I want to point out that the figure "750 miles" from St. Augustine to DC keeps getting thrown around. That distance originally came from a post of mine on the original thread, but I said at that time that the 750 miles distance was for the Interstate. In other words, the cycling distance would definitely be longer. Ryan seems to have taken that 750 miles distance and put it on his website, and everyone here seems to have taken it, in turn, from Ryan. This is how rumors get started! I'm not absolutely certain how far the Adventure Cycling "Atlantic Coast" distance would be, because I'm not sure of the exact route or distance they use for the Richmond, VA, to DC portion. (Perhaps someone on this forum knows.) Nevertheless, the segments from St. Augustine to Richmond alone add up to 1,020 miles according to the Adventure Cycling website. I think you would need to add at least 120 miles for their route from Richmond to DC, so conservatively, I'd put the St. Augustine to DC distance at 1,140 miles, at the very least.

Having said that, one could definitely reduce the distance for the Southern Tier + Atlantic Coast routes by not going all the way to St. Augustine, Florida. I imagine there must be a decent way to get from, say, Tallahassee heading northeast toward Savannah, that would cut off at least 200 miles from the 2 routes combined. That figure is just a guess on my part.

Another thing worth pointing out is that if Ryan was in Deming, NM yesterday afternoon, and left Phoenix on Dec. 8, that means he only biked about 320 miles in 5+ days. (Yes, he presumably got further than Deming on Dec. 13., but that would also make it 6 full days) And it sounds most likely that he went by car from San Diego to Phoenix. So in his first 12 days, he really hasn't biked that far, considering the distance he's trying to cover. Just trying to keep it real, folks.

One practical question to ponder is if you were trying to get from southern New Mexico to DC by bike in the winter, but were going to travel 1/3 of that distance by train, which part of that route would you want to do by train?