New to this
 

Hi everyone,

I am new here on the forum but not so new to cycling, I am thinking of cycling from LA to NY for charity and would appreciate any help/advice. I cycle quite a lot but not on a particular bike (bikes owned by brother). I am unsure which bike I should get for a cross country ride, due to not riding massively I would be looking at doing it in 45ish days.

Oh, here we go again! :rolleyes:

You will get some here that will point out that your question has been asked and answered a zillion times so you might want to narrow down your question. I agree with them to a point, as forums are here for partly just entertainment and communication. Otherwise, one might just tell you to go read a book with the information in it - then we might not use this forum much though.

So, when you goin? What kind of equipment do you have or have access to (or experience with)? Questions like those can help you get what you need.

Glad you are planning the trip. That is exciting!

If this person is not a troll doing a spoof on a recent set of threads ... that would be a good place to start.

Do you plan on camping and cooking? Credit card touring? Having a support vehicle? How much stuff do you plan to carry?

45-ish days is not very long for a self supported coast to coast ride. It is more doable if your route will be pretty direct. For example if you manage to keep it to 2800 miles you could do it in 45 days doing an average of 62 miles per day. That said most routes are more like 4000 or more miles. and the large majority take a good bit longer. We took 73 days to do the Trans America Route (a bit over 4200 miles) and figure that is pretty normal middle of the pack pace.

Average daily mileage varies all over the place for different riders and anywhere from 25-85 is probably in the broad range of normal.

FWIW, I don't get the charity ride thing. Why should anyone donate because you are taking a vacation and doing something that lots of people do for fun? I hope you don't plan on using donations to help pay your expenses. That would be very bad form IMO.

I have had experience with racing bikes and mountain bikes. I will be hoping to go in the not too distant future, I did have a look through the forums but everyone has different needs so I felt like I needed opinions personal to my situation. I will be cycling LA to NY (I live in the UK) on my own and with the least amount of luggage as I can (change of clothes, laptop to update blog, mobile phone, DSLR and bike spares)

I will be credit card touring, without support vehicle. The reason I want to do it for charity is because where I work collects money for charity and the charity holds events, some of which are cycling, but are all booked up, so I thought to myself that I would organize my own event so that I can still raise money. the events they were holding where nowhere near as long distance as LA to NY so I thought it would be a challenge for myself. I do not think of this as a holiday and of course I would not use donations to pay for any of it.

eat, sleep, ride, eat, ride, sleep, ride, eat, ride, eat, ride, eat, sleep, sleep. mix it up

I think any bicycle that you find comfortable would be the way to go. Although I've never used it, if I were to do a credit card tour I'd use this seat post rack and strap on a lightweight day pack like this one.

Personally I'd leave the laptop home and only carry a smart phone.

So ... if you're serious about this, did you just want to tell us about it ... or did you have a question?

I've only started lurking these forums for a while after being away from these forums for a long while but I think most touring bikes have a minimum of Shimano Deore so they should be enough. I was looking around some sites and the Raleigh Sojourn looks nice although I haven't tried it.

Everything you need to know about cycle touring can be found, with some research, here and here. Come back when you've got specific questions.

Fit is First for a touring bike.

Best to avoid questions about raising money for charity. Very controversial subject. Just read the treads. You'll see.

For credit card touring, unless you pack really heavy, you really do mot need a touring bike. In fact I'd prefer a road bike for that.

Doesn't smell like a troll.

So, to the OP. Since you are brand new here. . .
Just about ANY questions you have--ESPECIALLY on how to get started--have most likely been asked and answered many, many times already. Either do a search using the search function located in the "Search Thread" menu, or just browse through a couple of pages of threads.

No one is trying to harsh your buzz about getting started. However, your question is overly broad. It's best to wade through some of the collected wisdom here and then start a new thread when you have a specific issue that you cannot solve.

