Navigation and Cycling Route Design

Set of Adventure Cycling Association Bike Route 66 Maps

There are many resources available to help cyclists plan a tour route confidently, especially for trips in the US. A few resources I rely on for route planning are Crazy Guy On A Bike and Cycle Blaze blogs, GPS route maps on Strava, Garmin and RideWithGPS as well as Adventure Cycling Association maps. For me, the biggest consideration for deciding on a route will be the time of year and associated weather conditions. Since my next tour will be in the US, I'll concentrate on what factors helped me decide on this upcoming route. 

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The US is a very big country with specific regions and varied terrain. Each region has it's own weather concerns. At the moment, I happen to be in the desert of Southern California where the heat will become unbearably hot and even dangerously high during the summer months. The heat of the desert is what helped me decide when I'll be starting my tour. Come April, temperatures will climb to the high 90's. I set March 1st as a start date. My other consideration for when to start the tour is attempting to plan for dates where I want to be in certain places. There are many people I want to meet up with and places I want to visit but the only real, non-flexible date I have is to be at the 25th annual Recumbent Retreat on the Oregon Coast September 7th. I want to be in Portland the 1st week of September to spend a few days visiting friends before I do the 2 day ride to Warrenton, Oregon where the retreat is held every year at Ft. Stevens State Park. I'll have to cycle 7,000 miles to make this event. I've given myself 6 months for this ride.

Many people love going 'old-school' using a paper map while other cyclists prefer using GPS files to download on to their Garmin style cycling computer and others, still, will simply use Google maps on a mobile phone for navigation. 

All the map panels for one section

Section 6 information

How did I pick my route? I'll be starting the tour from a Catholic church in Bermuda Dunes, California where I've been staying over the winter. My dear friend, Joni, is very generously letting me park my truck and trailer while I go on this cycling trip. Since I've already done the Southern Tier bike route twice, I decided to do something new picking bike route 66. This is a bonafide bike route which appeals to me for a few reasons. Personally, I think the US is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for cycling. The biggest difference between cycling in the US and other countries is the lack of US cycling culture. Most other countries have a strong cycling sport culture while most of the US passionately hates cyclists especially cyclists on the roads. Even though Bike Route 66 is all road riding, I'll feel safer taking a route designed for cyclists. 

Points of Interest

Section weather and route highlights

Field notes of attractions

Available services in each town

Adventure Cycling Association is a bike advocacy company out of Missoula, Montana. They have been in the business of designing bike routes with accompanying maps since the 1970's. Bike route 66 is one of their newer routes. The available maps include all the information I'll need from the start in California to where I'll take the route in Missouri. I try to use the routes designed by Adventure Cycling Association whenever I can for long distance rides in the US. Why reinvent a route when a perfectly good one already exists? Not having to plan the actual route makes doing the ride much easier. The maps for this route are available to buy in paper and also for downloading to a cycling computer like a Garmin. I bought the paper maps. These maps include elevation profile and list of all services available in each town. The maps divide the route into sections. Bike route 66 has 6 sections. There is a folded map for each section. One side of each map has an overview of the section with valuable information including weather, services, road conditions and points of interest. The other side is divided into panels with the actual map route that can be folded for use in a handlebar bag map case.

Panel in my handlebar bag map case

Close-up of a panel and start of my tour route with written directions on the left side.

Lots of other cyclists have already done this route and much more information is available online from blogs, YouTube videos, Strava, Garmin and RideWithGPS data files.  For me, it's reassuring to read other cyclist's accounts of their rides. Aside from the paper bike route map info, I also use Google search to see what other camping options are available. Typing 'tent camping' for a particular town will usually bring up all the available options. RV parks often don't allow tent camping so it's a good idea to call ahead to verify. Just about anywhere you can think of doing a tour, someone has already done it and they probably have a blog, GPS route map or YouTube video record of the trip available online. 

