Monday 28 February 2011

Weekly Countdown: 7 Plotting the route

Another week passes and the excitement is beginning to mount, things are coming together, and it's getting closer now.

The eBay items all sold, and in all I made over £200! Quite a result I think, and so I'll start to have a look for more items to sell. However, unless I get a largish windfall in the next 7 weeks (the lottery tickets have been bought!), I think that I'll have to resign myself to not having quite enough, and letting the plastic take the strain.

As I mentioned in my last post, the new maps for the GPS arrived, and so this week I've spent some time inputting Points of Interest (PoIs), and playing around with routes. At the moment, my itinerary is looking like this:


Week 1:
18April, Monday: Arrive in Chicago
19April, Tuesday: Pick up bike & ride to Bloomington, IL
20April, Wednesday: Ride to St. Louis, MO
21April, Thursday: On to Springfield, MO
22April,  Friday: Overnight in Tulsa, OK
23April, Saturday: Ride to Clinton, OK
24April, Sunday: Ride to Amarillo, TX

Week 2:
25April, Monday: Ride to Santa Fe, NM
26April, Tuesday: Rest day in Santa Fe
27April, Wednesday: Ride to Holbrook, AZ

28April, Thursday: Sidetrip to Grand Canyon, AZ
29April, Friday: Ride to Needles, CA (Happy Birthday Simon, and happy wedding to William and Kate)
30April, Saturday: Laughlin River Run
01May, Sunday: Side trip to Las Vegas, NV

Week 3:
02May, Monday: Rest day in Las Vegas.
03May, Tuesday: Back onto Route 66 and ride to Victorville, CA
04May,  Wednesday: The last stage of my Rt66 adventure to Santa Monica - I've done it! Probably overnight up the coast somewhere (Santa Barbara?).
05May, Thursday: Continue up the PCH to Monterey, CA
06May, Friday: The last full day - make it to San Fransisco
07May, Saturday: Return Bike & Fly Home
08May, Sunday: Arrive back home
I'm sure it'll be fine tuned and tweaked, right up until my departure, and probably during the trip too. For example, my gut feeling is that the second half, from Texas onwards, will be the more interesting part, so I'm looking at whether I should speed up the first part so I can spend more time on the second.

Of course, the trip is not just about riding across America, it's about experiencing the places and meeting the people, so if I find somewhere that's really nice I will spend a bit of time there. Equally if there's not much of interest around I can zip onto the Interstate for a bit.

This week I'm going to continue with the GPS side of things, and, most importantly, decide on my travel arrangements to and from the US.

Days to departure: 49
Paydays to departure: Payday today, so I suppose just 1 left.
Funding: $$$Covered by my credit limit$$$

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