Just to get you thinking--pretty much ANY bike you can think of has been used as a touring bike. There is no wrong way to tour. Your bike needs to fit you and you need to like it. It would be nice if it were mechanically sound too.

Here is a good place to start. Pay special attention to the posts on "The Great Fear" and "You're Doing it Wrong". If there is such a thing as the "right" way to tour, these 2 have been touring all over the country, having a great time for a long time, doing it all wrong.

There are things that already don't add up here. The OP doesn't own any bikes, uses his brother's bikes, yet has experience in road and MTB riding.

Perhaps our questions need answering first before we waste too much time and bandwidth on this:

Age (I'd conjecture 23 by the name)?

Occupation?

Financial resources for the trip (or, if too personal, the daily budget the OP is planning)?

Expected distance to be ridden each day?

When is the trip planned to be undertaken?

What charity and just how is the OP going to get people to donate?

What training is to be done beforehand?

How far has the OP actually ridden in a single day in, say, the past 12 months?

In fact, what real experience in riding bikes in the past 10 years?

I would suggest the OP seriously browse the threads that have been started very recentlyby bikexcountry. They might enlighten the OP, show us the OP is prepared to do some independent research rather than be coddled by opinions "personal to my situation", and might answer many of the questions before the OP even thinks to ask them.

What is your budget for the bike, gear, travel, food, lodgings, etc.?

Just let it die....

Wow...some harsh answers and some help. If the OP is serious, then he should simply Google "biking across America" or some variation. There are some great sites/blogs that will walk you through an actual trip. Another good resource is CrazyGuyonaBike.com. Again, you can read a person´s trip from start to finish and get your own ideas about what to do and NOT do. FWIW, I do understand that this site gets "trolled" a lot, but I also know that there are a lot of people like me who know what they want to do, when they want to do it, etc, but just need a gentle boot up the buns to make it all come together. And if it´s a troll, what has been lost except a few minutes of time?

In the Road Forum, and in some other forums I've been to (outside of BF), some people like to mimic existing threads. So someone might post something entitled "Cyclists and Sports Cars", for example, and within the next few hours, there will be a whole series of threads started with "Cyclists and ... ". Somewhat annoying, but relatively harmless. Another method of mimicking existing threads is when someone posts a thread or several threads which come across as a little naive (such as bikex's threads) ... and then someone mimics that thread or set of threads.

This poster appears to have done just that. His post has summarized bikex's set of threads: 1) charity, 2) cross US, 3) doesn't own a bicycle, 4) talks about a brother who rides, 5) doesn't ride much, 6) wants to do the ride in 40-ish days, 7) starting shortly, without any experience or a bicycle, 8) doing the ride lightly loaded, 9) hoping to stay in hotels rather than camping, 10) does not think of this ride as a holiday.

It's a classic mimicking thread.


Now, if muzz89 is a real person who is really planning to do a ride like this ... and who has accidentally created a mimicking thread ... then it would really help us help him if he were to return to the thread and answer the questions which have been posed.

Tks, Machka! All good points and helped me understand the across-the-board reactions. Geez, I´ve got to stop taking people at "face" value.

You're really reaching here... I mean congratulations for getting up to 10 but there's nothing compelling here. If you give people a chance, a little support and guidance they just might surprise you.

Did you read my last sentence ... the one you didn't quote?


(And you're still new here, not even a year yet. Just wait till you've been here a while and have had a chance to see what goes on. :))

I'm more interested in the bike stuff.

Yes, me too ... I wish there were no mimicking threads, trolls, etc. But some people find doing that sort of thing amusing.


Anyway, it could be that this person has accidently created a classic mimic thread. If that's the case, that's a bit funny, and he really needs to come back and elaborate on his situation.

I'm not sure if the OP is a troll or not. But someone needs to write a "touring bot" that could pass a Turing Test. The bot could at least dialog for a while with all posters that ask "What bike should I get for coast-to-coast bicycle tour?" or "What gear should I carry?". ;)