Google maps bike route with elevation listed at the bottom left

Campgrounds available for my 1st night in Barstow

This tour will be the 1st time I'm able to ride through the summer months. All my previous tours have been during the winter months which made cycling in the northern areas of the US impossible. It's just too cold. I'll be starting this ride a bit early to head east into the middle of the country and expect the 1st month could present some colder days and even colder nights. As long as I'm prepared with proper gear I expect to be ok. Bike route 66 goes west from Santa Monica, California through Arizona and then New Mexico where it climbs over the Continental Divide at 7,700 ft and then drops to 6,500 ft in Gallup, New Mexico. From there, the route will drop down significantly to 3,500 ft in Amarillo, Texas before going through Oklahoma and then ending in the rolling hills of Missouri. 

Even though I bought the maps, I probably won't use them for actual day-to-day navigation. For me, it's easier to look at the maps to decide on the day's route and then plug the start and end towns into Google maps to use on my phone as I ride. Using the Google bike route option, I can double check the elevation as well. For me, the amount of climbing in a day is a more important stat than number of miles. Even though I'll be using e-assist for this ride, I'm still not a fast rider. My average speed will be around 11 mph which most cyclists can achieve without e-assist. I want to make sure I get to my planned destination on a daily basis before 3pm. Making sure I have a safe place to spend the night is always my number 1 priority. 

From Missouri, there are a couple of well-known cycling paths I have wanted to ride for a long time. I still need to figure out the route from Missouri to the GAP trail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I can take the GAP to the C&O path which will take me directly and safely into Washington DC. I hope to be in DC for a few days to explore. From there I'll be taking another Adventure Cycling Route back across the country. The Trans America Bike Route was established for the bicentennial in 1976 and is the oldest cross country route in the US. I already have the paper maps for this leg as well.  

These are all bucket list routes I've been wanting to do for a long time and I'm excited.

Differences between Using YouTube Or a Blog for Documenting Travels and Why I Use Both

Click on the photo to go to my YouTube Channel

Documenting travels is something that can take a good deal of time and requires thoughtful reflection. The efforts can also be very rewarding. Deciding if and how you want to document your travels will, most likely, depend on how much time you want to devote to the process. This decision will also depend on where you travel, how fast you travel, accommodation choices and whether you want to carry all the necessary electronics. 

Some people use email to correspond with friends and family while they travel. Others use Crazy Guy On A Bike, Cycle Blaze, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Some people use high quality cameras to record memories while others use only a mobile phone. Whatever works for you is the right way. Lots of people wait until after the tour to write up their story. I know I can't always write up a blog post everyday that I ride. After just a few days have passed, I forget a lot of details. Without photos and video I often have a hard time recalling what happened on a particular day. 

Aside from time, the weight and space that electronics take up in your bags is also a big consideration for how you go about recording your travels. Documenting my tours as I travel has always been important to me. I started trike touring in 2007. This is well before social media or smart phones. I carried a small point and shoot digital camera and would go to internet cafes to upload photos and write up a day's ride on the website Crazy Guy On A Bike. Internet cafes charged by the hour and this exercise would typically take 2 hours. When I first started out, I didn't know anything about photography and it took time to think like a photographer looking for scenes to capture with my camera. In the beginning, I would often end the day forgetting to take any photos. Followers would remind me to take selfies as well as landscape shots. I learned that scenery photos and selfies both added a lot to telling my daily story. 

Front page of my blog

In 2007, when I first started touring, keeping a blog was the easiest way to let friends and family know where I was and that I was safe.  I put up a blog post for every day that I rode. The blog not only told the story of the day with photos but also had a link to my Garmin GPS route data. This link offered a map so you could see exactly where I was. In 2007, this was a big deal.

It's only been a few years that camera image stabilization and sound quality improved enough to where I felt comfortable doing video. Before the GoPro Hero 7, action camera video looked amateurish. It was too shaky and there was always annoying wind noise, especially for doing action video like I do holding the camera while riding my trike. Once I started adding video, I also had to learn the difference between when to take a photo and when to take video.  This was not obvious to me at all. Many people only take photos or only do video but I think they are both valuable to telling a story.

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Do you want to join my 2023 USA trike tour? Please click here to fill out the contact form. 

