Good news: Here is the final bike setup all packed and ready to go. It handles like a charm and while the bike is obviously a heavier handle, it still rides very nicely. The only two things missing are my Sony Reader and the 2-liter hydration pack that will sit on the rear rack under the rack pack.

Bad news: I finally caved in to personal pressure and weighed the rack pack, which sits sideways across the rear panniers. I have long known that the four main panniers weighed a total of 46 pounds and that meant for me to stay inside 50 pounds total, with everthing, the rack pack had to weigh no more than 4 pounds — even though it holds the tent, footprint, sleeping bag, bag liner, sleeping pad, bike cover, four propane canisters, sandals, and a spare tire (and a few miscellaneous things). I knew it was going to be close so have been very, very hesitant to actually weigh it. I admit it, i'm a coward.

OK, so maybe "close" wasn't the right word. It didn't make it. The total for everything seems to come in at 65 pounds. I can't really say that this is 15 pounds overweight because the 50 pound limit was just a number i pulled out of my ... well, lets just say i made it up. It was a hope, a dream. But, this is conterbalanced with another good news, so given that that makes two good news versus only one bad news, overall i won the lotto, so to speak.

Good news #2: The 65 pounds will only be seen, felt, put up with, once every twenty days. The entire rear right pannier is full of freeze dried meals. The top quarter/third of the front left pannier is instant oatmeal. There is one propane canister in the rear left pannier and four more in the rack pack. I will use some of each of these every day of the ride and the weight will decrease accordingly. Since i'm carrying enough food for twenty days at a time, at which point i'll stop and restock, by the time i get into the third week of each twenty day cycle, i will, i am thinking, be closer to 45 pounds.

Oh, so much baggage.
Affects your entire day.
Anger. Why hold on?

Spent the morning packing everything in the panniers, or more accurately trying to pack everything in the panniers. The 20 freeze dried meals fill up one entire rear pannier so everything else has to fit in the rest. Soooooo... adjustments needed to be made — small adjustments, but tweaks none-the-less. I think i could have stuffed everything i left out into the rear stuff sack that sitts sideways over the rear panniers, but i would rather go too light than too heavy, so am adjusting downwards.

I'm keeping the light fleece pull-over jacket and leaving the wind breaker at home. If i need something in addition to the fleece, or need something more windproof, i'll pull the rain coat out and use that; it's also obviously wind proof. Instead of taking 3 pairs of riding shorts, i'm taking 2. I'm only taking 1 of each type of shirt, a long-sleeve, short-sleeve, and singlet. I'll mix and match as necessary for the weather conditions. I'm leaving the light tights at home as well. If i need the extra lower body warmth, i'll ride in my rain pants, like i did when i was riding this winter. I found when i was riding when the temperature was in the lower 30s (°F) that the rain pants kept me warmer than thights because they were completely windproof, yet breathable. I prefer the tights because they're quieter, but,...

As much as i want to take my small radio to listen to an occasional baseball game, because room is tight i'm leaving it at home. But, to be honest with myself, i can very, very easily imagine that i would never listen to it anyway. More likely than not, i'll be camping around other people each night (so will be chatting), and i'll have my mp3 player and Sony Reader. I doubt i'll miss the radio.

Because the food takes up all of one pannier, that means i'll be stuffed to the gills at the start of each 20 day cycle. Then, as i eat the food, that pannier will empty and the bike will get lighter. Then each time i stop and restock, i start the cycle all over again.

OK, upstairs to brush my teeth, then out to ride to my favorite lunch park with all the panniers, except the stuff sack (w/ tent, sleeping bag, etc.). I'll add that tomorrow.

.........

And now back home.....

Today was milestone; i packed up all the food supplies that i'm sending to myself via General Delivery along the way and mailed the first of the boxes off this afternoon. It turns out that it will take less than a week to get there and that means it will arrive dangerously close to the point that i arrive afer the close of the 30 window that post offices are willing to hold these boxes. When i got home i called the post office in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky and explained to them and the guy there said not to worry. He took my name and promised that he would ensure that my box would be sitting there waiting for me no matter when i arrived. My sister now has the remaining two boxes and we worked out a schedule for her to mail them. This task is now crossed off my list.

