The plan?  What Plan?  We had a detailed plan to ride the Transam route, but; plans change.   Sis was going to accompany us, and we were going to ride the Transam because it is the better choice for having cyclist "infrastructure" support along the way and being a more cyclist-friendly route.   But, a family emergency arose that concerns the health of one of my nephews, and Sis really needs to sit this one out.  We had a detailed itinerary worked out for the entire crossing, we had a plan for traveling to the start; honest-to-goodness, we really did have a great plan.   But now, for a variety of reasons, with less than 1 month before departure, Doc and I agreed that we had rather ride the Northern Tier instead.  So now we don't have a plan, just a concept that we will somehow travel to Maine, load up our bikes, dip the rear wheel into the Atlantic, and ride towards the sunset until we hit that other ocean.  As of the time I am writing this, I haven't even ordered the maps for the Northern Tier - hopefully they are in stock and can ship them to me in time.  We don't know how we are going to get to the start - neither of us wants to fly, and even if we did it's a convoluted travel scheme flying from Tulsa, OK to Bar Harbor, ME and likely requires an overnight stay- and then we'd have to disassemble, box, ship the bikes somehow, unbox, and reassemble on the other end (hoping that nothing was damaged in transit).    We don't know how much we will stay indoors, how often we will camp, or have a clue at all about accommodations along the route.  We are hopeful that COVID restrictions won't impact our little adventure, and though we haven't fully researched that, I am aware that the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana does currently have COVID travel restrictions - our route goes through the reservation and we currently have no plan to deal with that either.  Our departure date was based on the expected weather for the Transam route; we are fixed on that date but will now be riding a lot further north and haven't researched the expected weather.  So to recap; we ain't got any real shred of a plan.  

Doc is overwhelmingly busy from now till departure; he is a real practicing physician as well as being the Medical Director of a hospital and is working pretty much non-stop between now and leaving time to get things prepped for his absence, so any planning that's done will need to be done by me.  And as of this moment, I ain't got a clue.   Here's the Adventure Cycling Association overview map of the Northern Tier route;

Heart

3

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

As of this moment, the map above is the "plan."  All we got to do is start on the right side, ride to the left side, and more-or-less follow that red line.  Ok, I guess we do have a plan, even if it's a bit flimsy at the moment.  Hey, with a plan that detailed, what could possibly go wrong?