draco_1967
Site Supporter
The following is write-up that I have been working on for a little while. I'm still editing and fixing stuff, so I'll be posting it in installments...It's been much harder than it should be to gather pictures from my buddies.
Preparation.
Back in February or March, my coworker, Lars, and I started to discuss the idea of a long trip in the summer. One of the biggest challenges would be getting enough time off together to go anywhere interesting. After some negotiations with the boss lady, we were able to get Thursday, Friday, and the following Monday at the end of June. With only 5 days, we would have to choose our course carefully. We toyed with the idea of going East to NC, TN and running some of the roads in that area (I really wanted to meet up with the other riders her on the forum). Unfortunately, there are 1800 miles between Salt Lake and the Dragon, which would have meant some iron but days to make it out there and back. Alaska was right out.
Eventually, we settled on going west, to the PCH. I planned out a few different options and we picked one that we could pull off in that time. Instead of doing the whole length from Seattle to San Diego, we decided to go as far as San Francisco before heading back East.
At the beginning of the planning stages, we had 7 riders, and a wife who wanted to follow in the car. One of the guys has severe separation issues....As weeks went by, people started dropping out for one reason or another. One had family stuff going on. Another wasn’t confident in his bike (suspension or tires, I can’t remember which). Finally, it was just Lars, his BIL Erick, and me.
Eventually, we finalized the route, planned our stops for gas and sleep, and booked a few campsites in the areas that were filling up quickly. As we were finishing up the route, we realized that 5 days would make our schedule a little too tight for comfort. It would mean that the last day we would have to ride from San Fran to Salt Lake, which would be a little much. I was the only one of us who had done 500+ miles in a day.
I begged and pleaded with my manager to give us just one more day to balance things out a bit better. Finally, she relented and gave us the OK.
The final route would look like something like this:
Day 1: Downtown Salt Lake City,UT to Boise, ID
Day 2: Boise, ID to Seattle, WA
Day 3: Seattle, WA to Cape Disappointment, OR
Day 4: Cape Disappointment, OR to Crescent City, CA
Day 5: Crescent City, CA to Sebastapol, CA
Day 6: Sebastapol, to San Fransisco, to Western Nevada (we hadn’t set an exact location)
Day 7: Get home before it gets hot.
Preparation.
Back in February or March, my coworker, Lars, and I started to discuss the idea of a long trip in the summer. One of the biggest challenges would be getting enough time off together to go anywhere interesting. After some negotiations with the boss lady, we were able to get Thursday, Friday, and the following Monday at the end of June. With only 5 days, we would have to choose our course carefully. We toyed with the idea of going East to NC, TN and running some of the roads in that area (I really wanted to meet up with the other riders her on the forum). Unfortunately, there are 1800 miles between Salt Lake and the Dragon, which would have meant some iron but days to make it out there and back. Alaska was right out.
Eventually, we settled on going west, to the PCH. I planned out a few different options and we picked one that we could pull off in that time. Instead of doing the whole length from Seattle to San Diego, we decided to go as far as San Francisco before heading back East.
At the beginning of the planning stages, we had 7 riders, and a wife who wanted to follow in the car. One of the guys has severe separation issues....As weeks went by, people started dropping out for one reason or another. One had family stuff going on. Another wasn’t confident in his bike (suspension or tires, I can’t remember which). Finally, it was just Lars, his BIL Erick, and me.
Eventually, we finalized the route, planned our stops for gas and sleep, and booked a few campsites in the areas that were filling up quickly. As we were finishing up the route, we realized that 5 days would make our schedule a little too tight for comfort. It would mean that the last day we would have to ride from San Fran to Salt Lake, which would be a little much. I was the only one of us who had done 500+ miles in a day.
I begged and pleaded with my manager to give us just one more day to balance things out a bit better. Finally, she relented and gave us the OK.
The final route would look like something like this:
Day 1: Downtown Salt Lake City,UT to Boise, ID
Day 2: Boise, ID to Seattle, WA
Day 3: Seattle, WA to Cape Disappointment, OR
Day 4: Cape Disappointment, OR to Crescent City, CA
Day 5: Crescent City, CA to Sebastapol, CA
Day 6: Sebastapol, to San Fransisco, to Western Nevada (we hadn’t set an exact location)
Day 7: Get home before it gets hot.