we have not yet figured out a way to associate hardship with
their use. In becoming a part of this new critical mass of happy cyclists,
then, you break with the currently dominant paradigm of no pain no gain
that the UCI decision had propagated for almost half a century. On one,
you also fall out of the mental rut you may find yourself in with regard to
how you are "supposed' to look when moving from one point to another.
In the last few decades, recumbent cyclists seem to have followed a
progressive resistance to the conformist consciousness that had once so
paralyzed us as individuals. As the proliferation of household appliances
began to make it possible for the individual to function independently of the
needs of the group, for more and more people, what he or she wanted
finally began to matter. The need for us to stick together for battle
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How to Bike America
continued to lose its importance in the '70's when Vietnam made war as we
had known it obsolete. The hippie and pop psychology movements then
used the folly of supporting a war effort to show us that we as individuals
really did matter. It convinced many of us that it was OK to break with the
rank and file, to be different.
As the shock of long hair, sideburns, sit-ins and tie dye had begun to wear
off, consistent with the spirit of the times, Dick Ryan, of the present day
Ryan Recumbent, teamed up with a handful of engineers in the Boston
area to manufacture the first recumbent of the modern day era, the Avatar
(Long Wheel Base, Under the Seat Steered). Initially met in 1979 with
curiosity and much fanfare, the high price tag of the bike ($2195), however,
made it hard to buy for the small but growing number of people unafraid to
stand apart from the crowd.
At almost the same time, on opposite sides of the United States, Gardner
Martin, a student of aerodynamic advantage began producing his Easy
Racer speed machines in the Santa Cruz area of California. While in the
southern part of that state, another small team of engineers, led by Jack
Baker of the present day S&B Recumbent began producing the
Hypercycle. A short wheel base machine, it was not about serious cycling
like the S&B that has evolved from it, but more of an adult toy that
appealed to cyclists looking just for pain free fun.
Bitten by the same bug, in the middle part of the US, another recumbent
movement began. In Indiana, Doc Pierson (a local dentist), brought his
design for a recumbent bicycle to a well-to-do tool maker named Steve
Edwards of Ace Tool and the Infinity (Long Wheel Base, Under the Seat
Steered) was born.
Soon the Dutch introduced their version of pain free cycling to America in
the form of the Roulandt and in California another long wheel base, the
DeFelice began to attract buyers.
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How to Bike America
During this time, the only link these bikes had to the marketplace were the
tiny ads that they were able to place in the backs of bike magazines or
through Dr. Bike, the only recumbent dealer in the U.S. Run by Ken Culver
in the Long Island area of New York, this operation now located in Arizona
found interested buyers all over the world for this "new" cycling position.
The King of Morroco even purchased an Infinity and a Hypercycle from
Culver and once sent out a Lear Jet from his home land just to retrieve a
replacement part.
So it was that the present day recumbent movement began, just like the
modern day computer -in garages, almost strategically positioned
throughout the US. Then when in 1984, E.I. Dupont, the chemical giant,
offered $18,000 to the first human powered single rider machine that could
top 65 miles per hour, the present day recumbent movement was given
somewhat of an official blessing. Soon, Dick Ryan and the rest of his
recumbent brethren would be able to remind people that speed on a bicycle
didn't require that one have to be uncomfortable. The engineers backed up
this contention when their equations showed that it was the recumbent
design, which is 25 to 33% more aerodynamically efficient than a
conventional upright bicycle, that could produce the speed they would need
to win this award.
As other recumbents kept falling just short, on May 11 in 1986, a
recumbent bicycle ridden by Fast Freddy Markham then captured the
Dupont prize on a fully faired Easy Racer recumbent. His victory gave a
shot of adrenaline to the fledgling industry that Ryan had helped to
revitalize. Since then, scores of manufacturers and a myriad of different laid
back machines have sprouted up all over the world. In 1990 Recumbent
Cyclist News then, with great success, began helping these builders
merchandise their wares to a very receptive public. Here now in 1998, it is
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How to Bike America
the world wide web that is even further bringing down the walls of
resistance.
Having made the recumbent my main source of transportation in 1982, I
have witnessed this transformation on a first hand basis. It has been the
many tens of thousands of miles comfortably seated on a recumbent that
has let me look deeply into the question of why other people on regular
bicycles used to almost persecute me for having a good time. When I first
started riding 'bents, for example, if I wasn't being accused of being on a
fake bicycle, I was met with looks of disapproval by those others on
standard two wheelers. As we talked about earlier, I knew on some level
that I was just having too much fun for them; I wasn't playing it cool.
Fortunately for me, my brain injury rehabilitation had made me enough of
an oddity already that I was able to ride a bicycle, the recumbent, in total
comfort and not give in to the subtle suffering that many felt was required of
me.
More and more people are also discovering, as did I, that it is actually an
honor to be different; that their bicycle does not have to cause them pain.
Those returning to this once almost outlawed style of riding are discovering
they can ride for hours and miles without ailments such as the sore butt,
stiff neck, aching shoulders or numb hands that afflict the conventional
bicycle rider. Besides far greater comfort, the recumbent rider also
experiences a better view of the world, a toning and strengthening of the
abdomen, even a better sun tanning position.
Nor are they dangerous. In fact the lower center of gravity and greater
proximity to the ground mean that if you should crash on one, your feet will
absorb most of the shock instead of your head. Because more of your
weight is over the rear wheel, recumbents also stop faster. Cars see you
better, too, because the biggest part of your body is in the car driver's field
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How to Bike America
of vision and you do not blend in with pedestrians, joggers or conventional
bicyclists.
On a practical level here are some more things to consider about the
recumbent advantage. On a recumbent:You don't have to dress a certain
way; there is no need for special clothes such as bike shorts with a
chamois in them or jerseys with pockets in backIt is easier to feed your self
on oneYou can ride far longer with one handYou see more of the lands
through which you are passingThey perform better in headwinds of which
the plains and deserts are filledYou are on a magic carpet ride...having fun.
Comparing my two bike rides across the US, the recumbent position
proved infinitely superior. I could enjoy my time off of the bike and still had
energy at the end of a day for more than just climbing into my sleeping bag
or looking for a hotel room. I also enjoy the added respect that motorists
give me and the inquisitive, receptive people I meet even today. It is this
last fact, which when held up under the scrutiny of a TransAm crossing,
that can help you decide which kind of bike to ride on your own TransAm.
Any time you pass through unfamiliar territory on a recumbent, people
along the way can't help but feel a sense of comfort wherever they see you.
On a 'bent, it is as if you don't pose a
threat. When you are not moving about with your arms poised for attack in
the fighting position of the upright it is as if you are saying all is well, the
world is a safe place for me to be. Instead of presenting a menacing
appearance, on a recumbent, you offer your heart. It is as if you are saying,
"love me, don't fight me".
Try to imagine just for a moment what our world would be like if love was
the dominant theme; if there was nothing to defend. Harmony, tranquillity
and joy would abound. There would be a true heaven on earth. All would
be a playground -- National Bicycle Greenways would fill the land!! It is
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toward this end, then, that I say that those on recumbents will be the
ambassadors of such good will as we soon move into the next millennium!!.
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Training Overview
(with Fall program and word on safety and tailpipe emissions)
For any of those of you who have never done any multi-day long distance
touring, the best time to start preparing both your mind and your body for
any long distance trek is two seasons before you hit the road. Toward that
end, here is what I recommend:
Try to replace as many of the car trips you may make with bike trips. As
you do so, the inconvenience you may experience will be nothing
compared to the abrupt change in your flow, if you are not prepared, once
you do head off.. Carrying extra clothes for work and having to take more
time to get to your place of employment or learning, for example, will pale
in comparison to the demands that your trek will require of you.
Here is where your hauling a trailer will work in a powerful way to get you
extra ready for your journey. The extra weight will make you work harder so
you will not have to go as far to get the workout you will need. This can
become a powerful ally in your training as a trailer also lets you perform
other tasks on your way to and from work or school and even during any of
the longer breaks you may be able to take during the day.
The added maneuvering it will require of you, where to park it, how to lock
it, backing it up, the greater clearance needed for your path, etc, will all
stand out as a daily reminders of what lies ahead. To see a comparison of
the trailers we feel are best for the job at hand, see ourTrailer Matrix page.
Whether you run a trailer or not, start off with weekly mileage goals. You
might even do well to invest in a journal for this application or make your
own out of a spiral bound notebook. Such a way of tracking your time in the
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saddle will give you the encouragement you need to keep increasing your
distances.
Keeping in mind that success of any dimension is about many small
victories that add up to the one large achievement toward which one may
be striding, you will want to ride a certain amount of miles each and every
day. You must be honest with yourself as you figure out what is realistic for
you for your first week.. Some may want to get a hundred miles or more in
their first week. For others just finding the time or the where-with-all to
reach the 45 mile mark can be a big accomplishment. No matter what
distances you are able to make time for, I do guarantee, that if you keep at
it, as I show you in the table below, your mileages will surely increase.
The key, here, is to make a habit of riding. Whenever you can. Wherever
you can. And on a daily basis so that you get into the habit of making the
bike a part of the lifestyle your cross country ride will soon become for you!
Here is where pacing yourself is important. There is no need to race, just a
need to keep moving along at whatever pace is comfortable for you. On
your longer weekend rides, be careful not to overdo your time in the saddle
such that it may take a you a few days to recover. To keep from
overtraining in this way, make sure to always leave yourself with a small
reserve on to which you can build upon each succeeding day. As you plan
your riding, know that however far you may head out, is often how far you
will have to then return.
Making appointments to do so is a good way to discipline yourself to be on
the bike. Establish a specific time slot for your ride, and like arranging to
have your hair cut or your teeth cleaned, build your day around such prime
time. Make certain not to let anything or anyone else encroach upon this
period. If there is no other way around something else that may compete
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for this time, move your biking to a different part of the day so you can still
be sure to get your mileage. And try to plan such change on the day before
When you know ahead of time where your biking exists in the day ahead,
you are able to direct more of your mental and physical energy to it. In this
way, it will never become a hardship or for that matter a chore, but
something you can look forward to each and every time you begin a new
day. As you make it the centerpiece of your day, your thoughts will change
from trying to figure out how to fit it in to your schedule to how to improve
on certain aspects of your riding, where you will go or what you would like
to achieve once you do head out.
Set up a training loop. Work out a network of roads that will take you an
hour to ride. Know how to modify it so that it will also work if all you have is
half an hour or 45 minutes to ride. Try to include some hill work in the route
you choose. In time you and this course will get to know each other pretty
well and you can use it to gauge your progress.
It can become a snapshot for your longer weekend rides where you will
also have to work in the pacing for your eating and drinking. It will begin to
give you a working understanding of the:
Cyclists Creed
Eat Before You're Hungry
Drink Before You're Thirsty
Shift Before You Have To.
Be careful not to let yourself think that your training loop must only take
place on quiet country back roads. If you do, your experience of cycling can
become highly fossil fuel dependent. If you use a car to get you to your
riding, you may very well find getting the miles you need to lose their
purpose, to get you ready for your TransAm.
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In addition, instead of being able to use some of your biking to unwind from
your day, by introducing an intermediary step between you and your ride,
the car, there is not only less time for your cycling effort, there is a new
unneeded degree of distraction. Suddenly your mind occupies itself with
parking considerations, how well your vehicle is or isn’t running, even
what’s on the radio, etc, instead of how you plan to get the most out of
your day’s pedaling. Often such Car Mind will also make the visualization
exercise you will need to be doing to prepare your mind’s eye for the
mountains and deserts of your TransAm ahead, far less effective and
focused.
For almost all of us, our training ground is right out our front door. If you
plan your riding so that your miles don't take place on busy rush hour
arterials, anywhere that there is asphalt is a worthy place to ride your
bicycle. Especially if you can remove the car from your training equation.
During the work or school week, even if your job or class is only a mile
away, ride there. In such a way it will be much easier to cycle during any of
the breaks you will do well to schedule yourself for. Doing so, whether you
tow a trailer or not, will still help you to get used to the initial inconvenience
of having to deal with locking your bike and carrying all of the things you
will need.
If security is an issue as you go more places with your bike, get a beater.
To find yourself on your two wheeler more, start moving your mind and the
world around you toward a more car free existence. I talk about this
mindset and explain what is meant by a "beater bike" as well as where to
get one at our How to Car Free page . I highly recommend that you
familiarize yourself with the words this essay offers.
Safety in Traffic
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If cars worry you, any ride you do across the US will not be an escape
from them. Learn to love them. Learn to love being that part of traffic that is
not being slowed down by the gridlocked reality of modern day driving.
Make your ride a moving meditation, where like the tiger in the jungle, you
are comfortably aware of all that is taking place all around you. For such an
awareness to best be practiced, when in traffic, pretend that you are having
a conversation in your highest unseen, unheard mind with all of the highest
such selves of everyone else with whom you share this part of the road.
Pretend that you are all mindful of one another. Trust that that person in the
car next to, ahead of and behind you knows you are there and that you
anticipate his or her every move and vica versa. Make it a dance of which
you are the grand choreographer.
Whenever what a car ahead, behind or next to you does or may do to
threaten your path, try to establish a telepathic conversation with its driver.
Many long time cyclists that I know make this game of make believe a part
of the sixth sense they have developed for the road. Many are not even
conscious of the fact that they are doing so, but when asked, they will
realize that this technique has subconsciously slipped into their arsenal of
safety gear for quite some time. Even as a game of make believe, it still
gives one a sense of security, however real or imagined it may happen to
be.
Something else that has helped me over the years is to see my path as
filled with light even before I embark upon it. Doing so, knowing where I am
going, establishing purpose for my travels beforehand adds to my feeling of
confidence. This also is a communication that other souls (I base this on
the assumption that we are all spirits or unseen energy moving about in
physical bodies) pick up on in their ability to predict my actions on the
human level as they subconsciously listen to the dictates of the spiritual
level that exists far beyond this one.
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When your miles find you riding in the dark, imagine that you are a ball of
blinding light going down the road. Whenever you hear a car approach, turn
this awareness up to make yourself stand out even more. In addition to
your bike lighting and any reflective gear you may happen to be running,
you will begin to develop the sense that this is helping you to be seen. It is
this confidence that goes out into the universe and additionally
communicates to all of the other spiritual beings that are having the same
human experience with you that you demand to be seen and made
exception for.
