I met Dave in a park off the Trinity River to talk about his bike tour from Texas to California. He showed up in the jersey he wore during his trip pedaling the Salsa Vaya from the tour. The interview below is an edited transcript from our conversation.
He and my boyfriend often ride together off-road. I heard about Dave’s blog and was intrigued that anyone would want to ride a bike over state lines surviving on self-support. At first I thought tour rides were self-supported. Dave’s journey proves otherwise.
THE SET UP
My step-father’s father back in the 1930’s rode a bicycle from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. He didn’t have internet. He didn’t have good maps. He didn’t have good roads, and he didn’t have any sort of driver awareness. The roads were twelve feet wide for both lanes of traffic with no appreciable shoulder. In my opinion, that’s what going out on a tour really is. I’ve got the Internet. I’ve got Google Maps, Google Earth, and a phone that worked most of the places I went.
Check out that odometer.
A lot of people react to the mileage because I had to average about 80 miles a day on the days I rode. It wasn’t nearly as hard as a lot of people make it out to be. It also wasn’t as dangerous as a lot of people thought it was going to be. Friends and family were concerned that I was going to meet up with bad people. Of course that thought occurred to me too.
But during the total cross country trip maybe two cars honked at me in a way that sounded like they were not giving me an attaboy, and those were both in CA during the last few days. But you know, 100% of the people I met were very supportive, and there were parts of the trip that that was pretty handy because I had some trouble that I needed help with.
Quote from Dave's blog: "The scenery is subtly sublime. My heart is light and all is right with the world."
THE PLAN
The original trip was planned out to be about 2250 – 2300 miles over twenty-six days, leaving from Ft. Worth, Texas and ending up at my uncle’s home in Humboldt County, CA.
Dave on the road.
The route included about 280 miles of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in Colorado, so I’d be going off-road in the middle of the trip, then getting back on the highways for the remainder. I made a couple of route changes while I was on the road. Most notably I skipped most of Nevada and took a train instead. The closer I got and the more I learned about being out there, I realized that riding across Nevada alone in June on the so called “Loneliest Highway in America” just didn’t have the appeal that I hoped it would. It was going to be four and a half days of desert terrain with 80 to 90 mile stretches between water, just water much less food or any kind of supply.
View of Nevada from Amtrak.
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