In my experience, the hardest part of any journey is making sure you don't get talked out of it, either by your own negative thoughts, or by the concern and fear of others. The concept of the trip is often frightening enough, to think about it in its entirety and to think of all the things that may go wrong along the way, will almost assure that you quit before you have even begun. I am like any other person, with negative thoughts and the fear of the unknown, and the more other people shared their concerns with me, the more afraid I became. So I told everyone to keep their fears to themselves, and I started planning. 

    When embarking on a huge trip. A journey. A quest. You will come across a number of people who cannot wrap their minds around why you would be interested in throwing yourself out into the world and seeing what happens. These people will range from pure strangers to your very best of friends. You may lose some people from your life, either temporarily or permanently. But, if it is in your heart to find yourself by flinging yourself out into the open space that is the world beyond your comfort zone, you will only find regret and what ifs by staying within the bounds of acceptable society. 

    This is the account, as accurate and true as I can possibly record it, of my trip from Oregon to New York, mostly alone on a bicycle. 

    I was asked time and time again over the course of planning and taking my trip, why on earth I would want to do such a thing. Honestly, there are a million reasons and no reason at all for my having taken such a trip. At times I thought it was to find myself, to test my limits and really see what I was able to surmount on my own. Other times, it was to figure out what was next in life, what to do with my life. At the end of the day, I don't know how much why I took the trip really matters, so much as the fact that I did it, and it was amazing. 

    In April of 2014, I was hired into a new position within my company. At the time, my manager and I both knew that it was a stepping stone to something else, as the job was really only full time for a few months as we created and launched a new program. Then it would be time to find something else. During this time I was also in the middle of buying a house, and everyone in my family but me took a trip to Bolivia, where my dads side of the family is from.  Having grown up traveling and not taken a trip since graduating college, I was pretty upset having to miss the trip to Bolivia.  In September of 2014, it was time to start looking for that next step. I loved where I worked, it was a good company, with good people and every day I was helping to save the world. I made decent money and was happy to stay with the company for many years to come. That was my plan. And then, my company was acquired. I went from loving where I worked, feeling good about where I worked, to dreading getting up in the morning. Things were changing, my friends were leaving, and my nonprofit was now for profit and I didn't get that warm fuzzy feeling of doing good everyday. Now I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to stay with the company anymore, and if I was going to change companies, I had no idea where I wanted to go next and I was starting to really get the itch to travel. Wanderlust is what they call it. 

    At home, in an attempt to travel by proxy, I had been reading all sorts of books and watching movies about people going on epic journeys. I read The Happiness of Pursuit,  all about different people finding happiness in striving for something huge. I read Wild about Cheryl Strayed hiking the Pacific Crest Trail by herself. I read Going Somewhere about two teens riding bikes from Wisconsin to Portland Oregon. Tracks, a film about a woman who crossed the Australian desert with four camels amazed me. The list goes on, and they were all fascinating, but rather than helping me feel better, they made me want to travel more. Not long after, I received a wedding invitation in the mail. My cousin was getting married in New York in June, so I filled out the RSVP card and mailed it back, not thinking too much of it.

    My subconscious must have been planning for days in the background, because one day, about a week later, the idea to ride my bike the 3,000+ miles to New York hit me, full formed.  As most people do in modern society when struck with a crazy idea, I went to dismiss it. The farthest I had ever ridden was 80 miles a few years ago on my road bike and everything I needed was provided at aid stations. This trip would require me to carry all of my gear on my bike and it would take months. I would be nuts to try to do this. But then Cheryl had hiked the PCT without having ever backpacked before, and what did she have that I didn't? I was actually better prepared, because I rode my bike 12 miles every day to and from work. I went through all of the different arguments as to why I could not ride my bike across the country, and I found a logical argument to negate each one. It was settled, I was going to ride my bike across the country to the wedding.

    I made the decision at the beginning of October. With the wedding in June and the time it would take me to make the actual trip, I had maybe seven months to save, plan, prepare and tell everyone I was leaving.

    For the first few days, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell my boyfriend, my best friend, my family or even my dogs. I didn't say it out loud to myself in fear that I might back out before I had summoned up the determination to follow through. I started saving money, figuring out the different categories of planning and then started researching. Unlike the trip in Wild, I would have to plan my own route. I would also need bike gear, camping gear, and clothing. 

    I had no idea what I was doing.

    It was mid-October before I told my boyfriend, Chris, what I was planning. He was more supportive than I was expecting, bolstering my confidence and making the whole trip feel much more real. The following week I told my family and best friend at our weekly dinner. My parents also took the news surprisingly well, but my best friend, Rebecca, was not so positive. She could not understand why I would do such a thing, why I needed to take such a risk, and then she stopped talking to me for a while. It wasn't until later, when I sat back and really thought about her reaction that I could come to terms with it, she was scared for me, far more than I would ever be for myself. At the time, however, it hurt. 

    Once I told people, they started asking questions I did not yet have the answers to. Some of the questions were very helpful, forcing me to consider situations that had not occurred to me. Other questions were not so helpful. 

    On Halloween, my boyfriend and I went to a party. I told a few people there about what I was planning. The trip had started to occupy all of my thoughts. Late in the evening, a guy walks up to me, obviously a few drinks in and says “I hear you are planning a cross country bike tour.”

“Yeah, just starting to figure everything out.”

“I LOVE bike touring. You have to stop by the shop that I work at and I can help you with your bike.”

“Alright,” I replied, feeling like I had just hit the jackpot, assuming this guy actually knew what he was talking about.

    Jack went on to talk about this awesome rear wheel hub and all the racks I may want. We exchanged numbers and he told me to stop by the shop soon and we could get started on things. Jack was the first of many strangers who would ultimately end up helping me on my trip. Unlike most of them though, Jack became a friend over time, rather than a stranger.

    About a week later, I made it over to the shop. It was not far from my office but not on my way home. When I got there, Jack had made me a list of the different gear he thought I needed. He also thought I was nuts for taking the trip on the aluminum frame commuter bike I had bought two months earlier. This trip really should have been done on a steel frame touring bike. (Steel frame bikes could be welded at any old shop if they got a stress fracture from the weight of the gear, aluminum, not so much) but it was what I had, and there was not going to be any extra money so aluminum frame commuter bike it was.  

    Jack walked me through seats (saddles), racks, panniers (bags), handlebars, lights, wheels, dynamos (electric generators that can be built into a bike wheel and used to power lights and cell phones and other things) and tools.  Most of these things I had some idea about, I had been riding to and from work for almost three years and had ridden a bike most of my life. But I didn’t have the knowledge to keep up with Jack as he talked about the ups and downs of the finer details of these things.

*Struggling with the planning chapter*