My other sister gave me a $100 McDonalds gift card usable at any McDonalds around the country. My plans are to be on the road for eleven weeks, but if i only look at the first ten weeks, that means i get $10 of free food each week for those ten weeks. If i can eat for $5 per meal, that means two free meals a week. I'm very happy. Now i have to look online and see if there are McDonalds all accross the country. I seem to remember seeing an infographic online once that showed out west there weren't all that many McDonalds. That's something i'll research this weekend. If it turns out to be true, i'll use all of the card while still east of Colorado.

My friend from Tokyo called the other day. When he first contacted me he was going to come over and ride with me through Montano, Idaho, and Oregon. A while later that went down to just Idaho and Oregon. Now he says all he can do is come over and meet me in Prineville, Oregon and ride with me for the last four days. I'm now back to begging for friends from among the people i meet on the side of the roads.

I'm in a terrible quandry as i try to figure out what to take off my mp3 player in order to squeeze a couple of Beethoven's string quartets on as well. The Sony web site had a special a week ago and was selling a 16G mp3 player for $75 and i almost bought one just to eliminate this need to choose what to take off and what to put on. But in the end, i didn't buy it because i know after this ride is over, i really don't need it and my current 4G player will suffice. Wish i wasn't so rational sometimes.

I added a few new books to my Sony Reader as i also go through the process of trying to figure out what i want to read while on the road. I added Thich Naht Hahn's "Understanding Our Mind." This is the very first eBook i have ever bought, and even though i already have a paperback copy on my bookshelves, have had it for several years, i wanted to read it again on the road so had to break down and buy it. I also want to (re)read Dainin Katagiri's "Each Moment Is The Universe" while on the road, but didn't see that as an eBook, so have been in the process of typing the entire book into my computer and putting each chapter on the Reader as an individual .rtf file.

Other possible book reads are Anthony Robbins' "Awaken The Giant Within," George Leanord's "Mastery," Brian Tracy's "Create Your Own Future," and Lester Levenson's "The Keys To Ultimate Freedom." If i remember correctly, Levenson is the founder of The Sedona Method? Anyway, he wrote this before he got that far in his journey. And of course, i'm sure i'll pick away at bits and pieces of Nisargadatta's "I Am That" now and then as well. That's an old staple, as is Dogen Zenji's "Shobogenzo" and Daido Loori's dharma discourses i have gotten from the Zen Mountain Monastery web site.

I'm going to put my new Continental tires back on my bike this weekend so there will be one week's worth of riding on them before heading out. This way, if there are any problems, they'll become apparent here at home and not out on the road in Virginia. I'm looking forward to this as they really rode nicely when i had them on for one 30 mile ride a month ago.

Unfortunately i have a mild case of Racoon Eyes after spending all of Tuesday out on my bike under beautiful cloudless skies and 80°F weather while wearing sunglasses. I haven't worn them since in an attempt to get some sun and redecue the effect; it looked pretty wierd on Tuesday.

More later....

Boxes will go to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Scott City, Kansas, and Virginia City, Montana. I called each of them this morning to get the addressing they wanted and verified that they will hold the boxes for 30 days. All agreed and my sister has agreed to mail them for me.

I still have to figure out how to recycle the used propane canisters while on the road — this will take some more thinking. I can't carry them with me, i don't have the space and i don't want the weight. If worse comes to worse and i can't find a solution, i'll have to mail the empty canisters back to my house and deal with them when i get back home. But that's a waste of money. Hmmmmmm....

A friend is driving me to Virginia and we leave on Tudesay the 27th. Get to Williamsburg on Wednesday afternoon and then sightsee on Thursday and Friday at Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown, and whatever else is historical.

Start riding on Saturday, May 1. Will follow the schedule laid out in Bicycling Coast To Coast and you can see the day-to-day details in a link on the Schedule page. I added all the towns i'll stop in to a Google calendar and the link points to that. Look below the three calendars i have on that page. Will make a detour off her schedule to drop down and visit Mammoth Cave National Park. I was there when i was as small as my bicycle is tall and have clear memories of visiting some caves, but want to visit them again so i really know what i remember. I'll also take some time to visit Royal Gorge in Colorado. Other than that, i don' t have other plans to detour, but it could well happen, as long as i can make up the time in later days.

Plans call for arriving in Florence, OR, and the Pacific Ocean, on the 16th of July. Will backtrack and ride back to Eugene on the 17th, where i will drop my bike off at Paul's Bicycle Way of Life bike shop so that they can ship it back to my house in Lockport for me. That way i don't have to travel with it. Have already talked to them (email) and made the appointment. Great people. $40 to them for their work (a great deal) and then i pay the FedEx shipping. But they do all the work.

