We started out planning this tour with a little past experience but basically in the dark about a whole slew of important questions. We had little idea of what our route should be, how weight we could reasonably carry, what electronics to take and how to keep them charged, what equipment would be best, how much clothing would be needed, whether we should expect and prepare for a lot of flats and/or broken spokes, whether we could stealth camp or whether we would always need to find campgrounds, whether an "RV Park" could be considered a campground, and on and on.

In the following sections we address some of these questions and report on what we now think we know about them. At the end of the trip we will come back and report on whether we were right or out to lunch. We may also be able to make another list, of the questions we should have asked ourselves!