SerenaClaire

I'm going to be graduating from college next spring, and some friends and I want to bicycle from Puget Sound down to Mexico next summer. My dad's an avid cyclist and bicycled across the US and Europe, and I've grown up cycling & primitive camping, but not a lot of major touring. Now that I'm planning my own trip, and I'm asking around to see what kind of advice I can get from experienced cyclists. Right now, I have a nice little 80s Centurion racing bike which is just a tad short in the body for me for longer rides (I've done 100 mile rides on it), but I'm wondering if I can get handle bar extenders to fix that problem. I'm on a really tight budget, so I'd rather not have to get a new bike. As for budgeting, I'm of course trying to figure out the total cost for this trip, how much to plan on per day. It won't be a large group going, and as we're going to try to stay rural and we all primitive camp, I was thinking that half the nights we could find a secluded field to camp out in. I know things have changed since the 70s when my dad went, but that's what he did and it worked for him. We'd just camp in campsites the other nights to have access to showers occasionally. Is $25 per day an unrealistic number to figure in? And then there's length, of course--the tours I looked at planned for around 45 days, figuring in 6 days of rest. I always figure that if we get behind schedule, there are always cheap local buses that can cut 30 miles off for just a couple bucks. Backpackers and cyclists do that back home (I live in NorCal) all the time. Do you veteran cyclists have any tips? Are these figures completely unrealistic?

Thanks!!