Originally Posted by bikenh

Exactly. Try riding with me sometime and you'll quickly come to understand the reason I do things the way I do them. I never stick to a preplanned route, one way or another it never happens. I don't carry paper maps on me and I don't carry a Stupid/Idoitphone on me either. I do everything on a laptop for routing. Since I typically end up leaving later than planned one reason or another it always seems to happen. As a result I end up riding 120-150 miles a day, not your paltry 50-60 miles a day...heck I typically end up with most of those miles in the PM hours. If I have 40 miles in by noontime I know I can end up with 120-130 miles by 7PM. Again, I have no other choice since I always end up seeming to get the trip started when I had planned to. Between road closures, finding Bikes Prohibited signs, etc I end up having to reroute. My plans for overnight stays never go as planned so I'm always looking for new places/towns to stay in. I don't spend money on campsites and I don't take the chance of getting told to get out of town by cops...if you don't ask you don't have to worry. I find my on campsites based on my own criteria. As I get into town around 7PM or so in the evening I stop to grab supper and then set out to find the route I want to use the next day and start looking at possible locations to camp both the current evening and the next evening as well. The only way I can do that is to do it online. I have to get internet access somewhere and most public libraries aren't open at 8-10PM in the evening...heck they close even earlier than that on the weekends. Since I don't like sitting outside in mosquito infested territory all that long I would much rather be indoors away from the bugs. McDonalds don't look so bad now does it.

For people where things always go exactly as planned my strategy would sound pretty crappy. But most don't have their plans always go according to schedule and you have to have a way to change your plans as you go. In my case, they change everyday and sometimes they change throughout the day as well. Their have been several days thus far when the route I was going to use for the day changed during that very day and I had to stop and get online to reroute the trip.

Something about packing up a wet tent when I can pack it up mostly to totally dry...doesn't sound appealing to me. I'll go for things that sound far more sensible.