From there i'll go up to Portland to visit the Japanese Gardens and Powell's Books, and whatever else looks interesting for two days. Haven't yet reserved a hotel room, but want to do it before leaving so i can find a discount online. From Portland, i fly home on the 21st. I bought my ticket online the other day. Because i'm using frequent flyer miles, it will be a very long day. Leave Portland at 5:45 am, transfer in Denver, transfer again in Des Moines, arrive at Chicago O'Hare at 2:40 pm, get out of the airport and take an hour train ride to the city, walk a few blocks to Union Station, catch an evening Metra train from there to Lockport, arriving at about 5:50, assuming i catch the 4:50 train at Union Station, then a 10 minute walk to the house. Whew.

I have all my food and gear. Everything seems to be in order. I put my new tires on the bike to see how they rode and found them to be wonderful. In fact, i hated to take them off the next day but i don't want to waste the miles on them. They have to hold up for 4,300 miles as is.

Still don't know how i will get everything on my equipment list into the 5 panniers i'll be carrying. I have to force myself to fully pack all of them some day next week just to get it finished and decided. 20 freeze dried meals completely fill one of the larger rear panniers. That means everything else has to fit in the other 4. It is going to be interesting.

I have figured out where i want to drop ship my food so that i can pick up my refills once on the road. Mammoth Cave National Park, Scott City, KS, and Virginia City, MT. Now i have to call the post office in each town to see how to address the box and see if they have any special procedure i should follow. Maybe i can do that tomorrow. If not, early next week at the latest.

The weather here has been warm and wonderful, but incredibly windy, so the training rides are mostly enjoyable. I rationalize the winds as Mother Nature just forcing me to get in good training rides for conditions i'll probably find on the road anyhow. I'm not riding in the rain because i don't want the practice in those conditions. I'll just deal with it when it happens. I'm not riding every day because that would change the TransAm from 3 months of riding every day to 4 or 5 months of riding every day. I don't want to burn out so am riding no more than 4 times a week. OK, i did 5 days one week, but not usually.

I always carry two of the panniers fully loaded when i ride just to get used to the weight and handling. In a week or so, i'll start carrying four of them, or maybe all five. Even with only two, when the wind is blowing, they act more like sails than panniers. With 24 mph winds the other day, riding between the white line and the gravel shoulder (maybe 8"?) was no easy task. The wind had me moving all over the place, especially when a truck would rumble past. As an aside, i put my flag on the back of my bike. A 6 foot job sticking way up were everyone can see it. I feel more comfortable with it even if it doesn't really make me much mroe visible.

The only issue that i can't get off my mind is what i will do with all my "stuff" when i run into a grocery store or restaurant. I don't really worry about it because thousands of people do this ride each year (i think) so it will just work itself out, but i just keep thinking about it. Coming from around Chiacago, my brain says that as soon as you walk out of sight of the bike, all your bags will grow legs and sprint away. I can lock up the bike, but i can't lock up the bags or lock them to the bike. What do people do on the road? Hmmmmm..... this will be interesting.

My sister showed me a Yoga pose to help with my IT Band, but when she showed it to me all i could do, after i stopped laughing, was to ask her, "you expect me to bend like that???" I think i'll stick with the two stretches i already know and use to keep it under control. Or, maybe i'll be lucky and it will be all better by the time May gets here. Strangely enough, yoga makes it worse than riding my bike. (I quit running 2 weeks ago. It's more productive to spend the time on my bike.)

Yes, it's official, i'm getting very excited now that we have entered April. Wish i could just pack up and leave next week, but the weather will be better in May.

The more i think about it, even though i'm taking my Sony Reader, and agonizing over what i should plan to get read while out on the road, my gut has been telling me that in the end i will probably read very little. Instead, i'll read the guidebook each night and talk to the people i meet. Then fall soundly asleep and an ungodly early hour each night because i'm tired. We'll see.

4,300 miles. Does that sound like an awfully long distance to anyone besides me?? What was he thinking? But, it's only 77 days and no one day sounds impossible, so it can't be all that difficult.