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Five years ago, I started my YouTube channel as a way to expand how I document my travels beyond the blog. Mostly, I was documenting my travels for me, my family, friends and anyone that wanted to follow along. My idea for the YouTube channel was to post videos showing what it looks like to ride and tour by trike. It was important to show the view of the scenery and the road from the seat of my recumbent tricycle. I want the viewer to feel like they are on a ride with me.

While actually taking videos is easy enough, making YouTube videos is a very complex process. I typically use 4 cameras for my videos. I have an small GoPro type action camera, 360 camera, iphone and a drone. This means there are files from 4 cameras to go through,  organize and process. Once I've decided which files to delete and the footage I want to use, the real complexity of organizing the video to tell a story comes in to play. There doesn't have to be much of a story but a story is necessary.  Essentially, my videos are only about trikes and traveling by trike.  Since I'm almost always telling the same story of going from point A to point B, over time, I've learned to refine how I tell this story. I travel with a MacBook Pro to make my videos with software called Final Cut Pro.

When I started my Youtube channel, I didn't know anything about video and there has been a steep learning curve to climb over. Luckily, I love to learn and am continually looking for ideas and ways to improve my videos to make them more compelling. Somethings I've learned are, first off, it's important to introduce myself, say where I am and immediately explain the purpose of the video. This is how I introduce the story I'll be telling. Using a variety of shots and angles helps to keep an audience engaged. Personally, I always handhold my cameras because I can get different kinds of shots rather than having the camera mounted, in one position, to my trike or helmet.  I've also learned that my videos are really a snapshot of the day's ride and they don't need to be very long. I like to make videos that are less than 10 minutes. The video should be pretty with cinematic shots of the scenery and have engaging music. I want to leave my audience feeling good and maybe even a little inspired by what they've watched. 

Some people do vlogging type videos where they mostly talk into the camera giving lots of personal information about their life while also offering their thoughts and opinions about headlines of the day. I think it's really important to know what audience you are trying to attract and speak to. My niche is super narrow and I stick to it very closely. I try to show my surroundings and the actual ride more than talk about it. For sure, all I am going to talk about is trikes and traveling by trike. Clearly, I think this topic is very interesting and I continue to have a lot to share about it. I don't think that, as a person, I am especially interesting and feel that my opinions about the world would not only be boring but are completely unnecessary. There are plenty of YouTube channels that talk about current events, news and politics. I don't even follow politics and have no need to add anything to that discussion. The only time my videos will include news of the day is if something happens that could affect my triking and traveling. For instance, at the beginning of Covid, I made a video addressing my concerns about how shutdowns would effect traveling and making videos for my channel. It would have to be a very rare situation that you will hear me speak about anything beyond triking.  I keep my channel very simple. I don't monetize my videos and the number of views a video receives is unimportant.

I think making videos is a far more complex process than writing up blog posts. That said, the story and information presented in a video has a much narrower focus than what can go into a blog. The videos I make are light with very little emotional ups and downs. In a video, I have found, it's best to pick only a few details to expound on. For me, the biggest difference between doing videos and a blog is, in a blog I can be as wordy as I want to be. I can go into much more detail about how I feel about things that happen during the day. In my blog, you get a clearer and richer picture of how it actually feels to be trike touring. I can write about the good and the bad. I can express uncomfortable or embarrassing encounters, awkward situations, annoyances and frustrations. I can go into more detail explaining things I've learned and discovered as I travel. Maybe it's personal growth, things I'm thinking about during the day or fascinating points of interest along the road that surprised me. My blog always includes a link to my Garmin route data. This gives a lot of details about the day's ride as well.

Even though documenting my travels is a very time consuming endeavor, I find both making videos and updating my blog to be rewarding. So far, I enjoy doing both of them. Through each process, I've certainly become a better photographer, videographer and writer. It's possible that each exercise helps me to process my travel days. I've always talked about myself as an extra slow cyclist and some of that slowness is the time I need everyday to organize and store video footage, process photos and update my blog.

How do you document your travels?

What Lessons Can I Apply to Trike Touring from 3 Years of Solo Full-Time RV-Life?

