Thinking back to 1999...
How do you plan a bike trip when you don't know how far you'll feel like traveling each day? I did quite a bit of soul searching for this trip, and settled on the Pacific Northwest. I wanted to take a month-long trip, figured on traveling 50 to 60 miles a day, and somehow came up with a starting location of Spokane, Washington, and an ending location of Crescent City, California. My choice of starting and ending points had a lot to do with the area I wanted to cycle in, but the actual points were strongly influenced by transportation - was there an airport anywhere near there? Spokane and Crescent City both met the airport test, although Crescent City hosted only small commuter planes. My sort-of-planned route was to loop through western Idaho, then pick up the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route across northern Washington, then pick up the Adventure Cycling Pacific Coast route to head south through Washington and Oregon. I hoped that this would take around 4 weeks...
So, the extent of my planning was to get Adventure Cycling maps, get road maps and cycling maps from the Department of Transportation in Washington and Oregon, and set a date. I decided on an August to September timeframe and started keeping an eye on airfares.
Then - I ended up with an unexpected job opportunity, so I quit my job in mid-June. The new job was north of Boston, and my home was south of Boston, making for a pretty awful daily commute. Time to sell my townhouse and look for a new place to live. And of course I still needed to take my bike trip - let's keep priorities straight here! I took close to 6 weeks off between jobs, which left me some time to deal with housing arrangements plus take a 4-week bike trip. The week before I left for my trip was pretty crazy. I put my townhouse on the market, found a new place to buy in North Andover, had a home inspection, applied for a mortgage, gave someone power of attorney to deal with the purchase & sales agreement for my new place, gave someone else power of attorney to deal with offers (and P&S) on my old place, kept my fingers crossed, and left town! It was a whirlwind week!
In the two weeks between when I gave notice and the last day of my job, I purchased my plane tickets, and arranged for a place to stay for the first and last nights of my trip. When I made the reservation for the last night's hotel, I asked if they would be willing to accept and hold a package for me - I needed someplace to stash my bike case! The hotel was willing and able. If they had said no, my next call would have been to a local bike shop. And the one after that would have gone to a Mailboxes, Etc. or some similar place.
I shifted my bike trip to start 6 weeks earlier than I'd originally planned - so I had a late June start. It's time to bike and clear my head of all of these job / house / financial things!