City Air
If tailpipe emissions concern you here are a couple of thoughts. When the
Olympics were held in Los Angeles in the 1980's researchers found that
well conditioned athletes practicing their craft and sedentary persons doing
nothing were both similarly affected by the poor quality of air that comprises
much of the LA basin. This was so because even though those athletes
they tested took in greater volumes of air, their systems were able to more
readily expunge any of that which was potentially harmful.
You will also do well to use the process of transmutation. Similar to how
placebos have been proven to remedy health problems, you can play the
same game with bad air. Instead of thinking how harmful the intake of such
fumes can be for you, pretend that they are like a noxious cough syrup that
in time will make you better. And since foul air can be stressful to your body
like certain bad tasting oral medications, you can even pretend that the
load it is placing on your system is improving it in some way.
Here you can pretend that it is similar to the weights you lift at the gym to
get bigger muscles or the bigger pedal load you may have to push to get to
the top of a hill. Always remembering how much power the mind has over
the body, whenever I get a good tailpipe whiff, for example, I automatically
send such strain to making my legs stronger for the task at hand.
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Minimize the Coasting
When the riding permits it, try also to make it your goal to coast as little as
possible. Try to always keep the pedals turning unless you are coming to a
stop.
With all of the above in mind here is a sample training schedule
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Mo Total
Wkday
25
30
50
60
165
Wkend
20
30
40
50
140
Total
45
60
90
110
305
From this example, by starting with just 5 miles a day during the week and
then graduating to 12 miles a day during your work or school such period of
time, you will have racked up a respectable 165 miles by the end of the
month. Add a 10 mile Saturday and a 10 mile Sunday in week one to the
25 mile weekend days you will have graduated to in week 4 for 140 miles
worth of weekend miles and your first month of training suddenly becomes
a 305 mile month!
Stay at the week 4 level for the next few months until the rains or the cold
hit and you will already have over a thousand miles in your legs. At which
time you will want to begin the winter program I will soon be suggesting
here.
But here, like everything else about your ride lies the key to success. Do it
Now!! Start your training program as soon as Labor Day hits because
summer will be over almost by the time you get into a groove. As the
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brisker temperatures of autumn hit, you will not be afraid to begin if you
start when I am suggesting, but will have initiated a momentum that will
carry you through into the cold of winter.
Hopefully, you will be able to ride year round and as you do the words from
"How to Win an Argument with a Car Driver" , will serve to greatly inspire
you. You might even do well to post them somewhere so that you will see
them regularly.
Begin Now! If your bike is not the right one or if you don't have a trailer
begin with what you do have. Borrow a bike if need be. Just begin!! Do it
now.
Or in the words of the successful businessman Charles Schwabb:
The best place to succeed is
Where you are with what you have
Or there is this from Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can,
with what you have,
where you are.
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Winter TransAm Training
In terms of year round training, in temperate climates, such as those found
along the the Pacific Coast and much of the Atlantic seaboard and in the
South, including Florida, Arizona and Texas, much of what we talked about
in our fall training chapter will work for you. If it's rainy weather that's still
keeping you inside and the dangers of being caught outside in the cold are
not a threat to your very survival, here are some things to consider:
It is helpful to change your attitude about what cycling is if you want to ride
year round in those areas with milder weather. If, for example, you fear
getting out and getting your miles in because it may rain on you, you might
as well put your bike in the attic until next summer. Your actual time on the
road will of course be less due to weather conditions and there being less
sunlight, but you will want to get out whenever you can if you want to be
ready for your next cycling season and soon your tour.
There are even health benefits to doing so. In and around rainy weather,
the air is highly charged with negative ions which are important to offsetting
the positively ionized air that comes from tail pipe emissions or paint or
other chemical discharges. Also, actual miles on the road are far superior
to those derived from stationary bikes for this reason and those we will
discuss later in this chapter under 'Indoor Cycling Options'.
Rain, unless the skies are heavy with gray thick clouds is much
unpredictable. In order to cycle year round, then, you can expect to ride
heavier in the wet season because fenders are highly recommended. As
are heavier tires also filled with anti-flat gel and the clothes and rain gear
you will always want to have along will bear more weight (bicycle clothing
options are discussed at this page). In addition, the whole exercise will take
more time due to the fact that the roads won't be as fast due to the added
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friction of water and road debris and you will want to clean your drive train
every time the streets get it wet.
One can ride in the rain comfortably if you have the right gear. The Burley
Design Cooperative, located in the rainy Pacific Northwest offers a
complete line of clothing for biking in the wet. In such conditions it is the
small things that can make a world of difference for you. Rain booties are
one such helpful wet riding tool. Burley makes the kind you can slip over
the outside of your street shoes. In order to be able to see better when it is
raining outside, a visor (Giro makes one that can even be velcroed to many
of their helmets) or baseball hat will do wonders to make the road before
you very clear indeed. And because water as it evaporates leaves the
surfaces it touches cooler, this is called convection, waterproof or at least
water resistant gloves will go along way toward making your moisture laden
trips pleasant ones. Cold hands will only exacerbate the chill you fell should
your face or other unprotected areas get damp.
If yours is a recumbent, because of the seated position you will find
yourself in, you will find that water tends to collect right on your lap. The
heavier waterproof (not just water resistant; the kind found at marine
stores) rain pants with an equally waterproof zipper (not buttons) are
helpful here. Better yet, if you run a fairing (I won't ride in the rain without
one anymore), not only will your feet and legs stay dry but you can even
outfit your bike with a rain poncho to keep your lap dry as well.
There are other things to consider when riding in the wet. Be prepared for a
far greater amount of debris on the road's surface. Rain will tend to wash a
lot of the rubble away from the road's shoulder oftentimes right on to your
path. In addition, little shards of glass become somewhat adhesive when
moist causing them to stick to your tire's where they will work themselves in
to then cause a puncture at a later time. This is why, earlier, I had
suggested flat proofing your tires. I recommend Slime.
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It is also important to keep your brakes dry. You can do this by lightly
tapping them every 30 seconds or so. Also, keep lots of oil on your chain. If
you don't have time to clean it after your riding, at least keep it lathered in
oil.
Once you get out of the wet, you will need to get your gear dry so that it will
be ready for the next time. The best way to do this is to drape your wet
outer wear on a free standing clothes rack that you will want to then
position close to a heater. Besides drying such articles, this will also keep
them, your helmet in particular, from developing a moldy smell.
In much of the U.S., the best way to remain fit for the two wheel road all
year round and not live the compartmentalized lifestyle of your being a car
driver one part of your life and a cyclist the other is to simply eliminate your
vehicle all together. Such cyclists don't know the meaning of the term 'cabin
fever' because they are not afraid to be in the out of doors. In How to Car
Free you will find many helpful ideas for how to make this a reality. In the
colder parts of the U.S., there are even cyclists who look to their frozen
season as a great time to ride and stay in the best of shape. One such
group is theIce Bikers.
If, however, you can't implement any of the above because of work,
scheduling or if your winter season makes it just too cold, or the roads are
mushy or non existent outside, we'll now talk about what you can do to stay
in bicycle shape when there is a roof over your head.
Indoor Cycling Options
A word of caution is in order here. When I used to work at a health club,
those looking for fitness after many years of neglecting their body's needs
and much overweight would occasionally remark to me with some variation
of, "You know I missed a week because I got sick and then I stayed away
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from the gym for another few weeks and before I knew it the year was over
and my membership expired and the years kept stacking up. Now look at
me." As you know, cycling is the same way. The more you fall out of your
good two wheel habits, the easier it is to neglect cycling altogether. So
don't use the weather as an excuse not to be ready for the good roads of
spring because one season lost can easily become a lifetime.
If you are truly shut out from the outside roads, you have three indoor
cycling options available to you, a stationary bike, a wind trainer or rollers.
In the words ahead we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of
all three.
A stationary bike, like the kind found at most gyms (if you belong to one, of
which we'll talk about later) will do wonders to keep your lungs and heart in
shape if ridden regularly. The rule of thumb for such conditioning is to
maintain a brisk pace for at least 24 minutes. Doing so will keep, at least,
your cardiovascular system in shape for cycling. Some gyms even have
recumbent versions, others have miniature televisions screens on which
you can watch a ball game or whatever else may interest you.
There are bike shops that feature a line of exercise bikes, even the
recumbent style, that you can buy for home use, Compared to other forms
of indoor cycling, however, a stationary bike does not keep you familiar with
the bike you put on the asphalt. To begin with, the actual way in which you
fit yourself to such machines is much compromised. Using such exercise
equipment also doesn't allow you to do what is necessary to at least keep
yourself familiarized with the location of your shifting or braking
mechanisms. The subtleties of working with your bike in dealing with traffic
or any of the other many obstructions that will find their way on to your path
are skills that also fall into neglect. Nor is your sense of balance exercised
or can you fully integrate your body to the machine by locking your feet into
the pedals.
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Wind trainers are a vast improvement over the stationary bike. Instead of
just exercising your muscles, heart and lungs, they let you work with the
machine you actually ride on the road in overcoming the resistance of hills
and starts and stops (on the better trainers on the market today, you can
use a lever to increase or decrease the machine's resistance). This is
helpful because the way in which your bike's drive train responds to any of
the work you may create with your simulated road conditions will still be a
familiar feeling to you. In this way, when you actually hit the road the only
variable that will remain is balance.
Rollers, the choice of serious racing cyclists for many decades will help you
speak to this last unknown. A simple system of rolling pins held together by
a rubber chain, you mount your back wheel between the two rear rollers,
your front wheel on the front pin and off you go. But be prepared to sweat.
Big Time.
Because of all the microadjustments your body must make to keep yourself
balanced and upright on rollers, sweat will start dripping from your arms
faster than any indoor training mechanism that I know of. So much so, in
fact that I once corroded the bearings on one that I owned because I was
too wasted to wipe it down after my daily workouts on it.
I only recommend rollers for those cyclists who are very serious about
staying in top condition. While they are no substitute for the road, they are
certainly the next best thing if your are locked indoors. Their disadvantage
is that they take a while to learn and if your concentration lapses while
doing so, you can actually cause damage to yourself, your bike or anything
located close by.
This last concern, however, is somewhat minor as you can locate them
near a wall which you can use for balance. And they are pretty easy for
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most to learn. I was even riding them with no hands within the matter of a
few months time.
Be also prepared for noise. The faster you go, the accompanying hum will
turn into a rumble which can wake sleeping housemates or unnerve those
next door neighbors with whom you may share a building wall.
While you are safe from cars and indeed you can get a great
cardiovascular workout with any of the three indoor cycling options above
you will do well to consider the other areas in which you will lose. Shifting
gears or applying brakes in real conditions, for example, are skills that one
does not remain completely sharp for. The difference between keeping
oneself familiar and the kind of keenness that actually riding on the road
develops can mean the difference between danger and joyous ease of
passage in difficult cycling conditions.
Nor are all your senses activated. You don't smell the world around you.
You don't hear what it is telling you. The 6th sense one develops for any
kind of trouble is deactivated; your actual sense of the road and any of
those obstructions to your path that occur in real life cycling are not kept as
sharp than if you had never left the streets with your two wheeler.
In addition, by actually mixing it up with the pavement, the road cyclist also
keeps his muscles supple. Seasoned racers refer to such conditioning as
having snap in one's muscles. He or she also breathes fresh air and not the
recycled variety filled with positive ions that is found indoors.
Those cyclists bound to the indoors can, however, make their season away
from the road a powerful time to gain overall body strength as well. Here of
course, I am referring to working out with weights. Many cyclists grow much
disproportionate bodies because they stay as far away from such
resistance training as possible. Not good.
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While healthy well exercised legs are very very important to one's state of
health, if other areas of the body are neglected your overall conditioning will
be much compromised. Translation: Your resistance to illness, especially
as you age, will become less and less. This is so because besides toning
and shaping muscles, weight training and stretching (never do one without
the other, a Google search will bring up many good web sites for
stretching) massage one's internal organs.
An example of what I mean is order here. After I completed my first bike
ride across America in 1979, people would comment that I must be in great
shape. In truth however, I knew that I really wasn't. My legs looked like tree
trunks and while I could knock off a hundred miles with great power and
relative speed, there was very little else I could do well without getting tired.
I was like a machine that could only do one job.
The simple act of walking was uncomfortable and tiring for me. I could
barely swim one lap in a swimming pool and shooting a few basketball
hoops with friends greatly exhausted me. I knew I was a basket case when
I could barely do one or two sit ups.
Finally overcoming my resistance to being indoors for exercise many
months later when I started working out in a gym, I was actually able to see
how far out of shape only riding a bike for my fitness had gotten me. So I
began to look forward to my future winters as great times to round out my
conditioning.
In the classic book, "Getting Stronger" by Bill Pearl, well known bike racer
John Howard offers a strength conditioning program for cyclists. Howard's
program is year round, yet as I am saying here, he does show weight
training that is far more intensive during the off season.
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Since the bike rider will want to be more focused on gains in strength rather
than in muscle size, he will want to do more reps with slightly less weight.
The areas he or she will want to place the greatest focus on are the back,
gluteus and hamstring muscles. Here the king of all bodybuilding exercises,
the squat, can do wonders. In fact, if there's any one exercise that is the
most comprehensive in the gym it is the squat. What's amazing about this
exercise, is that because it involves so much of the body, it actually causes
the upper and lower body's to grow in both strength and size in proportion
to one another. Note: With the squat, you will need to be doubly sure to
protect your back by doing the abdominal work that is so crucial for any
weight lifting routine (and really life in general).
For me, after a squat workout, I fell like I am pedaling air almost no matter
what gear I may find myself in. I can't say enough good things about the
squat but it is easy to get hurt doing so if your technique is incorrect and
especially if you don't stretch before and after. If it is an exercise that
interests you, ask questions, read what the experts such as Fred Hatfield,
aka Dr. Squat, have to say about it and concentrate on getting your form
right. Here it will be helpful to use light weights for a long enough period of
time that your muscles won't let you do them any way but the proper way.