 

My upcoming tour will be using just my trike pulling a small trailer

I'll be leaving my truck and trailer behind

After 3 years of living solo full-time RV-life, considering a 9,000 mile, nearly year-long tour with just my trike will be quite an adjustment. I'm hoping that many of the lessons I learned while switching to RV-life can be applied to trike-touring life. My upcoming tour will be with just my trike. I'll be leaving the truck and trailer behind.

RV-Life

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Do you want to join my 2023 USA trike tour? Please click here to fill out the contact form. 

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Switching to RV-life required surmounting a steep learning curve. I was very, very fortunate to have wonderful friends who are super generous with their knowledge about RVing. They helped make the transition to RV-life so much easier. My friends Lonnie, Dave and Paul helped me in so many ways that I'm not sure I could have done it without them. They have all continued to be a reliable source for good advice. To have this kind of guidance and support is truly a godsend. I knew nothing about RVs or RV-life and these friends helped make the switch possible and successful. Lonnie walked me through the process of buying the truck and trailer every step of the way. They all took me shopping for the tools I needed and then made sure I knew how to use them. These friends also helped me learn to drive and back-up with the trailer. All of them were patient and excellent teachers. Through their guidance, I started my RV-life with confidence. These friends are part of a community of cyclists that have helped me all through the years of touring. 

One of the earliest lessons I learned once I started solo full-time RV-life was to take things slower and give myself extra time to think through what I was doing. Getting ahead of myself and making mistakes could be very costly. I typed up a cheat-sheet to follow for hitching and unhitching the trailer from the truck. 3 years later, I still bring out that sheet every time to make sure I don't skip any steps. What I learned is the process, whether hitching or unhitching, takes about 45 minutes. While trike touring, the time needed to set up and break-down camp is something that always annoyed me. I was always bothered that it took a minimum of 45 minutes. Somehow, learning the time needed to set up my trailer is the same as setting up a tent camping site is reassuring for me. 

Often while trike touring, I come into camp tired from the day's ride and feel the need to lay down and relax even though I have lots of things I still need to take care of. I learned that driving my truck and trailer for hours is just as exhausting as trike touring. I discovered it's important to take a breather, relax for a bit and regroup when I stop for the day. 

Myrtle loves being on the road

When trike touring, I've always needed a concrete pre-planned destination for the day. The #1 priority every day I ride is to make sure I have a safe place to spend the night. I know if I don't feel safe I won't sleep. I've tried stealth camping and, even though I've picked a place that felt safe in the daylight, my imagination always got the best of me when the sun went down. I learned it's better for me to be in a bonafide campground or hotel rather than wild camping. While RVing, I did a lot of boondocking and really enjoyed it. Boondocking is camping on public lands. There are no services and you never know who else will be there camping with you. I always felt perfectly safe even if other campers pulled into the area after dark. It could be a car, van or RV and it never occurred to me that someone would do me harm. Maybe this is naive but I don't think a RV is going to keep me safer from bad guys than being in my tent. Certainly, I'll feel more vulnerable in a tent but I'm hoping that the experience of feeling safe while RV boondocking will help me feel safer while tenting. 

Because I have a limited budget, I will need to tent camp as much as possible on this tour. This will require living outside for probably a few days at a time. I have friends that love, love, love being in their tent and look forward to living outside. I'm hoping I can make the mental adjustment to appreciate the tent camping aspect of touring more for this tour than I have in the past. One thing about RV life is I haven't had to deal with weather issues as much as I do while trike touring. I'm protected from the elements in my trailer. I have heat, AC, a bathroom, kitchen and very comfortable bed. This trailer is like a cozy little nest. If I see bad weather coming that looks dangerous, I can put the key in the ignition and drive to safety.  The best I can do while touring is make sure I find a hotel when the weather looks bad. I think the camping part of my tour will be the hardest for me, mentally and physically. 

There is an aspect of RVing that I never got used to. I didn't like experiencing the world through a windshield. I wanted to be out in the environment. In a RV, I can't pull over whenever I want. The world goes by much faster than trike touring. Too fast. There were so many times I wanted to stop to look at a view or something along the road more closely but I couldn't stop. The RV needs room on the road and enough time to stop. I love taking pictures and video and flying my drone. I'm really looking forward to having that freedom again to explore what's on the road. It's something I've really missed. 

