Three weeks...

I've gotten two extra days off for the beginning of my trip so I'll now be leaving on October 6th. Time is running short and I'm working overtime with the rest of my planning and material gathering. This afternoon I ordered a rack and another set of panniers for the front of my bike. Once they arrive I'll be able to finalize my gear list based on available space. I'll make sure and post some pictures of my gear layout and packing strategy.

I suffered a bit of setback in an injury-wreck I suffered on the way home from work this week. I tapped the curb with my front wheel at 30mph, lost control and went into a slide. My legs and arm got eaten up by the concrete and I walked away with some bad spots of road rash. It's painful as all heck but I suffered no internal damage. My bike bike was thankfully saved from the carnage. I'm hobbling a little and missed out on a couple days of training but should be back in full gear by the end of the week.

More to come as it develops.

Here's a couple of photos of the damage to my leg.

Routes!!!

After much disorder and dismay I have finally finished planning a route for my trip! I had to try three or four different online mapping programs before I found one that would actually allow me to correctly save my routes. I finally stumbled upon www.mapmyride.com which worked exceedingly well for my purposes.

One of the difficulties in planning these routes was finding roads and highways that were suitable for bicycling. The satellite photos found on most mapping programs were helpful to tell the size and expected traffic of possible routes. I also got lots of help from cyclists who are local to the areas that I'll be travelling through. They were able to give me alot of great advice on good biking roads. Regional online cycling forums were very useful for contacting these helpful individuals.

All in all it's a 785.5 mile trip. If you'd like to see more detailed interactive versions of these routes then I'd be happy to post links for such.