And don't think that any kind of lifting movement that makes the use of a
machine to simulate the squat will get you all the benefits I am talking about
here. Any time you practice this motion on a Smith Press, a Hack Squat or
any other kind of similar apparatus, you are not bringing as much of your
body into the exercise. Assisted such squats don't require you to make the
microadjustments needed for the side to side or forward and backward
directions your upper torso will want to move in when you are under such
weight.
If your gym has a sauna, if you have a few extra minutes, sitting in one
makes for a great way to end a work out. This is so because for health
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reasons it helps to more fully expurgate those toxins that exercise has
begun to release from the pores of your skin. It also balances out one's
blood sugar so if you have consumed too much alcohol or had to many
sweets, such dry heat will help to reestablish homeostasis. In addition if
you live in a cold home, the sauna offers a great way to warm up your
body's core temperature so that you can be out in the cold for longer
periods of time if done so before your riding begins.
Now that I've given you all the options, let's put them all together. Even in
those more temperate climates we talked about at the beginning, during the
winter the smaller window of daylight available to you will make it difficult to
get in the miles you may desire; especially if you go to work in the dark and
get home in the dark. If this describes you, you will want to become a
weekend warrior.
I would suggest for such riders that they train three of their week days in
the gym. And if you can't afford a whole year see if you can purchase a
three month program. Most gyms offer this. If you don't know what to do (if
you want to do more than just the squat) ask them to assign you a trainer
who will outfit you with a program. You can even supplement the basic
routine they will give you with observation, watching what the others in the
gym are doing, as well as by asking questions and reading. Beyond all the
hype, "Muscle and Fitness" magazine, available at most supermarkets,
always has good articles on everything from technique to diet and the
proper mental attitude one will need. Any of Bill Pearl or Arnold
Schwarzeneggar's book's are also very good sources of weight training
information.
Always begin your workouts with at least half an hour on the exercise bike.
If you are working out three days a week, and can get in 20 or 30 mile days
over the weekend, you will still be able to maintain a reasonable degree of
fitness for the roads of spring. If you can not get out at all during the
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weekend because of rain, cold or road condition, at least make sure to get
in an hour of indoor cycling on both your Saturday and your Sunday.
If you also use your exercycle time to catch up on your reading, make sure
that you keep the intensity level up. In fact, if you can be honest with
yourself here, I would suggest that you don't read until you know how hard
you must push yourself to feel as though you've gotten a genuine workout.
Since this will usually mean a high degree of perspiration, you will need to
have a towel on hand so that you won't damage your reading material.
The bikes at most gyms have little holders for books and magazines but if
you are doing so at home, you can station an ironing board next to your
trainer on which you can even add a newspaper to those items you may
want to read. Whether such sessions take place at the gym or where you
live, if reading makes it possible for you to be inside while on a stationary
bike, do plan to ride longer than half an hour; make 45 minutes your
minimum time on the indoor saddle for this less focused kind of “library”
cycling.
Hopefully the words above will make your upcoming winter a journey into a
whole new way of looking at bicycle fitness. You can also use this time to
read not only about weight training, if you choose to do so, but about
nutrition as well. All in all, you can come away from your off season indoors
a much more powerful cyclist if you implement some of the ideas I have
just shared with you. And as they say: Just do it!!
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The Performance Box
(Using it to commit, achieve, and break free from your ties)
Have you ever wondered why some people always seem blessed with an
inordinate supply of initiative? Do you ever wonder why some of these
people are then able to stay on track while so many others fail?
I have found that many of those who are willing to undertake new
challenges and then persevere all the way through to the winner's circle
have been able to engineer some kind of performance box into their efforts.
They begin by burning the bridges of retreat. Then they fabricate little
rewards along the way until they achieve the greater reward they are
striving for. In the words ahead, I will use the example of my bike rides
across America to show you the success principle these people utilize to
help you fully commit to your ride and break free from the ties that may
have before kept you bound.
The way that I got my first bike ride across America going back in 1979,
when very few did such a thing, especially after a long hospitalization and
rehabilitation, was to tell key people what I intended to do. I made sure to
advise those I knew who would not let me forget, even those who I knew
would laugh at me if I didn't 'walk my talk'.
And as I talked about the dream of biking across the US, there were those
who made a point to ignore such talk. While others, laughed, some just
took a look at my weak body and smiled. They were saying the same thing
as those few friends or family members who cautioned me against doing
such a thing.
It was the inspirational dissatisfaction from these important naysayers that
forced me to take my next step. In order to more fully commit to the dream I
had threatened to fulfill, I traded my motorcycle (even though I could hardly
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ride it after I had more fully recovered, I still kept it around erroneously
thinking it imparted some kind of strength to me) for a better bicycle, one I
could use for the many hours of training I would need for a 4000 mile bike
ride. And then after I had convinced most everyone who knew me that I
had gone crazy, I sold my car. This was so that I could make the last few
rent payments before I would leave as well as help me buy the rest of the
gear I had begun to learn I would need. Selling it would also pay for the
lodging and food I would need once I actually did hit the open road.
Because of these two actions, I was in a performance box. All of a sudden,
I had to cycle everywhere I went. The sacrifices I found myself having to
make soon became a part of my new lifestyle. Quickly I found myself less
attractive to the opposite sex (remember that was the late '70's, I find that
not having a car now makes me somewhat curious to at least those
members of the female population who have some depth and are
interested in being fit). Because dating was virtually eliminated as a result,
at night I read about bicycles and what little I could find about bicycle
touring. And I went to bed early. Such self imposed solitude not only
prepared my mind for the next day's riding but it also readied me for the
many nights I would spend in my tent with little more than my journal and a
candle lantern for company.
In other preparations for the TransAmerican road, I pretended that my
bicycle was my employer and I made sure that we got on the road
everyday at seven in the morning with the work crowd. Every day began
with a destination in mind, that once reached, I had to cycle back from -another Performance Box.
In preparing for those domestic chores that I knew would greet me on the
road, I didn't let myself use the laundry machines at my apartment complex
but made more trips to the laundromat at the bottom of the hill with less
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clothes. Instead of doing my grocery shopping once a week, I bought
smaller quantities of food on a daily basis. More Performance Boxes.
As the miles got bigger, the months passed, and as the seasons changed,
because I had no other way to turn, I began to feel my goal as more and
more possible. When the weather was nice, me and my bicycle visualized
the mountains, the prairies and the fields of grain that lay ahead of us.
When the weather changed we knew we were being toughened up for
some of the steep ascents and other unknowns of the transcontinental
road. When darkness and the cold and rains of winter fell upon our efforts, I
kept telling myself that what I was moving through was nothing compared
to the proverbial bicycle road that would connect us with the east coast.
Using Performance Boxes to build my life around my bike in this way
prepared me for the next stage of my ride -- breaking free of my ties.
Breaking Free
In order to say good bye to friends and family, familiar faces and the ease
of knowing my way around my own home town, I burned even more
bridges of retreat. In order to minimize my storage needs, I started selling
my household items. I placed ads on bulletin boards and in newspapers, I
held garage sales, I took things to the flea market and either gave away or
sold even more things to people I knew.
The first thing to go was my waterbed. Seeing it go made me cringe, as
selling it meant I would have to sleep on the floor. Letting it go, however
strengthened my visualization as it toughened me up for the many nights in
the middle of nowhere that I knew were ahead of me. Doing so also
reminded me of the dream I was buying for myself.
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Selling my bed was symbolic for me. It initiated the process of letting go. It
made it easier and easier to release the rest of my things. Soon, the rest of
my furniture followed a blender, toaster, lawnmower and countless other
items that all had memories attached to them as they trickled out the door.
Everything that I disposed of in this way made it easier for me to say good
bye. It made me look forward to the day when I could just get started. By
getting rid of my comforts, I also left myself with no way to turn but toward
the fulfillment of my goal.
A few words about faith and the way I now know the Universe to work are
in order here In liquidating many of my possessions, I also had to place my
trust in the Universe to take care of me once my dream had been
actualized. Fortunately for me, four or five years before, I had given myself
the college graduation present of going to Europe. To pay for that three
month journey, I had sold much of what I owned that time as well. Even
though I then returned to very little, I found myself replacing everything I
had before owned with usually better and newer items in a much faster and
easier way.
In the metaphysical realms there is a spiritual axiom that the universe
abhors a vacuum, it is always trying to fill a void. With regard to all the
“stuff” we have in our lives, this truth could never be more true. For
example. if you've ever moved into a bigger house or apartment thinking
you had plenty of room only to discover in a very short time that you felt
cramped for space, then you will know what I mean. If you've owned certain
things before, it is much easier to have similar things come back to you
because they are already familiar to you; a part of your energy. So in letting
things go, I had already trained myself not to worry about what would
happen to my life after I had completed my ride.
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On the Road Performance Boxes
Returning to the TransAmerica journey I had proposed for myself, then,
when I had built a big enough cash reserve, I bought a one way train ticket
to Portland, OR, 900 miles away. This achieved two things for me. First, it
set a departure date (as discussed in the chapter entitled “Undecided”, in
hindsight, I feel that the most important thing you can do NOW is to set a
departure date) for me. And second, it made it a lot harder for me to just
turn around and come back home, once I was actually on the bicycle road
east, when things got difficult.
So, as you can see, just getting my ride started, which is always the
hardest part about undertaking any large project, was a series of
performance boxes. So many good intentions and wonderful dreams never
become fulfilled because many people don't know how to overcome the
inertia that stands between them and their goals. Dr. Robert Schuller
speaks to this in his classic book, "Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking",
when he says, "Beginning is Half Done" as does a friend who says, "It's
Easier to Steer a Car that's in Motion".
By the time I finally began cycling the eastern road, then, I asked myself
over and over again what was so hard about this. What had I been
deliberating about? The only daily performance boxes that remained for me
were the towns along the way where I could get the water and food I would
need to sustain my efforts. This was so until I completed what had once
only been a dream in Washington, DC.
The seven years that preceded my second TransAm crossing gave me
time to think about how I could improve upon my first one. As a result, the
performance boxes I was able to create for myself grew in sophistication. I
learned how to make games out of them.
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One of the ways that I made myself get a fair amount of miles in my legs
before all the cars and trucks found their way on to the road was to not let
myself have anything to eat until I had ridden fifteen miles. Upon
awakening in the morning, this made me move quicker. It kept me from
lounging around and taking my time breaking down my tent and packing
my campsite back on to my bike.
Once I had gotten my mileage, I would then stop and eat the orange slices
and sandwiches I had made sure to prepare the night before. I also made
them easily accessible so my breakfast break wouldn't be too long -another performance box. To keep pushing myself when I was out in the
middle of nowhere, of which there is a lot on a bike ride across the US, I
used the mile markers that accompanied most of my riding on desolate
roads.
If I was thirsty, I would pretend I was out in the middle of the Australian
outback. I told myself that once I reached the next mile marker that I could
have two squirts from my water bottle. If I was hungry, I would give myself
a handful of granola or a bite from a peanut butter and honey sandwich
when I reached every other such indicator.
Even if the boxes I put myself in sounded harsh, I took comfort in knowing
that I set the rules. I knew also that the quiet pain of not having lived my
dreams would have been there to haunt me for a lifetime. Making the
sacrifices I had to make, then, seemed small in comparison to the bigger
picture, the rewards I knew would issue forth from the successful
actualization of my goal. I became a believer in the adage which pervades
much Eastern thought, that short term pain often brings long term gain
instead of the instant gratification that so diseases the Western world.
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Commitment
If you don't feel motivated to lock even the smallest part of yourself up in
the ways I am describing, maybe you have a problem with commitment.
Maybe you know you can make whatever is in front of you happen and you
know how to keep yourself rewarded to do so, but you can't seem to find
anything that is worthy of such consolidated effort.
It very well could be that you enjoy so many things that you think that
committing yourself to one project might be doing so at the expense of
those things you may have had to before fight to master. Even if they came
easily, you still don't want to let any of the skills or abilities associated with
them go to waste.
When you give your all to a project, however, you don't lose a thing, instead
you gain. Everything that you've ever done with your life comes into all of
your moments of commitment. Your special talents, the people you know
and the knowledge you will have acquired from other fields of endeavor, all
find their way into helping you move any of your focused such projects
along.
Let's use the example of my bike rides to help you understand what I
mean. On my first ride, I overcame much inexperience as a cycle tourist by
using every thing life had ever taught me.
I used memories of the unending torture I experienced in therapy to power
over innumerable mountain passes. I called upon my college party days to
win my way into the hearts and homes of the people of the Midwest. My
experience as a waiter showed me the correct amount of humility I would
need in finding out about the best roads and camping from the locals.
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Mechanical problems didn't intimidate me because of all the hours I had
spent trying to prove my manliness under the hoods of my sports cars. I
knew how to calm down the rough motorcycle gang that had overrun my
campsite in Idaho because my years on such machines helped me to know
the right kind of tough talk they would need.
By the time I committed to making my second ride, I had a much greater
wealth of resources to pull from because I also had a lot more to "lose" by
most people's standards. But as the saying goes, "you never lose, you
always win".
In the seven years between rides, I had learned a lot about sales, writing
and computers, and had begun to enjoy recumbent bicycles and
channeling and none of this was lost or left behind.
In order to ride the bike of my dreams on the journey of my dreams across
the US, I had to sell the vision I had in mind both to the media and to the
bicycle industry. Within my committed state of existence, I was
unstoppable. In attracting sponsors I discovered that they needed detailed
P&L's for what I was endeavoring to do. For them I put my long lost
accounting skills back to work.
This reinforced for me, as it did for many other areas of my ride, the fact
that some of the skills and abilities one may have may lay dormant for a
while but they are always there for you to call upon. It is within this sense
that the aphorism that you never waste time is also true.
I used my computer to design brochures and circulated them everywhere I
went. I used the story of my rehabilitation and first TransAm ride to
convince sponsors that I could pedal a 13-foot long trailer towing, state-ofthe-art recumbent bicycle across the US in the spectacular way I was
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prognosticating. In a relatively short period of time, by committing, I
procured all the gear, money and the bike I needed to do the ride.
