I recently completed a solo coast-to-coast trip of the USA, what an amazing country!

Well I had wanted to do this for a while now, a solo tour of the USA, San Francisco to Boston.

I'm by no means a touring expert, I've done a few but nothing as long as this. I'm more of a roadie/triathlete so I learnt a lot on the way (how to slow down and enjoy the ride for one), but better that than were the things I saw and the people I met, I'd only ever been to the really touristy places of America so although this was my fifth time here, this trip would be the first real venturing into "real" America.

I arrived in early August and stayed with a friend in SF for some days, the next day right off the plane I was hit by a bout of gastroenteritis (yay!), but soon recovered but it added a few extra days to my stay in SF.

Finally setting off was a fun, I had a last look around SF checked out the Golden Gate Bridge and started on the west coast beach opposite Golden Gate park.

I purposely hadn't planned all the trip, I knew where I wanted to go as far as the west coast was concerned: SF, Yosemite, Death Valley, Vegas, Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, through Colorado. But after that it was pretty much play it by ear see where things take me and what time I have to play with.

At before Colorado I was actually planning to go through Kentucky & West Virginia and then up to see places like DC etc. but quickly realised I'd run out of time before I got to Boston (not realising how windy the roads were there and how that really adds to the trip, so during the tailend of Kansas I made a point of going around a lot of the climbing involved and heading up to Niagara Falls before heading east to Boston (Salem just north of Boston was my official end point of the trip).

There's way too much to write about here, but the trip really opened my eyes, I live in a big city and I guess over the past few years I've become a little cynical as a result. Riding through these small towns and meeting random people along the way I was totally humbled by their kindness and generosity. I was worried I wouldn't have any stories to tell during this trip, but it quickly got to the point where I'd go to bed wondering what interesting/funny situations the next day was going to bring.

A few of the journey highlights:

As soon as I left the west coast I was so surprised how quickly the temperature ramped up 36ºc+ days were a staple of my trip until I hit Colorado, I'm not a lot better with the heat as a result! :)
Yosemite was stunning, I'd love to go back just to do some wildness hiking, it was one of my favourite places of the whole trip
Had my only major breakdown of the journey in Tuolume Meadows, my chain went into my spokes, fixed it as best I could and managed to limp to Lee Vining and a Warmshowers host, went completely above and beyond the call of duty and the next day did a 2.5 hour round trip to pick me up and bring me to Bishop where my driveside of the rear wheel was relaced and I was given another 7 spare spokes :D ... the next day I made my way back towards Lee Vining (where I stopped) as I wanted to see Mammoth lakes etc. (plus I wanted this to be a continous bike across America.. yes a stupid pride thing I know :)
Death Valley is beautiful and hot! Luckily I left early and got to Furnace Creek before temperatures got to silly, ventured out to see the outdoor Borax museum and experienced how intense it can get, feels exactly like a sauna with the added feeling that your skin is slowly cooking :-/
Went to Vegas and I'm glad I saw it, it's an impressive place but surprisingly I was not at all interested in gambling, before I got there I figured I'd waste $50 or so on some bets, but in the end I was much happier spending that money on a nice meal and just watched others throw their money away :)
Hoover Dam was very impressive, thanks to a security guard who took my panniers in I was able to rush and get on the last tour of the day, very cool to see inside
Got routed on Highway 93 to get to the Grand Canyon (checked on street view there was a nice shoulder), although after a while the shoulder turned into cambered gravel, got more and more impossible to ride on, ended up faffing around, stopped off at a cafe and discovered about 30 goatheads (thorns) in my tires, had to pull them all out and suffered after that with flats presumably one or two had pushed enough into the rear tire that I couldn't find them. Ended up stealthing it in Dolan Springs with seemingly 2 thunderstorms coming at me, tent fell down and spent a night probably sleeping 2 hours max. In the end I waited until first light and went up the wrong way up the highway on that shoulder (which was wide and cemented) until the right hand side finally returned to normal and I could get to Kingman, and take a rest day
Got to the Grand Canyon, what an amazing place, no photos do it justice, you just have to go there and see it with your own eyes, put my tent up there and an hour later was at the general store and the rain started and didn't stop for a solid hour, got back to my tent and it was floating on a good couple of cm of water (but luckily bone dry inside!). Tried to drain it but in the end gave up and relocated my tent
Colorado is so beautiful, it was nice to see some green after all that desert, Wolf Creek pass was a fun day, lots of climbing but amazing views and there was a Rolls Royce car event going on so that was fun to see them all passing by. At the top I got talking to an English couple, the guy was also a cyclist and had done Land's End to John O'Groats, he wouldn't let me leave without making me a proper lunch for me.
Kansas got a lot of stick from people when I told them I'd be going through there but the people were really friendly and I'm glad I saw it, although I'm also glad when the plains had finally finished ;) I had my fastest & longest ride there, a crazy tailwind, doing at some points 60km/h on flat sections dodging massive swirls of tumbleweed, like it was some kind of sequel to frogger. Kansas didn't make me a vegetarian but it came close.
I didn't know what to expect of Missouri other than lots of ups & downs, but they do win the award of most people waving and giving encouraging horn beeps as they went by, lovely people! I went on my first bike trail there, the Katy trail gave me some well deserved downtime from the traffic (US traffic in general is a lot louder than cars in Europe)
Illinois was pretty, I managed to reconnect with a friend there and had a rest day, got my bike serviced
Indiana I felt like I raced through it a bit so hard to remember what was there but felt much like Illinois from what I remember. I really loved how Fort Wayne looked, such beautiful houses and my first taste of Autumn with the leaves starting to change
Ohio, was ok but my god, fix your damn roads! It was host to Cleveland the city I really was happy to leave (sorry anyone from there), I picked a bad motel and left the city through what felt like a really dodgy area, I shot through a few reds there and tried to anticipate the lights changing as it just felt wrong.
Pennsylvania was nice although brief, Erie was nice with the state park there which I had a quick bike through
Heading into NY state I was starting to feel the fatigue. I made a beeline for Niagara Falls, the riding was easy enough although the drivers maybe a little more impatient than I was used to in places like Missouri where they'd happily wait for you to clear a crest of a hill before they overtook. Buffalo was a nice looking city and Niagara falls was wicked, did some exploring with the bike and did the maid of the mist.
From there I did the Erie canal which again was nice downtime from the traffic, back to my audiobooks blasting from my bento box, passed by lots of little towns, the temperature was starting to drop now and nights were getting colder and wetter
I hit Massachusetts, what a beautiful state, Autumn was alive and kicking! Up the last climb I noticed that it felt like my cleat was loose, in the end I found my crank was moving laterally a bit, the bike shop diagnosed my bottom bracket was starting to fail and replaced it, was perfect afterwards and pedal action felt significantly smoother as a result
Went through Worcester, what a dump, saw a girl-on-girl street fight with guys goading them on, people talking to themselves, the city felt.. weird. Got to the other side and started seeing about a motel and found everything booked up or silly prices due to the first game of the World Series of baseball (in Boston), whoops! Phoned a warmshowers host very last minute and he took me in and had a wonderful night with the family watching the game and eating delicious home-made popcorn!
Arrived in Boston and was met by a friend of a friend who was going to be putting me up, everyone in the house was really nice, was invited to a halloween party and decided to go as Lance Armstrong, most everyone got it, unfortunately no-one went as Oprah that night :)

All in all it was a 4000 mile trip, with quite honestly more headwind than I thought I deserved (but then again it's hard to know what was normal). I learnt a lot about myself and the whole touring thing, pretty much all of the kit I brought I had struck the right balance, although I discovered that my motivation for cooking went out the window so it was often ready rice & chilli as solo'ing means you had to do everything, often there's not enough time after a full day of riding and I was often too tired to care.

Warmshowers (couchsurfing for bicycle tourers) was definitely a great thing, meeting people, making new friends and getting some good local knowledge and tips was great, hearing about other people's tours and their experiences was really interesting.

I did stealth camp a few times but need to work on it, I think maybe it was too much to expect me to be a camping expert by the end of this trip. I did have to motel it more than I thought, sometimes because I didn't sleep great in the tent, in Colorado the monsoon was going on far longer so each night would be a bucket load of rain and I knew I'd have trouble sleeping in my coffin of a tent being hammered by rain all night.

All in all though I was so happy with how I did; so many stories and nice memories and made it coast-to-coast by myself.

Here's a little selection of the 3000 or so photos I got of the trip:

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/bny2dewvx54po6k/ngX_paTbub

And my complete journey in a Google Earth file, Garmin data links are in there as well:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12739357/usa-coast-to-coast-2013.kmz

(please note with the google earth link there should be a red line denoting the route, if not you might need to drag apart the sliders on the time control widget on google earth)

Someone asked me in Boston if I would do this again, "I would love to..." I said "but the next time to do it as a group would be great fun".

Anyways, American redditors I just want to finish by saying that you have an amazing country, thanks for all the great memories!

Posted Nov 1, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC · edited

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