What do you do after you've done your bucket list bike tour across America? I struggled with this ever since I came back from my tourfrom Virginia to Oregon last year. I cobbled together my route last year from sections of Adventure Cycling's Chicago to New York, Northern Tier, Lewis and Clark, and Pacific Coast routes. I rode through parts of 15 states (Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon) as well as the District of Columbia.

Every year in DC I ride an event called the Fifty States Ride. The route wanders through all 8 wards of the city to allow riders to hit streets named after the 50 states. Having done 15 actual states in 2018 and 12 states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Hawaii) in prior years, I briefly considered doing as many of the rest of the states as possible. 

That idea gave way to the notion of doing a big U using Adventure Cycling routes: south from Chicago to Missouri on Route 66; west through Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada on the TransAmerica and Western Express; and north from California to a finish in Oregon via the Sierra Cascades Route.

Rather than leave from home here in northern Virginia, I'd start at my in-laws house in northern Indiana. This way I could avoid re-riding from here to there which I have done three times already.

And so with bike on the back of the car my wife, daughter, and I lit out for North Judson, Indiana.

Oh, one other thing. I originally called this the No Name Tour but I decided to change that for purposes of this journal. I had heard that after recording their second album, a member of the band Crowded House referred to their second album called Temple of Low Men, as Mediocre Follow Up. I'll go with that.