When I then hit the road I was able to use even more of my computer and
writing skills. On the small briefcase computer (a Radio Shack TRS 80 lap
top sized word processor, one of the first of its kind), that I brought with me,
I was able to write articles from the road for the national magazine that
sponsored some of my ride. It happened to be the magazine that my
brother worked for. Called "Trucks", they took me up on my idea for a
couple stories that would compare my travels to those of the long haul truck
driver. "Trucks" as well, was caught up in the excitement of my commitment
To get me through the loneliness of the desert, I listened to spiritual
channeling tapes where I was also able to become friends with myself. The
spiritual wisdom theses tapes imparted, helped me with my many
speeches, the first of which took place in Houston. I was able to see all the
talks that followed as successful because I had won many awards doing so
going all the way back to grade school.
I even used the people skills I had fine tuned at the many garage sales I
used to go to back when I was rehabilitating, to win an unprecedented
amount of publicity for the National Head Injury Foundation. All because I
committed.
As I said in TransAm Mindset, I used the following words before I did my
1986 TransAm bike ride to keep me on the track of Commitment. They are
worth repeating here.
UNTIL ONE IS COMMITTED, THERE IS HESITANCY
THE CHANCE TO DRAW BACK, ALWAYS INEFFECTIVENESS.
CONCERNING ALL ACTS OF INITIATIVE AND CREATION,
THERE IS ONE ELEMENTARY TRUTH,
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THE IGNORANCE OF WHICH KILLS
COUNTLESS IDEAS AND PLANS:
THAT THE MOMENT ONE
DEFINITELY COMMITS ONESELF,
THEN PROVIDENCE MOVES TOO.
ALL SORTS OF THINGS OCCUR
TO HELP ONE THAT WOULD OTHERWISE
NEVER HAVE OCCURRED.
A WHOLE STREAM OF EVENTS
ISSUES FROM THE DECISION,
RAISING IN ONE'S FAVOR
ALL MANNER OF UNFORESEEN INCIDENTS
AND MEETINGS AND MATERIAL ASSISTANCE,
WHICH NO MAN COULD HAVE DREAMT
WOULD HAVE COME HIS WAY.
RR Murray
and
I HAVE LEARNED A DEEP RESPECT
FOR ONE OF GOETHE'S COUPLETS:
WHATEVER YOU CAN DO,
OR DREAM YOU CAN,
BEGIN IT.
BOLDNESS HAS GENIUS,
POWER
and
MAGIC
IN IT.
Johann Goethe
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I placed them at the foot of my bed where I could see them every day. And
as I contemplated the words, I asked myself over and over again, if I was
making them a part of my life.
Are you committed to your Ride? Is it a part of your life? Yet?
I have given you many tools you can use right now, the most important of
which is this the Performance Box. Used properly, you can use it to take
effective charge of the future that will get you to the Winner's Circle of
wherever it is that you are trying to get. With such an implement, you can
even turn all those days between then and now, and not just your Ride, into
a grand masterpiece of unequaled splendor.
Thanks for letting me share this information with you -- I love you!
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TransAm Road Food:
How, What, Where & When
With so much to consider in planning for a coast to coast bike ride,
inexperienced cycle tourists rarely give how, where and what they will eat
while in transit the kind of in depth analysis it really needs. And yet, those
who have made a success out of such long haul riding know that food,
properly procured, prepared and consumed, ultimately stands at the
epicenter of such a journey. While cars rely on the remains of old dinosaurs
to get them from one point to another, how well you eat, what, where and
when you eat all have a very direct bearing on the success or failure of
your ride. This is so because the monstrous breadth of your physical
output, day in day out, will require an equally gigantic measure of food
intake on almost an hourly basis.
Before I take you through the actual daily mechanics of eating for the huge
amount of energy you will need on your TransAm, first I will relate some of
the more memorable food related moments from my own coast-to-coast
rides. One thing that made them special was the fact that I was able to eat,
eat, eat with no concern for weight gain. I am recreating them for you here
so that you will know what you can look forward to with regard to one of the
biggest parts of your ride -- E A T I N G!
In 1979, there was the BikeCentennial group I caught up with outside of
Yellowstone and the restaurant meal I shared with them. Road Barbarians,
all of us, muffins gently wafted from one end of the long table to the other
whenever a request was made for one. We joked about how we were
totally out of our element as we looked at a menu with food that didn't list
peanut butter, granola or bananas. Our slap stick comedy continued as
someone noted that the fresh linen napkins didn't also do double duty as
work rags. The laughter that accompanied our enormous portions made
everything we ate taste so much better.
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I have never since eaten a stew like the one that Paul Phillips cooked in the
rarefied high mountain air of Grand Lake, in Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
Up around eight thousand feet and after buying a healthy round of
vegetables at a country store in the small town of Granby, we settled into
our campground in almost ritual like fashion. Ahead of us was the world's
highest mountain highway, Trailridge Pass at 13,000 feet, and we wanted
to be prepared.
Toward this end, I did a safety check on my bike and readied my next day's
finger foods while Paul used his Swiss survival knife to cut our onions,
carrots, squash and turnips into campstove sized chunks. As his vegetable
smorgasbord then cooked on the flame below, a sectioned piece of French
bread wrapped in tin foil warmed itself on the pot above. By the time we
added peanut butter (a TransAm staple) and the two cans of beans we had
cooked in the fire we had started in one of the nearby open pits, we were
ready to eat our way into the mountain that stood before us. Each bite was
supercharged with the power it would give us in the next morning's ascent.
The tea Paul brewed served to make our ensuing victory complete -- in our
mind's eye.
We went to sleep, full, happy and feeling the love we had blessed our next
day's climbing with. We were ready. And power we did. Driven by Food!
I recall the many feasts that farmers in the Midwest prepared for me and
how I ate and ate and ate much to their astonishment and pleasure. This
was so, because corn on the cob in this area of the country was plentiful
and could always be used to make up for any of their other food offerings
my ravenous appetite had pressed into short supply.
Though mindful of all of the above, my favorite eating spot was still the
sidewalk. Usually in front of the store where I bought my lunch foods. With
jars, wrappers, my Swiss survival knife and water bottles all strategically
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positioned within easy reach, and my maps spread all about me for reading
material, I must not have made for a worthy sight for the town fathers. As I
looked out on small town America, even the hustle and bustle of some of
the bigger cities through which I passed, I found joy in being a detached
observer to the only way to live I had once known.
These were some of the happiest moments of my rides as I looked out on
the busy world from which I had escaped. Fully engrossed with their own
lives, few took the time to find out what I was all about. And as a result, I
was able to I simply sit back and watch as store shoppers scurried from car
to store and back and delivery persons came and went.
A closer look at my second ride, since I had become more aware about
food, will reveal the impact health food stores had on the actual route I
took. Since college towns usually also house one or a few such purveyors
of clean such fuel, I found myself riding from one to another on my way
across the US.
I found that shopping for my food at grocery stores was the most cost, time
and performance effective way of making either of my rides real. After we
go through this list, I will show you how much I bought of each such edible
and how I prepared what I ate as well as what time of day I did so based
upon an average day on the road.
The Basics:
Oatmeal (box prepackaged servings)
Peanut Butter (16 oz., sesame butter if you can find it)
Peanuts (shelled)
Almonds (if you can find them)
Bread
Honey* (preferred: barley malt or rice syrup)
Oranges**
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Bananas
Apples
Raisins (16 oz. box)
Beans (canned)
Sunflower Seeds (in shells)
Distilled Water (gallon)
Dried Fruit (one 16 oz pkg)
Tortillas
Herb Tea (in box)
Occasional Optionals:
Fruit Juice (one quart)
Sardines/Tuna (canned)
Worthy Energy Bars (from Purest to Less Pure):***
The Organic Food Bar
Clif Nectar organic fruit & nut bar (NOT Clif Bar)
Ruth's Hemp Foods
Larabars
Odwalla Bars
Think Thin Low Carb Bars (Sweetened with Malitotl, a sugar alcohol low on
the glycemic index)
As you can see, none of the foods mentioned in the main menu above
require refrigeration. Nor are they packaged, with the exception of bread
and water, such that you cannot squish them into your panniers or trailer
bags. With regard to bread and water, I simply affixed these items to the
outsides of my packs with bungie cords.
I found that so that I would not spend the entire day riding with a container
of water and bags of unprepared food hanging off of my packs that the best
time of day to buy groceries was near the end of my riding day. In order to
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do this, I would stop at a market in the last town before I planned to bed
down for the night. If, however, while reading maps during my lunchtime
break, I could see that there were no towns within close proximity of my
projected night's stay, I would go back in and buy food for dinner and the
next day's breakfast. Before we go inside to actually make our purchases,
though, a minor word of caution is in order here.
Even though you are generating a tremendous volume of heat while out on
a TransAm, and can run sugary foods through your system faster and with
less harmful side effects, you would still do well to keep simple sugars out
your body. That of course is up to you but I know my performance was far
more consistent and effective the more disciplined I was in this regard.
In order to follow my advice about sweeteners when shopping in grocery
stores, I highly encourage you to read labels. Know what other names
sugar hides behind. When you look at peanut butter, for example, and you
see dextrose listed as one of the ingredients, beware. Yes, you even have
to watch out for peanut butter. In regular grocery stores, I found that the
Adams brand did not have this artificial sweetener.
If you want to begin your day with a warm meal and don't mind firing up,
maintaining and then cleaning your camp stove, expect to go through 3 or 4
of the small instant oatmeal packets a day. Add however many raisins you
may need and your morning breakfast can become a ritual you will really
look forward to. In lieu of oatmeal, especially if you are in a hurry to get on
the road as per the discussion in the previous chapter, you can just eat
more sandwiches and fruit.
With regard to the camp stove itself, however, it is not a necessity. I have
gone long stretches without using mine but it does add a touch of home to
the ride since you can also finish off your evening or breakfast fare with a
pot of tea, even hot cider (notice I didn't say coffee but if you must.....). If
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you do use one for breakfast, however, it does mean as I have said above,
you will be hitting the morning road just a little bit later.
Here I would like to digress back to the Performance Boxes we talked
about in Chapter Ten for a few moments. I found that on both of my rides, it
was best to be on the road as early as possible. In such a way, besides
beating some of the day's heat, I was also able to get far away from town
and all the cars the morning commute would bring. I especially found it
helpful to do so whenever my riding found me in high desert or prairie lands
or in the more populated areas of the east and midwestern states.
One of the ways that I was able to accomplish this was to reward myself
with food. But not until I had fifteen or twenty miles in my legs. Forestalling
the reward in such a way made me wake up in a hurry as I moved far more
quickly to break my camp back on to my bike. It also forced me to have my
finger foods ready the night before when I was often so tired all I could
think of was sleep.
As for tea or oatmeal or anything you buy that comes in small boxes, in
order to transport such items, once you get them to your camp you will
want to break then down. Get rid of the containers they come in and place
them in reusable baggies. In doing so they will take up less of your
precious cargo space.
In terms of finger food, for my rides these would include the fruits I list
above: oranges, bananas, apples and raisins as well as nuts. These were
all readily available at most of the grocery stores I found along the way. If
plums or peaches or apricots were in season, I made sure to add those to
my shopping cart. A day on the road usually meant I would need a bunch of
bananas, a 16 ounce box of raisins and six to seven pieces of fruit.
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In terms of readying what I would eat for the next day's ride so that I could
keep my wheels rolling, I began by jumbling the raisins and peanuts into a
gorp concoction. Once combined into one of the baggies that I used over
and over again, I had the perfect mobile snack food. I also found that
oranges were the best road fruit because they didn't bruise or make a mess
when stuffed into my packs. The trick here, however, was being able to eat
them while still in transit. For the other fruit I simply placed them in an area
readily accessible to my hands but oranges were a different story.
While neat for carrying, getting them peeled and then eating them could
mean a sticky mess if I hadn't taken the time to prepare them before hand.
So in order to keep their juice from dripping on to my handlebars and shift
or brake levers as I rode while on my upright journey and since I could not
get both hands free to break them down on my bent trek, I peeled them at
night (usually two or three) and then split the fruit into bite size slices.
These were then loaded into zip lock bags and placed in an area easily
accessible to my hands as I rode.
On my bent ride in '86 I found that since I didn't have a handlebar bag to
eat from, I used the panniers that hung from the rack behind my seat for
this. If you are on a bent and this is the way you plan to go, make sure the
panniers you ride with, at least the one that will carry your road food, have
zippers for easy access and are not secured by a drawstring which will be
harder for you to open and close with one hand.
Other food preparation chores also included making most of my
sandwiches ahead of time. Here is where one is reminded of the
decadence one must force on him or herself. Since the mantra is not 'Think
Thin' but 'Eat Lots', you can really pour it on. One of my favorite monster
high calorie sandwiches was peanut butter, honey, bananas and raisins.
And it was easy to gulp down five or six of them during the course of a day.
Since this also required a full loaf of bread, as well as a jar of peanut butter
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and a bunch of bananas, I used the package the bread came in to store
three or four of these extra jumbo, high calorie feasts. The first two or three
I ate right at the store where I made them for my lunch break.
Sometimes I would make sandwiches out of peanuts and raisins using
peanut butter as the glue to hold it all together. Where I could find tortillas I
rolled the nut butter and lengthwise sliced bananas all into one.
On my first ride, an old hobo who had just hopped off of a rail car in
Nebraska convinced me that I could eat canned, precooked beans without
having to reheat them. He pointed out that it was safe to do so if there was
no meat in them. I also used refried beans, then, as a sticking agent on my
bread or tortillas to hold many of my other road meals together which
sometimes also included tuna and sardines.
As for drinking water, besides my one gallon collapsible bag which I only
filled if my maps showed that I was headed for desolate areas such as in
the deserts and high prairies of some of the more western states, my bike
carried four one quart water bottles. In such a way, every night, I was able
to fill them with the contents of the one gallon jug of water I bought at the
last stop I made before I bedded down for the night.
And if mountain climbing was on the agenda for the next day's riding, I
always made sure to have plenty of sunflower seeds on hand. Filling my
mouth with a small handful and then using my teeth to shell them one at a
time kept me distracted from the task at hand if flies or cars chose to
accompany me. I'll never forget the road into West Yellowstone where I had
both. While the airborne bugs got bigger and bigger the closer I got to the
park, the vehicle herds that droned up the hill pulling everything from boats
and rolling tents to dirt bikes and even more vehicles also grew in size.