I also think that tackling the RV life so successfully will give me more confidence for this tour. This tour will be the longest in miles and time that I have ever attempted. I'll be tent camping and living outside more than any other tour as well. The bigness of this tour is daunting. One thing that continues to surprise me is that I never did anything really stupid while RVing. I naturally do everything at a slower pace and I think this has served me well. It's possible all the years of trike touring also helped me with my RV-life. Aside from all my experience of trike touring for so many years all over the world, I am expecting that lessons I've learned while RVing will be a big help for my upcoming tour. 

Maybe there are lessons that I've missed? 

I'm expecting to have a great time, as usual, on this tour just like all my previous tours. I'm sure to meet lots and lots of wonderful people as I cycle around the US. It's always the people I meet that makes a trip special and I think this tour will be no exception.

Unexpected Changes

The last couple of months have been interesting in an unexpected way. For almost 4 years I've been following the Ketogenic diet. My motivation for following this diet was to combat inflammation more than for weight loss and I have had great results. For me, the diet was easy to follow. On the Ketogenic diet your body uses fat for fuel instead of glucose. This diet is very low carb, high fat and moderate protein. There is no sugar - at all. One of the biggest benefits is you never have to worry about bonking from low blood sugar. If your body needs fuel it will turn to stored body fat for energy. This is very helpful for endurance sports like touring. I felt really good on the keto diet and had no plans to change from this way of eating. I had already decided how I would pack and cook for following the Keto diet while on tour.

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Do you want to join my 2023 USA trike tour? Please follow this link to fill out the contact form. 

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About 3 months ago, I started having unexpected physical issues. I suspect this was something that happened very slowly over time but, for me, it felt sudden. One day I noticed that my pee was much darker than I'm used to seeing. I also started to pee more often having to get up more than once in the night. I immediately thought this sounded like symptoms of diabetes but dismissed the thought because I've been strictly following the keto diet eating less than 20 grams of total carbohydrates daily. This is the diet medical professionals turn to for treating diabetes and controlling insulin levels. My skin started having a grey pasty color and my muscles mildly ached all the time. In fact, my whole body ached from head to toe. I have a blood meter with strips to check glucose and ketone levels. My glucose level was below 100 everyday but my ketone levels were barely visible, whereas, before these symptoms I always had high ketone levels. I upped my water intake and started to track my eating more closely making sure I wasn't eating too much protein. Excess protein can raise insulin levels. For the next couple of weeks there wasn't any change and I continued to feel poorly. I had complete blood and urine lab work done which showed an alarmingly high A1C level of 7.5. This is a level that is associated with diabetes. How could this be possible while following the keto diet especially with normal glucose numbers? A week later, I had the test redone and the level was 6.3 - better but much higher than the 5.0 I'm used to seeing.

I've been with an online Keto group for a couple of years that meets weekly on Zoom. They suggested I up my carb intake to see if this would help. I added more green veggies and I felt better. I didn't feel good but I felt better. I added beans with the veggies and felt better still. Then I added oatmeal with berries for breakfast and felt much, much better and my skin began to look much healthier as well. 

Of course, the obvious thing to do is to go see a doctor. I know the 1st thing a doctor is going to say is to get off the Ketogenic diet. And that is what I've done. The transition from the keto fat-adapted diet back to a glucose fueled diet is slow and can take many months. After 2 months, I'm almost 100 percent feeling healthy again. My blood work is now all good including an A1C level of 5.1. 

I can not explain what happened that my body started requiring more carbohydrates and rejected the keto diet. Perhaps, this is not a diet meant to stay on long term? I am now thinking about my upcoming tour and what foods I'll carry. To stay within my budget, I am planning to camp as much as possible. I enjoy cooking and know how to cook while touring. This diet change is unexpected but I am very relieved it happened before I started the tour with enough time to make the change gradually. I still have 7 weeks before I set out and plenty of time to tweak things so I'll feel great at the start.