I have been using the Complete Handlebar Guide (HG) as my main guidebook as go through the schedule and verifying where i am going to stay each night (i'm looking for the free lodging). Problem is, she goes off the official ACA TransAm route from time to time, and in those cases i have been shifting to Bicycling Coast To Coast (BCC) until HG gets back on track. Except for these excursions, the two books seem to track exactly the same stop overs. After yet another off route excursion today, it just dawned on me that if the two books are always the same except for the off route trips in HG, and i rely on BCC for those days, why not just follow BCC all the time? In effect that's what i'm doing anyway. Duh. And, in BCC she admits right at the front of the book that she's looking for all the free lodging she can find, and lists that each day. Unfortunately i didn't see that sentence, or don't remember reading it, before today. Why am i so stupid? Now to transfer my notes from HG over to BCC....

Now i only have to carry one book. That's a pound, or so.

As an aside, i decided today to take two days off the trail and drop down to Mammoth Cave Naional Park for an afternoon tour of the caves. I can squeeze this in without adding any time to the overall 78 days because of the way BCC lays out it's schedule in Western Kentucky. The trip down to the park is on the official ACA route and listed as an alternate. To get back to the main trail, though, i'll leave it all together and work my own way northwest over back roads, rejoining the main route at the end of the third day of the detour. This will put me right where i would have been had i continued riding west and not made the trip south.

I called my health care provider and they tell me that i am covered for emergency and accident coverage during the trip, I may have a co-pay to cover, but if i ever get hurt, all i need to do is go to the closest emergency center and they'll cover the bills. This is great news.

I ordered my food for the trip at REI. I hope this wasn't an omen, but almost all of it was out of stock when i tried to order them online. When i called customer service to see when they would come in if i back ordered them, i was told that they were expected in on March 10^th. With that, while attempting to back order one of the entrees the web site crashed, putting a stop to everything. Since i was still talking to customer service at the time, the woman suggested that she just take the order over the phone, which we did. All of the food should be in my local REI store by the third week in March. What i did accept as a good omen, though, was that while talking to the woman on the phone, it turns out that she used to live right here in Lockport. It is a very small world.

I still haven't decided where to ship food to in advance of my arriving. I can't do that until i see how much food i can carry at any one time, and since i won't get my food until the 3^rd week of March, this decision in now pushed off until then.

A friend has decided that he wants to go to the east coast to see Wiliamsburg & Jamestown so has offered to drive me to my starting point in Yorktown, VA. This greatly simplifies planning. I no longer need to ship the bike east, i no longer need to pay someone to receive it and reassemble it for me, and ii no longer have to ride it the extra miles to from that shop to where i start in Yorktown. Plus, i get the benefit of visiting Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown at a liesurly pace even before the trip starts. We'll leave on the Tuesday or Wednesday before i start pedaling (Saturday, 5/1).

It's trivial, but it turns out that i don't have an i-Go tip that will make my Solio solar charger work with the battery charger that i use to charge the batteries for my camera. Rather than buy another adapter that i may need only on this trip, i'll simply take the battery charger and plan on plugging it in whenever and wherever i can (hotel? restaurant?) when i need it.

WIth the above items off my list, it looks like the only things left to do are:

1. Plan food shipping after the food arrives.

2. Ride to my local bike shop and buy the few spare parts i plan to carry. But, i'm waiting for it to warm up a little more before doing that since it's about 12 miles from here. An easy ride, but time out in the cold.

3. Buy a plane ticket for the trip back home from Oregon.

4. Find a bike shop that will ship my bike back home for me so i don't have to travel with it.

5. Finalize my mp3 list. It has changed slightly since i last talked about it. Unfortunately i had to drop a little Mozart and Bach, and a few Beethovens, but there were more talks i want to listen to while on the road — a few that i have had laying around but never made the time to listen to. There are still a few more of those, but i just can't make myself cut any of the remaining classical music. I'd cry for the entire trip if i did, so why bother.

6. Finalize the list of books i will try to read. Of the several hundred books on my Reader, which 2 or 3 will i commit to reading/rereading? Right now, the short list is:
   • Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long-Term Fulfillment (George Leonard),
   • Happiness And The Art of Being: A Layman's Introduction To The Philosophy And Practice of The Spiritual Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana (Michael James),
   • I Am That (Nisargadatta),
   • The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence of The Soul (Mario Beauregard & Denyse O'Leary),
   • Create Your Own Future: How To Master The 12 Critical Factors of Unlimited Success (Brian Tracy).

