Planning and Logistics

This page is meant to describe a bit about how we got things in line and ready to go, and how we are approaching the trip. We learned a lot from other people’s websites, so this is our small contribution to the incredible online resource for bicycle touring. At the bottom, you’ll find some links on sites that we found useful for planning.

clearing out the basement…the work starts long before the first hill

The spark.
Shorter bike trips got us pretty excited to try this. Alan found a 5 week stretch to bike from Juneau AK to Glacier National Park in 2004. After we finished grad school, we packed our bags and went for a 6 week trip from Arizona to Canada in the summer of 2007. When got off our bikes for the last time on that trip, we weren’t ready to be done yet, so we thought maybe we’d try to do something longer the next time. While even a single overnight bike tour can be great, it really takes a few weeks to get into a good rhythm. The idea of crossing a big continent or two, and to feel the vibe of foreign places seemed like something worth trying to make happen, so here’s how we ended up doing that.

Finances.
Saving money is key. And, unless you are raking it in hand over fist, or have some liquid assets ready to redirect to biking, this is going to the the first place to start your planning. Squirrel away as much cash as you can.

We did a back of the envelope calculation and estimated that this trip will cost us $25,000 if we are frugal. We’ll see how close that is once we get rolling.

$25k seems like a lot, but it goes fast.

First, we figured in unavoidable expenses (regardless of lifestyle) to be almost $12,000. For us, those include:
-transportation to the start (drive), during the trip (ferries/sailboat and the occasional train or bus), and from the end (fly 2 + a tandem) [$4000]
-health insurance [$100+/mo *18 months = $2000]
-student loan repayments [$200/mo *18 months = $3600]
-bike maintenance [$2000] (reading blogs, you really burn through tires, and have to do rebuilds fairly often, and most people have to replace a wheel or two so this is maybe an underestimate)

Now, that leaves us with just $13k to live on for a year and a half. Assuming 550 days en route, we have to average less than $25 per day, combined. Since we are going to eat like twice as much as two normal people, that means rogue camping and not too much eating out in the north, and cheap hostels/hotels when necessary in Latin America. We might be over our $25k budget, and have allowed for that. We’ve talked to some people, and they inevitably say that they wish they had more $, so I guess we’ll just try to do the best with what we have. But whatever we spend on the trip, the less we’ll have when we return.

Also, we have spent a bunch of money on gear already (say $3-5k), so you’ll have to figure that into your planning. Good bikes are expensive, as are panniers, and camping stuff. We’ve saved a lot of money and stress by buying stuff slowly over the year or so leading up to the trip. Craigslist, REI, and Sierra Trading post have been excellent sources.

Health Insurance/medication
We had to do lots of updating on all our shots, and medications, etc. before going. Tropics and developing countries have a bunch of fun stuff that you have to prepare for. Malaria and Yellow Fever are a couple of examples. We had good insurance, so bought everything before going. We’ll ship it to San Diego and carry it from there. Lots of the medications are available over the counter for relatively cheap in Latin America, so that is definitely an option, as well.

We have a few months of insurance through our jobs, but will have to pick up some traveler’s insurance in august.

Route planning
Our specific route planning has been very minimal. Past tour experiences show that a good map is really nice to have, but that it is pretty hard to actually plan on stops, etc. Maybe planning your overnights and all your roads makes sense if you only have a week and have to hammer something out. But over the course of multiple weeks, we think it’s best to keep options open and talk to people along the way about route options.

We decided on our general route (arctic to tierra del fuego) largely from reading lots of bike blogs and talking with each other about what kind of experience we wanted. Since we really wanted to do something that lasted at least a year, other tempting options included SE Asia though China, Tibet, the “Stans” and across Russia into Europe; or, N-S in eastern Africa. Reading blogs from trips in those areas helped us to zero in on this choice. In the end, the advantage of speaking Spanish was too hard for the allures of the other places to overcome.

Communication
We’re going pretty minimal on electronics. no cell phone, no laptop, no GPS. Yes MP3 player, and yes with a little radio. Our biggest question was whether it makes sense to bring a laptop on a trip like this. We are not bringing one to start, but may pick up a netbook if things aren’t working out with paper and occasional internet cafe/library stops. A computer costs a good chunk of change, isn’t that durable, and is a high value item that you have to think about and safeguard. On the other hand, it could be pretty useful to type up journal entries, etc. Keeping up this website will be our most useful way to let folks know what we’re up to, so if our entries are suffering, please send us money for a laptop.

Links

Hobobiker. This is by far the best information source that we have found for this bike tour. Great journal entries, and really solid information on logistics such as choosing the best maps, etc.