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As the flies feasted on my sweaty arms and legs, each and every internal
combustion vehicle present seemed to be spitting their noise and stink on
me as they slowly ground past. The mind numbing rumble that their motors
produced, reverberated off of the mountain walls made bare by the
earthmovers that had long ago stripped them of life.
Throw in sweltering heat and I needed something to grind my teeth on.
Sunflower seeds saved me and my ride on that particular stretch. And I
always pressed them into service whenever there was a lot of traffic on the
road or the climbing was made arduous by head winds.
Hopefully with all of the above I've given you some new ways to look at
nourishing yourself for your TransAm. It is my hope that with just a little
creativity that you now know that you don't have to rely on restaurant food
for tasty meals that you can much look forward to. As well, you should now
be able see what kinds of foods you will need to eat and how, when and
where to eat them so that you can keep your wheels rolling on a day in, day
out basis once you hit the road!
* In my regular practice of life, I do not eat honey because it is too much
like simple sugar in terms of the insulin reaction it would normally
engender. However because finding substitute sweeteners such as barley
malt or rice syrup was nearly impossible in small town America and
because TransAm cycling burns most any food very quickly, I found I could
get away with using it to sweeten a lot of that which I ate.
** In my regular practice of life, I do not eat oranges because they are just
too acid. And yet in an extreme activity like TransAm cycling, I found such
excess tolerable.
*** These bars are not sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, a
dangerous sugar found in most energy bars. Instead, most rely on the grain
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sweeteners, rice syrup and barley malt, which are more expensive but
produce a far less frenzied burn when in the body.
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The Psychology of Now
These words come to you from my new book, "How to Move Mountains,
with Love" which is 80% written. I have put my writing and speaking career
in a holding pattern, however, so that I can walk the talk of moving those
mountains that stand in the way of our Greenway. Bear in mind that the
words ahead are for a general audience and yet I draw much example from
my TransAm rides in developing an understanding of time as it relates to
NOW. I want all of you to read this NOW so you can understand the
urgency that I feel for making our ride real, NOW:
Now is the beginning of the rest of your life
Mountain Moving TNT = Today Not Tomorrow!!
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to success in any endeavor is our
failure to understand true the nature of time. The procrastination that so
many of us feel immobilized by in reaching any of our goals, results from
our constant failure to understand that the only moment any of us will ever
have is Now!
There's a saying,
"Now and it's gone".
Just as I typed that sentence and in the very moment you read it, that
moment is gone as well. It can never be repeated. It's gone forever. Gone,
gone, gone.
The reason that many of us have unfulfilled lives is because we fail to
honor each moment as it passes. We oftentimes fail to do those things that
we want to do or say those things that we want to say, because there's
always a "next time" or a "someday" or a "when I get around to it", that all
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seem to minimize any of the tension that we may be feeling when an
opportunity to expend possible fruit bearing energy presents itself. This is
so because "next time" or "someday" or "when I get around to it" have
become the very way we address the moment at hand. They have become
habit patterns that immobilize us because they have become our very
approach to life.
The only problem with this way of living is that you are not really living right
here, right now, because your life is off somewhere in a future place. It is
not really present because all your "next times", "somedays" and "when I
get around to its" all represent a tomorrow which never comes. Or asked
rhetorically, what is right now but all of your "some days" and "next times"
and "when I get around to its" that all culminate in this moment?
In a more extreme example of the agreements we constantly make with
ourselves about the nature of time, let's take a look at what I had to do to
move beyond my paralysis. In touching my nose with my outstretched
hand, for example, with no more than the weight of my therapist's finger tip
applied against it, I felt like I was torturing myself the first few times I tried to
do so. All I had to do to alleviate such pain was to stop pushing, to wait for
the Proverbial Next Time.
Fortunately for me, however, the success books I had been reading had
told me that if I wanted to get better that I had to make believe that
tomorrow would never come. As a result, I pulled from the deepest places
within, all the while pretending that I would not get a second chance to
make the movements that were requested of me . And sure enough, in
time, all of the motions I was asked to make got easier and easier. It was in
this context that I began to rethink many of the other choices I was making
about time.
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When I then got back out into the "real world", I found that most people
seemed to act as if NOW drug on forever. If this describes you, don't
despair, for no matter how deeply embedded your inclination may be to put
things off, you can take comfort in knowing that there is a way out. As we
move through this chapter you will be given tools that can help you make
your life more of a celebration of NOW!
If you are, however, saying that none of the above describes you, but
something is keeping you from reaching your goals, maybe you're guilty of
waiting for the right time to make your move. Maybe you feel it is better to
wait until the kids get off to school or at that happier time when you've lost a
few more pounds (which could very well never happen and is another way
of putting it off all together) or on Jan. 1, when the New Year kicks in.
Don't wait!
Waiting for the right time to begin anything is faulty thinking because the
Proverbial Right Time never comes. And when it does, there will be other
unforeseen factors that will not make it all so perfect after all. Such waiting
also places your life in a holding pattern of always living in a future, which,
as we've already talked about, never comes.
I can illustrate how there is never a right time to begin anything with how
the old me approached my first bike ride across the US. In waiting for the
time to be right, I kept putting that ride off until the days became weeks and
then months until it was already summer when I finally hit the eastern road.
My "grand bike journey" almost never happened because there was always
a little more training that I needed, or an item I needed for my bike, or a
little bit more information that I had to collect or someone that I had to help
with a project of their own until the longer I deliberated, the more things
there were that were incomplete.
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It wasn't until I stopped waiting for everything to be perfect that I finally
began my ride. As I pedaled east, I asked myself over and over what was
so hard about what I was doing. Why had I kept finding other things to
consider? Soon, I discovered that just thinking about it is really the hardest
part of most any undertaking. When you finally begin to actualize your own
thoughts, you too will understand the actualizing power of the words that
the shoe company, Nike, has made famous:
JUST DO IT!!
Along the way to this realization, you will also see how dismissing any of
your proposed challenges with a 'someday' or a 'next time', makes you, as
it once did for me, a poor example for others. If so little of what you want to
do ever becomes action, this becomes the model for your children and
most anyone else who is influenced by your behavior.
In my own case, I was the consummate Non Doer who led by the perfect
example of unfulfilled potential. I had been that way all my life because I
always thought there was plenty of time. It wasn't until my car wreck
showed me the transitory nature of NOW that I really began to show my
world what I was capable of.
Maybe the mountains you want to move are not as glamorous as some of
mine have been. Maybe you are plagued by one of life's smaller bumps
and bruises and you want to change some of the habits that keep you from
moving beyond it. Suppose, for example, you know you want to quit
smoking but you are waiting for the right time to do so. Let me ask you,
then, what is wrong with quitting right now?
You can.
How, you ask?
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Get started. Smoke one less cigarette or part of a cigarette each and every
day or every few days. Even if it takes a month or a number of months to
smoke a little bit less each day, you will at least feel successful enough to
continue all the way down to the very last one. Every new habit can be
begun or changed in this way.
If you want to lose weight and you stop eating after six in the evening, that
may be your way of getting started. If you know you need more exercise
and you go out and walk around the block that may very well be how you
walk two times around it the next day and so on. And remember to
congratulate yourself, for just the very act of getting started is a victory on
your part. The key here is to do something to get you started. Later in this
chapter, we'll talk about how to stay with any of those new habits you may
adopt.
Which brings us to the next hurdle to overcome in effectively working with
the Psychology of Now. It is the size of the project, many of which are just
too big to do right now, this very moment. In order to feel like you're winning
at the game of life in the presence of all the larger time gobblers that make
up our daily living, you need to do what you can.
The way to do so is to break those bigger undertakings into smaller parts
that are manageable by you. Doing so will help you feel more in control as
you stay in the now because you will have also figured out a way to do
something about the large projects that may compete for your attention.
So how does one feel like he or she is a victor when there's so much to do,
so little time to do any of it and many of those things demanding our energy
can't possibly be all done at once even if we do manage to get them broken
down into their smaller component parts?
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To answer this, let's take a project that is just one of life's smaller aches
and pains. Suppose, for example, your bicycle has a flat tire and you just
want to get it fixed. Every time you think about your unhealthy wheel a
feeling of heaviness comes over your body because you don't see where
that hour or two that you are going to need to get it fixed is going to be
available to you.
To get around this dilemma, you will need to see how you can break your
problem down into those steps you will need to take. To do this, it is helpful
to get some quality quiet time (bigger projects will obviously require more
such time, I talk about what this kind of time is like in the chapter entitled
"Alone Time") to think the project through. Since most of us have probably
fixed a flat tire on a bicycle before, the appropriate sequence of events
necessary to remedy the problem will come to us in just a few moments of
focused such thinking. In looking at your faulty wheel in this way, you will
see what you need to do to win a little bit each day.
Your list of daily mini projects might look like this:
Day One: Take off the wheel
(Hint: If you leave it in a conspicuous place, like near your front door, you
will be forced to do something to it each day. If you keep the project close
to you, you will more readily attend to it.)
Day Two: Extract the tube, pump it up and mark the puncture.
Day Three: Patch the hole.
Day Four: Put the tube and tire back on to the rim and inflate it to its correct
pressure.
Day Five: Let the wheel sit for a day to make sure it holds air.
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Day Six: Celebrate as you put your happy wheel back on to the bike and
complete the job.
By seeing the whole task first in your mind's eye, you move the whole
project forward with greater ease. You anticipate any problems that may
arise before hand and see ways around them. You may, for example, in the
case of the flat tire above, find that you will have to add in a day to
purchase the tire irons you will need. You may even determine that your
time would be better spent buying a new tube instead of patching your old
one. If either of the above are true, you could simply add a day in for a trip
to the bike shop.
When you do something, anything, about all those things that compete for
your attention, even if it's just making a note of it (we will talk about the
actualizing power of keeping lists in the chapter entitled, "Write It Down")
you will soon find yourself traveling down the road called fulfillment. This is
so because you will begin to feel like your life is not spinning haphazardly
out of control.
And to keep you from feeling like a failure for not being able to follow
through with that which you have begun, always build a daily taste of
success into your plans. Make sure you can measure your results each and
every day in a way in which you know that you have been successful.
In learning how to win with time over the longer run, let's take a look at
some of those who didn't. I have worked in and worked out in health clubs
since 1980. During that time, I have seen a lot of people come and go. I've
seen the New Year's resolution crowds come and go, I've seen countless
buddy systems fail, I've seen the moms and the daughters and the Fathers
and the sons achieve vibrant health only to then become soft and out of
shape in a very short time, and have even watched the body's of alcoholics
go from flabby to competitive to flabby again.
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Why can't any of these people hang with it, you ask. The reasons are many
as we will explore here.
There are there burn outs. These people push far more weight than they
should be pushing without first working up to it or they do far too many reps
or sets for muscles that are new to weight lifting. They want the body
they've seen in the muscle magazines and they want it now without figuring
out a way to be happy with what they've achieved on a daily basis so that
they can take that success into the next day, week, month and year. Many
such failures would not have come and gone so quickly if they had known
that the health club experience is a way of life, that there is plenty of time to
achieve their goals if they just make a habit out of working out on a regular
basis.
There are the ones who think they need a workout partner. While it is
always fun and oftentimes beneficial to train with someone else, coming to
depend on someone else for your own habits can be a trap. In the sense
that life and the ability to chart your own course in it all really begin and end
with you, it is not wise to give so much of your power away in this way.
In my many years of pondering over what happened to this so and so and
that so and so, I have devised a simple way to make the buddy system
work. In the case of gym partners, this could work with anyone you have
come to depend on to help you achieve your goals, try to build solo
workouts into your schedule. This way, if one or the other of you gets sick
or cannot make it to the gym for some other reason, you will still know what
to do to get the daily taste of success you need when they are not there.
I have watched the habit pattern of coming become the habit pattern of not
coming. When I used to open the gym up at 5 in the morning, there was
always a crowd of familiar faces waiting to get in. So familiar that I knew
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their walk and could almost predict what a lot them would be wearing and
how they would greet me.
Because the gym I worked at was so large, I wouldn't know that any of
these people had been absent from the morning roll call until months
sometimes years later when I would see them at a shopping center or other
such public place in an all together different part of town. No matter how
much time had passed, we always seemed to recognize each other almost
immediately. When I asked them what had happened to them, their
embarrassed answers would often be some variation of their missing a
couple of days, which became a week then a month until they no longer
went to the gym at all. They had obviously established a new habit pattern
with their lives, they feel out of the groove of something they knew that had
once been a good, positive and important part of their lives.
We all fall into various grooves with our lives. And many of them that are
good for us, go against the grain of how many of us choose to live our lives.
Most people, for example, have a hard time getting out of a warm bed for
an early morning walk or a gym work out, to do yoga or to begin that long
proposed book they have wanted to write. That is the groove they have
worn.
Those of us who have chosen success, however, or, in other words, those
of us who are doing the kinds of things unsuccessful people don't want to
do, realize that we must be content to be different than most. We must also
be aware that the apple cart of good habits is very easily upset. It is very
tenuous and many well intentioned people and things that could be worthy
of our energy can knock us of it.
If you want to get up earlier on a daily basis, even if it's just during the days
of the working week, we must be wary of who or what it is that can pull us
off our path. Maybe it's a TV program that everyone else seems to be
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watching or an ended meeting that no one wants to leave or a phone call
that wants to drag on forever. Whatever it is, we must constantly be on
guard against those things that could keep us from making the earlier bed
time that most of us will need to awaken at that earlier hour we may have
designated.
On my bike rides across the US, for example, which always took place
during the hot summer months, most everyone that I encountered was
recreating.
In 1979 when I was such a novelty for being a TransAm cyclist, I received
many invitations to spend nights on the town, go on water skiing outings or
attend dinner parties. Quickly, after passing through just a few states, I
learned the danger of accepting any such well meaning fun.
The morning after, which by the way, never failed to come, always found
me less than eager to get back on my bike. I rode far fewer miles. I enjoyed
the riding much less and I was unusually tired. I began to understand what
was meant by the winner's edge, only because I no longer felt motivated to
continue my ride. Instead of merrily powering through any obstacles I knew
the ride would present and looking forward to the adventure that each new
day would bring, I had to push myself just to make it from one town to the
next.