   And who knows, i may end up reading nothing, but simply relaxing each night talking to people i meet and listening to music or a local baseball game i can pick up on my radio. Only time will tell.

(Click to enlarge)

Spent the morning digging through my backpack, various closets, and drawers to pull everything together and inventory what i have. With the exception of my 2 cup thermos, food, shaving kit, spare parts, & the electronics, this is everything i'm planning to take with me. I still haven't weighed anything to see what it weighs, but have approached this from a very minimalist point of view — i'm carrying only what i need to take.

The only non-bike clothing i'm taking is one pair of shorts & underwear, a t-shirt, a pair of socks, and my sandals. I'm also carrying a 3" x 5" thin notepad to keep notes in. And, of course, the small thermos. Other than these, i can't see anything else in the pile that is simply a want and not something that i may need at somepoint along the way. Which means, even if this weighs more than i think it will, i don't know where i'll cut corners to bring that weight down, except in how much food i end up carrying.

Once i decide how much food to carry, i can then look for the towns i want to drop ship food & propane packages to for pickup when i get there. As i have said before, as of today i'm thinking of days 20 and 43. Day 20 because that's about half way to Pueblo, CO, and day 43 because that should be Pueblo, where i plan to spend an afternoon getting a bike shop to give my bike the once over. Pueblo will be my last pickup, and even though after that i will still have 35 days to ride, i'm thinking that i'll be road hardened by that time so a little extra food & propane weight won't be that big a deal.

I also bought some pepper spray for the dogs i'm told to expect in Kentucky and Missouri, but mainly Kentucky. I have absolutely no idea how much to get so i bought 4 of the cannisters at the above link. If i'm incredibly lucky, i'll never have to use it and this is just another unused insurance policy.

Apparently any post office will hold packages for you for 30 days, but if i call them and make special arrangements they will hold them for longer. That means i can mail boxes for pick up at 20, 40, and 60 days, or 30 & 60 days, or whatever i end up choosing. I can also include the fuel canisters.

Now i just need to decide what i really want to do for food. In order to keep my budget down to $20/day, i can't eat my meals in restaurants, unless it is fast food — and that's not going to happen. And given that i think i'm going to need about 4,000 calories/day, i can't live on junk food. Well, actually that's not true because junk food carries a lot more calories per ounce of food than real food does, but it certainly isn't healthy calories, which is what i'm talking about. If this ride were just 2 weeks long, or even up to a month, i'd live on oat meal and PBJ sandwhiches. I don't think i can do that for 80 days, though — boredom and health reasons.

What i'm thinking is: 1) oatmeal in the morning; 2) sandwhiches in the afternoon, and 3) dehydrated entrees for dinner. Oatmeal is cheap and using "quick oats" means preparation is nothing more than boiling some water and adding it to the oatmeal. Even though i swear by the maple and brown sugar variety, i can mix it up with others to reduce the boredom factor.

It looks like a typical 2-serving dehydrated entree is going to cost about $6 and i'll eat both servings for one dinner. That's about 600 calories and i can add more calories with bread and jelly on the side. If i choose about 5 different varieties that will also make dinner more interesting as i cycle through them during the week. So, with breakfast and dinner, i figure i'm looking at no more than $7/day.

Lunch is going to be a little more interesting, or challenging. I don't think i want to stop and prepare another dehydrated meal. I like just pulling over where the scenery is worth sitting and watching and eating something like a sandwhich. It's simple and it's easy to prepare. If i had my druthers, i'd take an 80 day supply of Onigiri with salmon furikake, but obviously that isn't going to happen. (Ahhhhh, onigiri and a thermos of green tea, eaten outside surrounded by beautiful scenery....... makes me want to become a Christian so i can believe in heaven.)

I like the idea of carrying a loaf of bread, preferably a few baguettes, along with some dijon mustard, lettuce, tomato, and avacado, and restocking every other day, or so, as i ride along. I imagine, though, that there may be stretches of the ride where i don't pass a grocery store every other day, and i can't carry much because most of that will spoil in hot weather buried in a pannier. I could probably carry a jar each of peanut butter and jelly to carry me through those off days. Not often, but occasionally, on days where i pass a Subway or Quiznos, or some other local sandwhich shop, i could stop for a sandwhich and a change of variety. I'm thinking that all of this should average out to no more than a couple of dollars per day for lunch.

