eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

Day 1, DONE.  

We left the Outer Banks this morning around 8:30.  We dipped our tires in the Atlantic ocean and hopped on to get out.  Overall the first day went well.  Couple things we learned:

1. Our bags are really heavy:  We were talking about things we could ditch two hours into the ride.  

2. Head winds are the devil:  It is staggering how crucial the wind will be in this trek.  You can pedal at maximum intensity and not increase your pace in the slightest.  When the winds were really bad we averaged between 9-10 MPH.  Brutal.  When they died down or were behind us our average went up to 16-17 MPH.  We had headwinds pretty much all day today.  

3. Clouds are our friends unless they have rain in them.  

4. Eating every two hours is necessary.  

5. This trip is going to be awesome but we have our work cut out for us.  

About 10 miles from Plymouth some pretty hefty rain clouds and a thunderstorm starting moving in from the North.  We high tailed it and beat the storm before it reached us.  It only rained for 30 minutes so it doesn't count as a day towards the bet Brent and I made (1 hour of rain equals a day, I said it would rain 10 days on the trip before Colorado, Brent said 5, the looser has to carry 10 more pounds of gear for a week.)

We're staying in the Port O' Plymouth Inn "A World Center for Wood Products" they have a pool which was great after the first day.  On to Rocky Mount tomorrow, we're going to start leaving as early as possible from hear on out.  

Thanks to everyone that is following us!

Pictures from Day 1

Well we are one day away from jumping on the bikes and pedaling our way across the US one mile at a time. As pumped as we are for the trip to start, it almost came to a grinding halt before it even started. We were at Kitty Hawk Kites this afternoon trying our hand at a little hang gliding and don't think I will be getting my pilots license any time soon (watch the video below). We took the beginning hang gliding class, which takes us to the top of the giant sand dunes at the Outer Banks and fly at low heights WITH the help of an instructor. As you will see from the video, flight #1 goes just fine, but flight #2 comes to a very unexpected sudden halt. The only casualty turned out to be the shin, but fortunately I made the executive decision the day before to do something that I will only do one time in my life because of the trip and will make any kind of road rash much easier to deal with. I shaved the legs… A video of that fortunately does not exist and Lee now can't stop staring at my legs, maybe not.

In addition to having a good time hang gliding, we had good company on the dunes. We met George Simmons, who is now a retired US Park Ranger from Alaska on vacation with his family. They just finished a three-week white water down the Grand Canyon and are now finishing their vacation in the Outer Banks. They were on the waiting list for two years to go down the Grand Canyon, which from everything I had heard is a very short wait. The stories George told us made us both want to change the course of the trip up to Alaska, hey what is an extra 2000 miles?

One day to departure video and pics.  We tuned our bikes up in a Walmart parking lot, had our first night of camping.  We skipped paying for a camp ground and went back into the woods where some houses were being built and found a perfect empty lot to camp in.

We're in the car heading to Kitty Hawk, I'm writing this as Brent drives.  We packed up all the gear and got the bikes ready.  We still have few easy tuning things to do on the bikes before we go on Saturday.

We'll post some pictures of the bikes we're riding later, they're pretty great and we both feel a lot better to be riding new bikes.  

We just had a story published in the Washington Post this past Sunday the 24th.  Click on the picture above to see the article scanned and here's a link to it on the Washington Post website. 

We've been eating our faces off, aka "training" for the past few days, which has been pretty fun. 

Today we put all gear out to see what we're dealing with.  It seems like a lot obviously but we've been pretty careful to not take anything we don't absolutely need.  We're going on a 90 mile ride tomorrow to Purcellville from Arlington.  We head to Kitty Hawk this Thursday morning and will be hang gliding Friday, and heading out Saturday morning. 

There are a ton of things we will be doing on the trip.  Below is a list of the Life-List items we plan to check off. 





- Hang Glide in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
- Go to a Durham Bulls baseball game
- See the Smashing Pumpkins in Concert
- Camp in the Great Smokies
- See the Ozarks
- Go to Sturgis Motorcycle Rally
- Camp in the Badlands of South Dakota
- See Mount Rushmore
- Climb a 14,000 mountain in Colorado
- Compete in the Muddy Buddy Race in Boulder
- Mountain Bike Moab, Utah
- See the Grand Canyon
- Hike the Narrows at Mount Zion National Park
- Bike the “Extraterrestrial Highway” at Area 51
- Camp in Yosemite/See El Capitan
- Finish at the Golden Gate Bridge

It's been a pretty exciting past week getting ready for the trip, beginning to finalize the route, events, things we are checking off our Life-Lists along the way.  All good stuff. 


So, we're definitely taking a GPS with us because A. The majority of the people in our lives would not let us go without one  B.We are on a tight schedule to get certain places at certain times.  C. Brent and I get lost a lot on the adventures we go on.  We always get there though.  We found this great software called Motion Based that allows you to sync your Garmin GPS with an online map.  More reading to be done, but from what I understand there will be a map of our exact GPS position and display along with tons of other stats about elevation and weather, crazy.  People keeping up with the blog will be able to see where we are during the trip.  More coming soon about the route and what we're doing along the way.   Check the demo for Motion Based.