In such instances I often would catch myself wondering why I couldn't just
let myself sit around and drink beer and do nothing like everyone else.
While my hosts were always off looking for other ways to achieve their goal
of having a fun time, my goal of making it all the way across the USA on a
bicycle felt a lot less possible. It wasn't until I resolved to wait until I
reached the east coast to open up to other kinds of fun that my ride
became powerful.
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It also wasn't until I began to look at my bike ride as a series of
appointments that I was making with myself on a daily basis that I began to
see why it was important for me to be wide awake open and fresh for each
new day. In a grand sense, one could see my bike ride across America as
a huge appointment I had made with myself. Obviously, life's every day
challenges may not be as extreme but you can move any of those
bothersome molehills or towering mountains of your own by making
appointments with yourself.
If, for example, you want to read more, pick a slot of time at night when you
are going to read and do nothing else. Just as you make an appointment to
visit your dentist or your beautician and you wouldn't think of letting those
people down, make appointments with yourself to do any of those things
that you have been putting off. Whether it's regular evening walks, riding
your bike to work or that journal that you've been long wanting to write,
resolve not to let anything else fill such time slots because you will be
letting down the most important person in your world -- YOU.
Just as appointments will help you clear out any unneeded distraction, they
will help you overcome your own personal inertia and you can use them to
stay on any new habit track. It also helps to know when to make them. If
your challenge is modest, such as starting a small vegetable garden, you
can usually schedule time for it when you know you will be home and when
there is daylight. If, however, your undertaking requires absolute total
commitment and concentration on your part, you will need to schedule
prime time for yourself.
Suppose it's a piece of art or a book that you want to create, You will need
to schedule such activity at a time when the phones aren't ringing or the
kids aren't competing for your attention. For many of us, that time is early
morning. As I write this book, for example, it is now 5:30 AM. Getting to this
place on a daily basis has required that I build my day around it.
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Whenever I begin a new book project, however, for the first few weeks,
there is always some resistance to getting up in the very early morning
hours. The way that I overcome it is to prepare myself mentally the evening
before by having all of the clothes I will be wearing (when I used to have an
office downtown, I had everything that I would be taking with me prepared
ahead of time, my lunch was prepared, my bags were packed, my bike was
parked and ready to go near the front door) in neat little stacks next to my
bed. I even leave the computer on overnight and have the chapter I am
working on and the exact place I am working in it already up on the screen.
There are others of us who find that their prime time is late at night after
everyone else has gone to bed. To be effective at this time, such people
may find that an afternoon nap will give them the staying power they may
need. They may also have to coach any of those who may want to call or
visit at this time that they are not to be interrupted.
Any distraction that may compete for your attention when you get to prime
time should be removed before hand. If for example the only place you
have to do art is in the kitchen and the dirty dishes always bother you,
never do them during prime time --always make sure to do them before
such special time arrives.
Now that we're all authorities on how time really passes, what is keeping
you from seizing the moment? You for example, don't have to waste all the
time I did to learn about the very transitory nature of NOW. I ask you, then,
to use the example of my life to make the most of your own, NOW.
By way of illustration, armed with an urgency to how I NOW view the NOW,
I accomplished more in the first three years after my two-month coma,
clinical death and paralysis than I had accomplished in the 24 years that
led up to it. How I view the moment is how I view life -- with a reverence
and appreciation that I had not before known.
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If I could move the mountains that I moved just to get to life's starting line,
just think what you can do. Toward that end, I will share one last urgency
invoking tool with you. I've saved it for last because I feel it is the most
important tool you can use.
In my own experience, in order to get to a better understanding of NOW, I
let three very important words work their magic on me. They moved me
along to a life that better understood how time passed and to a life that felt
a lot more rich, fulfilled and complete. They are:
DO IT NOW!!
If you use them in the way I show you in the chapter entitled, "Affirm It",
these three little words will have the effect of your asking yourself, "Why
Wait?" If you make them a part of your life, they will have the effect of
placing you more in the moment and find you questioning how you are
spending your time right as you are spending it --right NOW. You will find
yourself asking when is a better time to do this or that or the other, if not
RIGHT NOW!
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Summer TransAm Training
As a qualification for the words ahead, I feel that you need at least one
solid summer of cycling if you plan to make a coast to coast ride.
Doing it on the road
Because being mentally prepared for your Grand TransAm ranks in equal
importance to how physically fit you will need to become, you can speak to
both of these preconditions while out on the road during the longer days of
summer. And it is crucial that you understand that if your Coast-to-Coast
ride is going to be a successful one that you absolutely have to be out on
the road. No longer can you opt for the safety, predictability and time
efficacy of doing it indoors on rollers or trainers.
And don't think you need back road riding to be ready for your ride across
what is mostly rural America. Get out on the road now. And by all means
DO NOT think you have to transport you and your bike to worthy riding turf
in order to do so. No way! Where you need to be is, with but rare exception,
right out your front door! For example, in 1986 as I was waiting for the Brain
Injury Association to get my tour all set up for the Northeast (after I had
already crossed the US), for the three weeks that I stayed in New York
City, I was able to stay in top shape even in and amongst the traffic and
other craziness of that bustling city.
While there, I rode from the Greenwich Village area to Central Park on a
daily basis. Once in the park I could let my guard down just a little as I rode
loop after loop on the quieter roads in and around it. For me this was not
much different from Oakland, CA where I trained for my very first TransAm.
In Oakland, I had to fight through much congested circumstance just to be
able to get to it's beautiful tree covered hill roads.
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And no matter where I've lived or for that matter traveled on a bike, when
headed for back roads, the intense traffic has never lasted more than ten or
fifteen minutes before I could then relax a little on the bike. And you will
need to be ready for busy roads because you will be passing through the
excitement of big cities. Even though you will be getting you through them
on the safest arterails you will have found, you still will need to be mixing it
up with the cars and trucks and buses of the concrete jungle.
If winter has kept you inside, once you get back out on the road, you will
need to rebuild your bike handling skills. Here working with your brakes and
being able to anticipate any shifting that will be required of you are
important skills that will need to be sharpened. Later in the summer, as we
will show you, your rides will need to be done with a loaded down bike.
Change your Body Clock
You also need to be riding now, ON THE ROAD, as much as you can, so
that your body clock can get used to a whole new way for time to pass.
Instead of deadlines, or appointments or event or practice times, even
breaktime or how many days until pay day or when your rent or mortgage is
due, none of that will matter once you hit the TransAm road. If you are in an
urban area, you need to internalize the fact that that the next town or city
center is no longer the eye blink of a few offramps away but often a worthy
pedaling distance filled with challenge you couldn't know to exist if your
time had been spent in a car.
While on two wheels, just as you remember every hill, stop light and
threatening driveway or side street that may have slowed you down, you
will also begin to develop the new understanding for time that you will need.
In fact, soon, your lifestyle will be forced to slow down to match this new
pace. And this is a pace you will to need to know because on your
TransAm, the clock will not rule your every mile and every meal.
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Instead it can be used to casually remind you where everyone else is in
their day so you can plan accordingly. As the rest of the world rushes about
to make ends meet, you can use your watch to know when to expect
commute traffic, when campgrounds or certain stores will be closing, and
you can even use one to determine what kind of pace you are keeping as
your ride. If you don't want to wear one on your wrist, you can let your
handlebars wear one for you as such a miniature clock can be a worthwhile
addition.
After just a few weeks of your tour, soon, you will barely know what day of
week it is. Here, where a calendar is far less important as you will know to
gauge weekends by the lightly trafficked early morning roads of the towns
and cities along the way. Do beware of popular recreation areas such as
lakes or national parks however. In the later parts of the morning, the roads
to these areas can fill up with steady processions of vehicles in all sizes
and shapes.
Hitting it early
Another dynamic to get used to is awakening and soon getting into motion
with the morning sun. If you do so all week long and this means losing your
opportunity to sleep in during the weekend, you will have to make this
sacrifice. This is crucial because you absolutely cannot afford to think of
your TransAm as a holiday after thought. It, like your work day is a job. And
to do the job effectively, as well as have the most fun when you are out on
the road, you must do your best to beat as much of the day's heat,
afternoon winds and work, school and errand traffic as you can.
Another reason, you will want to awaken early is so that you can find a
suitable night's stay for yourself, especially if you plan to camp. Most of the
campgrounds you will have set your sights on will either be closed or filled
if you arrive after 6 in the evening.
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If all of this means an earlier bedtime, consider this a part of your summer
training. Effective cyclists are morning people. And this is a dynamic that
you can learn if you want to show up in such a way bad enough. To better
understand why this is so, after about a month of re-acclimating your body
to the road, especially if the weather has kept you inside, you will need to
schedule one or two overnight camping tours for yourself. If the closest
campground is far beyond what you can make in a day, build your ride
around a hotel. But ride there fully loaded and leave early to get there and
leave early when you make your return.
Ride Loaded
When I say 'fully loaded', I mean carry all the gear you will need to make it
from one coast to another. Whether on your bike or in a trailer, you will
need to shake down any glitches that could appear long before your hit the
road with us next year. You will also need to get used to the dramatically
changed performance characteristics of your bike. If your gear is on the
bike, read this to mean slow and cumbersome. If off the bike, in a trailer,
you will still be slower and yet even though your bike will still feel like the
bike you have always known, you will need more space for the two of you
for turns and parking. You will also need to get used to backing up with
one. If you are undecided about which option, take a look at our discussion
of this entitled, Trailers vs. Panniers.
Either way, even before you make that first overnighter as well as after you
have made it, you will want to toughen yourself up for the road ahead by
riding your fully loaded bike as much as you can. Even if you are not
camping, you will still do well to make loaded training rides with some
degree of frequency. Even if it means evoking a few strange looks as you
ride around town with your sleeping bag and tent and stove and all of the
other miscellany you will need, doing so will prepare you for the oddity you
can expect to become on your tour.
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Let's Ride!
With all of that said, let's get out and ride. If you can discipline yourself to
adhere to the following schedule, there is no doubt in my mind that you
have what it takes to successfully complete a TransAm. Note that I have
not factored in rest days below. Try not to take more than one a week and
make up for the lost mileage by adding what you sipped to the rest of the
week's rides such that you still end up getting the total miles I am
suggesting here for each and every week.
Nor is it a good idea to try to get all of your miles on the weekends alone.
You need to, as the great bike racer, Eddie Mercyx, says, "ride lots". You
need to make the bike a part of your lifestyle. It needs to be with you pretty
much everywhere you go so that you and those others around you will
know what kind of success you have planned for yourself next summer!
Week
Wkday Miles
one
50 (10/day)
two
75 (15/day)
three
100 (20/day)
June Total
one
100 (20/day)
two
100 (20/day)
three
100 (20/day)
four
100 (20/day)
five
100 (20/day)
July Total
one
100 (20/day)
two
100 (20/day)
three
100 (20/day)
four
100 (20/day)
August Total
Summer mileage
Wkend Miles
40 (20/day)
50 (25/day)
60 (30/day)
60 (30/day)
80 (40/day)
90 (45/day)
100 (50/day)
100 (50/day)
100 (50/day)
100 (50/day)
100 (50/day)
120 (60/day)
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Total
Notes
90
125
160
375
160
Holiday
180 Beg Load Rides
190
200
200 Overnighter
930
200
200
200
220 Overnighter
820
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Read and Visualize
To supplement the above, you will do well to read about those others who
have successfully crossed the US on a bicycle. If on your breaks, and after
or before work or school, anytime you are off of your bike, you learn about
what the TransAm road is like beforehand, you will be inspired to train with
conviction. And as you visualize in such a way, as you learn and then apply
on a daily basis you will have built enough tough to know your efforts will
place you in the TransAm Winners Circle!
At Amazon.com, there are tons of titles you can peruse if you do a search
on 'Bicycle Touring'.
Happy summer cycling to all of you my fellow power persons !!
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How to Break Free
Meditation, Visualization, Writing a Proposal for your Employer
(Part One)
For most, the first question that demands to be answered when the idea of
crossing the US with us next summer enters their mind, is how it will be
financed. The wisdom here knows that money can often buy the time, gear
and proper mental and physical training for such an undertaking. While
there is much written about what the greenback dollars of the seemingly
favored few can purchase to make such adventure real, little, if anything
has been said about how the Average Joe with limited finances and time
can create the resources he will need to also actualize his dreams.
We are going to show you how words like expedition and journey are not
activities reserved for only those with deep pockets. Here you will see how
by willing to step out of the mold, by following a different path, how you also
can have a Big Life filed with excitement and challenge. Toward that end,
let's find you both the money, time and where with all you will need to
become a TransAm cycling veteran in the flesh and not just in your dreams.
If your summer's are not those of a student, your job and what to do about
it will often be your first consideration with regard to your system of support.
Until you learn how to minimize your cash flow and how to stop creating
new bills, as we will be showing you later on, many of you likely feel so
trapped under the load of your financial responsibilities, no matter how
heavy or light, that you cannot see a way out. How you can function without
a weekly or biweekly paycheck so that you can stay one step ahead of your
creditors is a total mystery to you. And even if you can put together the
needed war chest that can get you to other side of this concern, whether
regular pay will be there when you get back stands as another roadblock to
any scheme you may propose for yourself.
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We wouldn't be here however, if there weren't ways around all of this. Here
you will need to probe deep within for your most creative self. Here, quiet
time is a crucial element in finding yourself with the expanded such thinking
required to move forward.
Toward that end, I present this excerpt from the chapter entitled "Power
Without Money" from "How to Move Mountains with Love", the book I have
in a holding pattern until our ride is complete. The concepts I detail here will
give you some new ideas for how to transcend any of the circular thinking
that may keep you bottomed out:
Project Solving
Take the notebook you will have purchased for this occasion and in big
words write down any question you want to have answered, any mountain
or molehill you want to move, any mood or quality you want to acquire.
Expect solutions as you pretend that it is here that you send mastery to
your everyday world each and every time you close the door. You can
begin with, "How can I...., Where is..., Who will...". Put a question mark
beside each request, draw a big circle around it and lay it down next to you.
