How long is long enough?

The longer the better, seems to be the consensus, but this is a bike trip I'm talking about, so there's bound to be a limit - only question is, what is that limit?

I've decided that time will be the limiting parameter for this trip (well, after the money side of things, of course) as it will ultimately determine the route, the bike (mine or rented?), and whether I come back to a wife who's missed me, or one who's started divorce proceedings citing abandonment.

So how long is long enough? Chicken and egg sort of question - it depends what I want to do really. What I want to do, depends on how long I've got.

Well clearly a week isn't; although technically it would be possible to cover the 2000 odd miles of Route 66 in a week, it would be pushing it, with no time to take it all in.

OK, so longer than a week then. What about a year? Nah - too long. People go round the world in a lot less than that. And that's on foot.

So, I'm narrowing it down - somewhere between a week and a year. 6 months still feels too long, and 2 weeks too short. Between 3 weeks and 5 months then.

I decide to be pragmatic and start with a bargaining position of 3 months. That would be plenty of time to do everything I could want to do, before getting bored, so this is the time period I started planning to.

More of that later.......