Welcome to the Bike Loud blog! We will try to update this daily once we begin riding on May 23rd and as regularly as possible until then. Our idea is to take turns writing posts and I (Brian Richardson) am up first.
We are one month away from our start date! You may think that, having ridden across the country once before, I might be a little less nervous the second time around, but I have to admit that the idea of flying out to the West Coast on a one-way plane ticket with nothing but my bike is still pretty daunting.
We have spent the past eight months preparing for the summer: planning the route, fixing up our bikes, and riding as much as possible. From my experience in 2015, I learned that the only way to get in shape for a cross-country bike trip is to bike across the country. It doesn’t matter if you are an avid rider on your college cycling team (Evan and Wes) or an occasional weekend peddler (me), 10 weeks of biking 75 miles a day with weighted tour bikes is hard. I was reminded of this on a training ride a few weeks ago when Evan led us on a grueling 80 mile route through Hillsborough and Durham.
During that ride, I was also reminded of how incredible it feels to forget about the stresses of everyday life and just bike. We were only riding for one day and we were just barely outside of Chapel Hill, but still it gave me a taste of the freedom and adventure that I have craved since the summer of 2015. With final exams looming, I keep thinking back to that feeling of freedom and adventure, and it is all I can do to try and put it out of my mind and study for a few more weeks.
That’s all for now. Keep a lookout for more blog posts soon from the other crew members.