A good way to keep track of the things you would like to work on or those
questions you may want to more fully explore is to jot them down as you go
through your day. You can even set up a meditation list. You can use it like
a menu to pick from when your special hour arrives. Get yourself into
shivasana (a meditation position described earlier in the chapter where one
gets comfortable as he or she lays flat on their back with palms facing the
ceiling), cover yourself with a blanket, close your eyes and utilize the
relaxation techniques discussed in the meditation section above (counting
backwards from 50, watching your breath as it passes back and forth over
you nostrils, step by step feeling your body parts melting into the floor,
etc) .
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Once you feel your awareness shifting away from the world, you can turn
your attention to the answers you are seeking. When thoughts do begin to
present themselves to you, the question you have circled in your notebook
will act as a magnet to bring in those notions that are related to the specific
project you are working on. Often, possible solutions will come in bunches,
so when they come, roll over on your side and write them down on your
notebook.
Then get back into shivasana and try to build on what you have just
received. Keep asking for more answers. Keep asking for new ways to look
at your question.
If you want to know how to do something that requires that you make your
sessions interactive with real world circumstances you may want to project
solve over a number of days, even weeks or months. Whether your
sessions require an interactive dialogue or are solvable in one or two time
periods, it will help to consider the following recommendations.
Spend a few moments with those answers that come in. Then, once you've
deliberated on what you've received for however long feels comfortable,
write it down. Keep your mind focused by asking for other possible
variations. Then, make a note of what does come in. Make each new
thought separate by placing a bullet or a large dash beside it. Try to be as
brief as possible. Only write down enough to be able to effectively jog your
memory when you later review your session. Remember that your notes
are for your eyes only. Do not try to edit what gets on to your piece of paper
until you study the results at a later time.
By writing down your thoughts in this way, you have created an energy
which continually forces new thoughts or ideas into your mind. You keep
things moving in the cosmic soup that envelops all of us. Don't, however,
worry if you can't get anything at all. There may be times when you can't
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get anything moving during the time period you have allotted. Know that
that is fine too. Always affirm, whether you get information or not, that,
when you do leave, answers will present themselves to you all day long.
Tell yourself also that you will move with ease through whatever you may
have in front of you.
With certain projects, it may seem that everywhere you look, there is a
hurdle to jump. Going back to your inner drawing board on a daily basis will
help you to stay calm and remain on target as you move through one
obstacle after the other. Your inner work will also help you effectively match
a lot of the data you will collect against other level wisdom.
Ultimately, you want to get to FLOW, that place where you trust that every
silent urging, every hunch is taking you where you want to go without
needing to stop along every step of the way. However, in order to
successfully weave other level answers into the very tapestry of your life in
this way, making them interactive with the project at hand, you must still
keep the pump primed. And the way you do that is by making quality alone
time available for yourself on a daily basis.
In order to keep these sessions dynamic, to keep you looking forward to
them each day, you may want to vary how you use them. You may want
the peace of pure meditation for a few days, even weeks with a few
problem solving sessions sprinkled in between. Or you may just want to
totally reverse how much time you spend doing either.
Visualization
Another way to develop mastery with your alone time is with visualization.
You can use it to broaden the scope of the morning programming I
suggested to you at the beginning of this chapter. We hear visualization
talked about a lot like it's some brand new kind of magic that requires
specialized training. And yet, at the beginning of the 18th century when he
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nearly conquered the known world, Napoleon made use of this skill. As he
moved his armies around on a make believe playing field, he was known to
say, "Imagination is everything, imagination rules the world".
When we look at sport we also see the benefits of disciplining one's
dreams. In this realm, it is widely known that many world class athletes
employ visualization skills as a part of their everyday and pre-event
training. They see themselves on the winner's stand and they hear the
applause long before the contest ever begins. The winning basket, the
record breaking vault, the day's fastest sprint, many were first seen in the
mind's eye of the victor long before they ever happened. You don't,
however, have to be field general or an Olympic caliber sportsman to get
the benefits of what has been also called creative visualization. You just
need to know that the subconscious mind cannot differentiate between that
which you envision and that which has already happened.
In order to successfully visualize, then, you will want to, again, use the
relaxation techniques suggested in the meditation section above. Shift your
attention away from the busyness of the world. Once you have fine tuned
your awareness in this way, move the focus of your thoughts to what you
want to possess, achieve, or enjoy. Feel yourself driving it if it's a car (or
preferably a bicycle) that you want to own, being applauded if it's a speech
you plan to give or sitting on the beach if it's a vacation you want to take.
Make the entire scene as real as possible.
Add colors, people, sound and all the sensations that you will feel when
you find yourself in possession of whatever it is that you seek. Let your
imagination run free. Dare to dream. Then see if you can make what you
see, hear and feel even more grand. Keep pushing your mind for more
details.
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As new ideas begin to flood in don't be afraid to deviate from the norm of all
those around you. Before you start acting on any of the information you will
have received from the exercise above, however, you might just want to
begin with a more standard approach. Here you may just want to test the
waters by communicating your desired dream to your superiors. Schedule
a meeting with whoever it is that signs your paycheck. If it is a big company
you will want to do this with Human Resources, and explore the
possibilities of your taking some time off for our ride. Perhaps there is a
sabbatical program you can enroll in or some added vacation time you may
be able to take if you were to do so unpaid. If you are afraid that if any one
were to find out about your proposed scheme, that you would be soon
terminated, then do this research behind the scenes.
If it does not look like there are any options you can exercise here, perhaps
you can involve your employer in your ride. Here you will want to do the
inner work I excerpted above for you from my book. Toward that end, here
are some ideas I came up with:
Offer to wear a company T-shirt and pose with it at each state border that
you cross. Offer to write a weekly report for the company newsletter. Offer
to get their logo and name silk-screened on to your bike shorts, bike fairing
or helmet, maybe you could wear a button, all in exchange for a little time
off to bike the nation with us.
Company's' no matter how big or small love to see their name before the
public. Be creative here. Think of ways u can make both of you win!
Writing a Proposal for your Employer
If you choose to take this approach, do be certain to present this to them in
writing. Be careful not to let them see your scheme as half-baked. If it
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doesn't look like it has been thought out beforehand, they can hardly be
expected to think that you will do any good for them or for yourself on your
ride. If for example, you wanted to ride our San Francisco to Washington.
DC route ,you might try his format:
What is the National Bicycle Greenway?
The NBG is a nonprofit organization dedicated to consolidating and
choreographing the efforts of US trail building organizations in laying in
place a nationwide network of bicycle highways that will in time connect the
coasts and criss cross America from north to south and east to west.
Why the Ride? As I build strength in myself as a person, I will be helping
the NBG in initiating a nationwide discussion about the importance of
building infrastructure that connects all of the states with one another as
what will in time become a contiguous labyrinth.
When?
Individual cyclists can leave whenever they need to leave
How?
Each rider will make the ride his or her own with the info the NBG has
provided at their site. They have been building their database on the web
since March of 1998. They have interactive maps and data bases telling
riders where to eat, sleep and play, they have ride partner classifieds, even
an on-line book using a coast‚to-coast ride as a model, which explains all of
the mental and physical tools that are needed for longer tours, along with
much other information that is all based from their main ride page.
My Dream
Talk about how you have always wanted to cross the country under your
own power and see America first hand. Talk about how now with the NBG
ride, that you will get to take advantage of the research we are constantly
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doing on this topic and that you will be so caught up in the cross country
momentum the NBG sweeps the nation with year in year out such that you
can't help but succeed.
I will be gone for
State how many miles you plan to ride a day on your way to your
destination and how you can fly home to be back to work within a short
while after your ride finishes.
My Route
Here you can use our NBG Biking Cities to help you indicate which major
cities you will be passing through. This will give your employer a chance to
see if there are any suppliers or people they sell to along your way that
they can have you visit on their behalf. As your company's ambassador,
some of your visits could result in media exposure for both your company
as well as for your host. Be sure to suggest this.
Why it will make you a better employee
Try here to apply our ride to whatever you do for your employer. If it is
customer service, for example, talk about how your ride will broaden your
view of the world and make you a better people person. You can use "Why
TransAm" for other ideas:
What's in it for _______ (Your employer's name)
Suggest the silk-screened logo and other promotion ideas mentioned in the
first paragraph of this section. Talk about how it will make them stand taller
in their immediate community especially as a green purveyor of commerce.
Draft a Sample News Release
------------------- sample---------------------------------------Thanks to the generous support of ______ (employer), _____ (your name)
will join other cyclists who will be biking across the United States this
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summer to call for the building of the National Bicycle Greenway (NBG).
_____(your name) a _____ (your title) at _____ (employer) expects to
arrive in _____ on ______.
Use the next two sentences to describe what your employer does and then
close with:
By making it possible for _____ (your name) to live the dream of crossing
America on a bike, ______ (employer) is showing how one business in
______ (your city) can speak to the many environmental and transportation
problems our world faces today.
------------------- sample---------------------------------------Create a Web Site
You can use all of the above as the format for a web site. If you can't do
one, or don't want to invest the time or money in a web publishing program,
find a friend who can. If you were to give the above text to him or her on a
disk, along with a picture of two, it should be a very simple matter of
formatting your work accordingly. And if you cannot locate such a person,
you can try your Internet Service Provider. They usually have a stable of
what they call web consultants who can do this kind of work for you for a
pretty reasonable price. You will then want to take the result of their work
and put it on the free web space most providers make available for their
clients.
Professionally Packaged
While a web site is great, your proposal will still need to be in printed form.
In fact, if you can't get it webbed, this is far more important. Most people
still like paper, something they can feel in their hands. Make sure your
proposition is typed up and do try to give it some polish. For example, put it
into a clear plastic presentation folder. The more professional, the better
your chances of coming away a winner.
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Make Allies out of your Co-Workers
While you are going through the above exercise, do make certain to make
allies out of your co-workers. Don't endeavor to do your ride to give yourself
bragging rights over them. Instead make them a part of the cheering
section you would do well to create long before you hit the road. You might
even try to get them involved, for example, in the home group we will be
showing you how to build in a later chapter. Look for ways that they can
take up some slack for you while you are away and look for ways to reward
them for doing so even before you go. Get them interested in your ride.
Suggest lunch-time training rides with them. Build a sponsor page at your
web site that signals their contribution to your ride (note: later in the
chapter, we will be showing you to practice the detachment that will also be
needed here so that these well meaning people do not stand in the way of
your actual departure.
With all of the above said, know that if you are a good worker, the cost of
retraining a replacement for you is often more cost prohibitive than if your
employer were to give you a little more time away from the job. The
question both of you need to ask yourselves here is what would have
happened if you were to become ill or were to have had an accident.
Get Another Job?
If switching jobs and starting fresh were already thoughts that you found
yourself entertaining, maybe you could view our ride as a vacation between
the two. Since it is a largely accepted fact that the best time to look for a job
is when you have one already, it might be a good idea for you to create a
resume or upgrade your old one and start shopping it around. Here you will
want to contact a few of the employment agencies found on line so they
can do the actual looking for you.
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Ordinarily, they will want to meet with you before they go out and try to find
a match for your services. This should not be a problem, however, since
many of them work after the standard work day is complete. Here you can
schedule to meet with them after your own day on the job is finished.
If you explain your situation to them and keep it on the hush hush at your
work, no one needs to know where you will be working once you have
finished your TransAm. Here, of course, you will need to let your new
employer know that you cannot begin until our ride is complete. Or if they
want to bring you on sooner, make sure they know that you will need a few
months off to bike the US with us.
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Magnetizing
How to Break Free
Magnetism, the Philosophy of 2nd Hand and the War Chest you will Need
(Part Two)
Now that we've hopefully made you feel a teence more secure about your
employment situation, let's try to minimize your dependence on that regular
paycheck. Whenever I think about how hard I slaved for so many of those
things that only ended up in the landfill, I reflect back on my Uncle Jam's
(the star of one of the chapters in my book, "Awake Again") adjective free
words, "Do you really want rook? Let's see. $___ plus tax. If you think
worth ___ extra hours working (here he would divide the price by what he
determined to be our hourly wage as baseball umpires) then whip it.
Otherwise more slavery."
Then he'd laugh. "That's how corporations get 'ya rookie, they make (you)
keep buying stuff (they) get TV to say you need (and) then where's it at in
few years? But we're not 'gonna be their prisoners rookie, We're umpires."
For Uncle Jam, freedom was umpiring baseball games seven months out
of the year. And the way he stayed out of what he called the "system", the
need to always be making more and more money, was to objectify every
purchase he made in this way. I'm not suggesting that you be a minimalist
but I do recommend that you begin to question how much the things that
you work so hard for only serve to keep you trapped doing what you
sometimes don't want to do; to keep you weighted down when you are
trying to break free for, in this case, our ride.
Besides big purchases like a new car or furniture, it's also all the little things
that keep adding up that keep you enslaved with no way out You might ask
yourself, do I really need cable TV when I only watch one channel once a
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week if I'm lucky. Wouldn't your time be better spent reading and
visualizing for our ride or for that matter actually training for it if even on a
stationary bike? Or how about the newspaper or all those magazines that
you never have time to read? Is that new shirt or blouse really necessary
when you already have plenty of other options to choose from? How about
food? Might it make more sense to make your lunches the night before
instead of relying on the more expensive, less healthy kind found at your
work? And if you are driving a car, every week or month that you don't use
it is money in your TransAm bank (Hint: It could be the start of your CarFree lifestyle to sell it to pay for our ride!
It is also here that by looking at each purchase from the perspective of how
important it really is to biking coast-to-coast, that you can begin to take off
some of the pressure that your financial obligations place on you.
For many this will seem obvious. But when you are caught up trying to
keep up with what everyone else is wearing or driving or living in, etc, it
becomes increasingly difficult to see the trap you are only building for
yourself. In such a way, in always chasing after the almighty dollar to gain
more and more, you lose sight of your power to make your own dreams
real. And then when life passes you by, filled with someday's and lacking in
adventure, you can't help but feel like having been a victim to it. So, as you
learn in the words ahead to do what it takes to financially prepare for our
ride, you will also be learning how to spend more of your money and
therefore your time on the kind of adventure you only thought others
engaged in and not yourself.
