Plan A: Work, ride the career pony, excercise type Type-A personality traits.
Plan B: not Plan A.

 

It's been a dream of ours to take an extended bike tour to explore the world. It is a great way to smell the flowers; scale is reduced below that of a car or bus tour, and the people and places along the way are much more accessible.

We've been working overseas from 1995 to early 2001, without a home, cars, or other long-term obligations, and when it was time to return to the USA, we realized that the best time to try this kind of trip was right now. If we waited, we'd get back into the mortgage/cars/career treadmill again, and it would be harder to leave.

We've been inspired by meeting other long-term cyclists/travelers on the road, as well as books such as Barbra Savage's Miles from Nowhere (and later Joe Kurmaskie's Metal Cowboy).

Our life overseas (Singapore, Belgium, Hong Kong) has given us the opportunity to travel throughout both Asia and Europe. Oddly enough, one place we haven't been able to explore recently has been our home country - therefore, a good portion of the start of the trip will be a trans-America crossing during the summer 2001. The route starts in Australia in March 2001, riding up towards Sydney through early May, then the Transamerica Trail from Oregon to Virginia, with trips along the great parks of the USA and Canadian Rockies (Banff, Jasper, Glacier, Yellowstone, Tetons), the Blue Ridge Parkway, and lots in between. After finishing on the East Coast, we'll spend a couple of weeks in Europe visiting friends and doing a little exploring (England, France, Portugal, Germany), then on to New Zealand for late 2001-early 2002. Finally, for summer 2002 we'll probably head back to Europe and perhaps up to Scandanavia.

We'll be riding our 1988 Santana Elan tandem, carrying paniers and towing a BOB trailer. I'm writing this on the train from Melbourne to Warnambool for the first leg of the trip on the Great Ocean Road. We just completed our first fully-loaded shake-down cruise to the train station, and so far, so good! We are carrying a full set of camping gear, and plan to camp about 5 days a week, spending a couple of days a week in B&B's, hostels, or hotels along the way. We hope to travel about 45-60 miles/day, a fairly relaxed pace that allows extra sightseeing along the way.