Having been an accountant, having lived on the financial merry go round
from which I saw no way off, I feel eternally grateful for the car wreck that
made the next ten years of my life a hell filled with questioning the mess my
life had become. In being forced off to the sidelines of life in such a way, I
also got out of the grind of just trying to keep up. As such I was forced to
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stand back and look for the essence of what my needs were and not the
actual form they took.
All of a sudden for me, shoes were really, as the saying goes, made for
walking and not for impressing anyone.When I needed a tent for privacy
and protection from the bugs and possible rain, for example, I was no
longer concerned with where I bought it or what it looked like. It just needed
to do its job. My bicycles became about comfortable transportation and not
mantle pieces used for show and tell. The items I bought didn't have to
have to be the newest, latest and greatest with a plastic bag wrapped
around them any more. Nor did they have to be accompanied by
department store music or fancy dressed sales clerks.
This new awareness was really driven home by the fact that my dollars
barely made it from one day to the next. Because I could no longer afford
most of those things everyone else was buying as shiny and new, I started
looking at alternatives. All of a sudden, I didn't find myself beyond going to
garage sales, flea markets or thrift stores and buying, God forbid, someone
else's used shoes, clothing or any number of the many many other items I
had before spent top dollar on. I also learned how to trade around for many
of the things I needed.
As often as I could, I tried to seek out individual sellers and not stores or
markets with fixed price tags no matter how cheap. This was so because I
could use such exchanges to work on those people skills made clumsy by
my brain injury. Here I also learned that to get the best quality for my
money I had to sell myself. In doing so, I learned to make the transaction
fun for everyone involved. Instead of dulling my mind by standing in line
waiting for a sometimes rude sales clerk to wait on me, it forced me to go
deep within for the best, most dynamic me possible. Buying in this way also
became an exercise in merging with the sellers, learning about their needs
and how I could serve them, instead of keeping myself separate from my
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them with money. This would also become an important skill as I interfaced
with all of the innumerable people that would become a part of my
TransAms.
To find individual sellers of those things I needed, I read the free
newspaper classifieds (because I couldn't afford a quarter for the daily
newspaper) and bulletin boards at laundromats and those markets that
allowed such ads. I found everything from blenders and toasters to electric
heaters, even the black jackets I could use for umpiring my baseball games
in this way. I made it a game. It became fun.
During this time, I also learned the fine line between quality and
inexpensive and devised a formula for knowing which items needed to be
top grade and which items were better procured as second hand. There
are, of course, certain items, such as the latest in electronic devices, that
cannot be located as used. Here unless you need them for your livelihood,
you would do well to consider the penalty of not being able to buy them the
price you are paying for actualizing your dream of a completed TransAm.
And yet despite the occasional such sacrifice, the vast majority of those
things you buy can easily be found by accessing channels different from
those you are presently accustomed to using.
For your ride, some of those things you need may require that you mark
time to ultimately procure them, but if you also make this a game, even
keep them on the shopping list you will have devised, this search can
become a treasure hunt filled with magic. And if you love the process and
all those who play the game with you, you will become very magnetic to all
those things you need, especially for our ride.
As you endeavor to get yourself out of the automatic of just trying to keep
up, it is here that a secret does lie. This may sound corny but there is a
difference between trying to keep up out of fear and trying to keep up out of
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love. With the former you will never have enough time or money. And yet
by seeing those you are trying to keep up with as your brothers and sisters
all moving in unison toward the same goals, dreams and desires as you
cheer one another on, you will be far more readily supplied with all that you
need.
The Power of Love
I arrived at the above awareness after years of list making, time marking
and garage sale shopping combined with much study about the
consciousness of prosperity. In the end, it was turning up the love that
opened the door to the greatest freedom from my financial pressures. And I
don't mean the touchy feely kind, I mean looking at everyone around you
and everything that happens to you from a loving perspective. Here you will
want to challenge yourself to find the perfect and good in everything. I
could go on and on here but as an experiment try for just one day to have
only loving thoughts about all that is a part of your world. No exceptions.
From what is said to what is done, "attack it with love" and watch the world
around you shift.
You might even do well to study Chapter 6 in "How to Manifest your
Destiny" by Dr. Wayne Dyer where he discusses this in far greater detail
than what I can do justice to here.
If you can be honest with yourself in letting a true unconditional love
increase your magnetism, more and more ways to get your needs met will
come your way. If you can be open to it, for example, there will even be
many situations where strangers (friends you've not yet met) will offer to
loan you what our journey will require that you have.
All of this is so because on some level, we are all attuned to the frequency
of love. When that love has a focus to it, it goes out into the universe like a
laser beam to bring back the fruits of its desires. This is why as our ride
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gets closer and closer and the energy of our love grows louder and louder
and more and more directed, it will become like a forest fire that few can
ignore!
Learn Detachment
In accepting the perfection of all that does or doesn't occur, what the
science of unconditional love teaches you far more than anything else that I
have shown you is surrender. And in the grand irony of it all, just as you
can't take any of it with you when you die, you must also learn to release
the need for anything you want to acquire to the omniscient, all knowing
force that suffuses you. As you give it up to this unseen force in such a
way, you must also learn to detach to how what you need will be acquired,
what it will look like when it does come, where you will locate it and for that
matter how long it will remain in your possession.
So why bother with list making, time marking and the world of second
hand? In addition to teaching you about the essence of your needs these
processes also help you focus your attention as well as build up the energy
of your desires so you can feel more secure about ultimately letting them
go.
As all of us fine tune our seeing, in objectifying our lives as we move
toward the goal of a perfect unconditional love, we also need to look at
other ways to minimize our cash flow. In addition to shopping second hand
and determining how much you really need any of the given items that
make up your life in the ways I have shown you above, there are other
ways to protect the war chest you will need to build for our ride. This is
especially so if you have found yourself caught in the grind of just trying to
keep up.
Don't create new bills
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If you have begun to eliminate some of those things that you might not be
getting full use of from your life as we suggested above but are using your
new found surplus to add other of life's temptations to it, you are obviously
not coming out ahead. Toward this end, I internalized this awareness with
an affirmation that I saw day in and day out, more than several times a day:
True security lies not in the things that one has,
but in what one can do without
And since both of my rides were exercises in streamlining my daily affairs
in such a way, you may as well get used to such simplification right now.
With regular practice it won't even feel like sacrifice to move forward like
this because of all the freedom it will be buying for you. Instead, it will feel
like a sacrifice to give up all the new time for new activity and adventure
you soon find at your disposal.
Uncle Jam used to reinforce this notion with the words, "Best things in life
free rookie." He would continue his staccato philosophy with, "Sunshine,
Free. Oxygen, Free. Ground, Free. What better than wind blowing across
face rookie? No charge. Free."
I used to think and think about what he was saying here because I knew he
deserved an audience. Uncle Jam was a man who had literally dropped out
of society and it's ways. Jam had once been a star athlete (he even turned
down a pro baseball contract), a scholar and a man who had all the toys,
including a '57 Chevy that had all the women swarming all over him.
Disgusted with the price of such a lifestyle, he found a way in which he
could thirst after his true passion, reading and he supported himself by
being where he most wanted to be when he was not surrounded by books,
newspapers and magazines. In the sunshine with healthy athletes playing
the one game he loved the most. He umpired youth league, young adult
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and junior college baseball. He also called the shots with his own life by
keeping it simple.
Here you might also do well to abide by the words of my early gym mentor,
Angelo Uchi. He used to repeat them over and over again:
Seek Simplicity
If you can make them a part of your life right now, they will go a long way
toward getting you off of the financial flame thrower as well as far better
prepare you for our ride. This is so because your tour with us will be a total
exercise in moving the miles armed with little more than life's basics.
Don't use your credit card
In your minds eye, you might do well to see every purchase you make as
one you will have to haul across the United States with us next summer.
Because that is what you are doing when you place the payment for your
purchases off to a later period of time. As dead weight it also means that
more of your focus and time will go in to working to get what you will have
bought paid for than in to training for and then doing our ride.
The solution? Run your credit card as a bank debit card where your
purchases cannot exceed the amount you have in your checking account.
And if you must buy anything on time, make sure it gets paid off at the end
of every month. Here, of course, you will want not to make big purchases
that cause you to feel squeezed every time a payment is due.
Build a War Chest
If you are not building a war chest (in our next chapter we will show you
how to do so) for our ride, now is an important time to start. Before you
start raising funds, you will need to figure out how much you will need for
your daily road expenses. Contingent upon how austere you can conduct
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your road affairs or for that matter how creative you can be with free
camping and the like, you can get by on as little as your daily budget of
grocery store food or $20-25 a day. Throw in five hundred dollars for little
emergencies such as bike parts and that hotel or camping spot that you
have to break down and pay for and the amount you will need to shoot for
on a 60 day coast-to-coast ride can range between $1220 and $1500.
Where $2000 should get you across the USA with the least amount of
discomfort.
If you wanted to go all out and make yours a lightly loaded hotel tour of the
US, you can expect to spend $50-125 between lodging and food on a daily
basis. If you are gone for two months that figure can range between $3000
and $7500.
You will also need to tack on however much a plane or train trip to your
stating point and from your destination will cost you. Let's assume a worst
case average, assuming you shop around and buy your tickets well enough
in advance, of $300.
So some number between $1520 and $7800 becomes the target amount
you will need to save (or sell things) for to make your TransAm with us real
where $2300 is the figure most will need to shoot for to go coast-to-coast in
comfort and with transportation to the start and from the finish.
And don't feel so hugely intimidated by these numbers. There is a saying:
Intention creates results
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Undecided??
The moment you sign up for your ride is the exact point in time when your
ride will have begun. Sure it won't be right away that your wheels will hit the
TransAm road, but when you decide that what we propose here is how you
are going to occupy your summer, magic will begin to prevail in your life.
And that is what we are doing here. We're making Magic.
Your entire ride and the joy that will result are all about stepping outside the
box of limited thinking that doesn't let the small thinkers of this world
believe in unseen possibilities. And yet the road to expanded awareness is
built on commitment, focused intention. When you really decide, when all
doubt is eliminated, when you actually circle a starting date on your
calendar, your view of your future will become clear; your life will shift to a
far more powerful operating level not fraught with limits .
In the same way that a forest fire gets the attention of most anyone from
miles around, your focused thinking will bring an avalanche of wonder, gifts
and resources into your life. As you give yourself to your two wheel dream,
your family, friends, coworkers, school and business associates will all tune
into this fact:
You know where you are going, and why.
This current of energy will travel in inexplicable ways from mind to mind,
heart to heart, as one obstacle after another falls away. Your very living
and needs will magically manifest for you. Contacts you need, at home and
on the road, will show up at the right time. Answers to questions, the gear
that you require; money, and the time for your journey will all flow into your
daily maneuverings once you've started on the Way to living your
dreams.......
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There's a saying:
The world stands aside to let anyone pass
who knows where he is going.
David Starr Jordan
If Jordan's word resonate for you, and commitment is what you lack, take a
look at the Performance Box chapter.
We're all on a mission here. As big thinkers, we have with the kind of faith
that will move mountains And moving those mountains will be a lot more
important to you when you sign yourself up to live your dreams!!!!
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Bicycle Touring Check List:
Bedroom:
[ ] Sleeping Bag
[ ] Ensolite or Thermorest Pad
[ ] Tent / Tarp
[ ] Flashlight with extra bulb and/or Candle Lantern
Kitchen:
[ ] Stove & Fuel Bottle
[ ] Cooking Pot, Lid & Cleaning Pad
[ ] Fork, Spoon, Bowl & Cup
[ ] Swiss Army Knife
Bathroom:
[ ] Lighter or Waterproof Matches
[ ] Sewing & First Aid Kit
[ ] Collapsible Water Bag (optional)
[ ] Tooth brush/paste
[ ] Shampoo
[ ] Soap (biodegradable, multi-purpose)
[ ] Small Towel
[ ] Toilet Paper in a ZipLoc bag
[ ] Brush/Comb
[ ] Sunscreen
[ ] Insect Repellent
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Closet:
[ ] Cycling Shorts
[ ] Gloves
[ ] Helmet
[ ] Wool Sweater and/or Wool Jersey
[ ] Cotton Socks (2pr)
[ ] Wool Socks (1pr)
[ ] Pants (Hospital Pants)
[ ] T-Shirt (2)
[ ] Rain Garments
[ ] Turtle Neck
[ ] Bike Touring Shoes
[ ] Thong Sandals
Dresser/Office:
[ ] Sunglasses
[ ] Change Purse/Money Pouch
[ ] Camera & Film
[ ] Journal
[ ] Cell Phone
[ ] Cell phone charger
(Tip: do Google search for solar cell phone charger)
Toolbox:
[ ] Crescent Wrench, 6" OR 8"
[ ] Pliers (small)
[ ] Utility knife
[ ] Allen wrenches as applicable
[ ] Spoke wrench
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[ ] Freewheel tool
[ ] Chain tool
[ ] Tire tools
[ ] Spare tube (don't forget a spare for your trailer!)
[ ] Patch Kit
[ ] Spare brake & derailleur cables
[ ] Old dishrag
[ ] Misc. nuts and bolt
[ ] Chain oil
[ ] Pump
[ ] Small Roll of Duct tape
[ ] Screwdriver(s) (make sure fits all screws/bolt heads)
[ ] Solar AA-Battery Charger
[ ] Spare spokes (can also be used for roasting wieners)
[ ] 35 mm film container with white grease
[ ] LED lights for front and back of your bike
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LONG DISTANCE ATTITUDE
Before you begin:
DO IT NOW because:
The hardest part is thinking about it.
There is never a perfect time to start anything.
The hardest part is getting started.
Tomorrow never comes because when it does it's right now and
then it's gone too.
The longest journey begins with but a single step.
Do the thing and you will have the power.
Do what you're afraid of and the fear will be overcome.
Visualize and read about long distance cycling.
In transit:
Life is a journey not a destination, have fun.
Anticipate: Eat, Drink and Shift before you have to.
Establish daily goals: Know where you're going, when you want
to be there, etc.
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Make a discipline of only looking for the good in people and
your experiences.
Know that every mistake brings you that much closer to success.
Genuine belief will insure that you will reach your goal.
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