If this works out, that means i should be able to keep food down to ~$10/day, which leaves me the extra $10 to accumulate in the virtual kitty bank. Lodging is the next issue. In reading through several online journals, it seems that a lot of people pay for camping every night, even if that is only $5 – $10. Is that because they don't look for places to stay free? Is that because it's really hard to find places to put up your tent for free? I just don't know those answers yet. But, for now, even if i had to pay $10/night, that still keeps me at $20/day. For nights where the cost is less than $10, and it seems like $5 is fairly common, then the $5 balance stays in that virtual kitty bank for luxuries like coffee, ice cream, a treat at a sit down restaurant once in a while, etc.

I'm estimating that the cost of the gas cannisters will average out to about $1/day as long as all i'm doing most of the time is boiling water for the oatmeal, a thermos of tea, and the dinner entrees.

So far, then, $20/day is still looking feasible without sacrificing any comfort, and if all the above works out i don't think i have sacrificed anything — i'd have a full belly every day, a non-leaking (tent) roof over my head every night, and plenty of books to read and music to listen to (my Reader and my mp3 player) while staying cozy in a warm sleeping bag. Don't need much more than that.

I know i'm not going to be showering every day, and that's not a big deal — been there done that with my back pack. That means stinky clothes a lot of the time. How often am i going to find a town with a coin laundry? That's what i just can't picture. Do i occasionally wash some clothes in whatever stream and river i happen to see? If i stay in a campground and they have a shower, even just a cold one, i can certainly wash clothes in the shower while i'm there.

As for food, there is no way i can carry all 80 days of food from the start. I don't want to ask anyone to mail food to me for general pickup at post offices, so what do i do? Find towns on the map before leaving where i think they will sell supplies? I hadn't planned to do much complicated cooking. I'm going to have to figure out what kind of food i plan to eat and then go from there. Sandwhiches: PBJ, deli, tomato/lettuce/avacado, etc.. Instant ramen. Spaghetti? Soup. Fried/Scrambled eggs. I could do freeze-dried food like i have when i back pack, but where would i buy those on the road. And even if they each only weigh 1 pound, i couldn't carry more than a dozen at a time. I don't plan on carrying more than 40-50 pounds of equipment in total.

Will have to think.

Edit: OK, i looked on line during dinner and see that the 2-serving Mountain House meals only weigh about 5 oz. each. Looking at the carories, i think one of those (i.e., both servings) would work well for dinner. I am going to need a lot of calories, and these are usually around 600 total for both servings. This means 3 dinners per pound and 30 dinners per 10 pounds. Depending on how much everything else weighs, this is maybe doable? I could probably restock in Pueblo, CO, but anywhere else? More food for thought.

• Current thoughts are to start on May 1st and ride the ~4,200 mi. over ~80 days.

• Do i fly to Virginia and then fly back to Chicago from Oregon? Or use bus? Or train? (Cost driven)
• Can i use any of my Frequent Flyer miles on Delta/Northwest or United to offset the price of the two tickets?
• Do i take the bike with me when i travel or ship it UPS before hand? If so, to where?

• How do i prepay 3 months of utility bills so i don't come home to a zero credit score from not paying them? How do i pay my property taxes early?

• I will need to buy two front panniers, but i think i already have everything else, including rear panniers, handlebar bag, tent, sleeping bag, rain gear, and appropriate clothing.
• For the front panniers i'll probably buy some Ortlieb Sport Packer Classics to match the Back Packer Classics rear panniers and Ortlieb handlebar bag i already have.
• Maybe i should buy an Ortlieb Rack Pack as well to hold the tent and sleeping bag? (Keeps them dry no matter what)
• My bike already has 3 water bottle carriers, is that enough?
• Do i need to buy a camp stove?
• I'll need to buy some spare parts for the bike, like a foldable tire, some brake pads, brake/shifter cables, etc. Rear/Front light?

• I'll need to buy a set of maps from Adventure Cycling Association. They're not cheap, at $165.
• Will buy one of two books as i start planning: either Bicycling Coast To Coast or The Complete Handlebar Guide to Bicycling the TransAm.
• I haven't figured out if, or how, i'll blog about the trip while i'm on the road. My phone is only an old Nokia 2610 but given that i'm Lao Bendan, it is a smart phone by my standards. However, i don't see yet how i can use it to blog more than 5 word entries.
• If i can find internet cafes from time to time along the way, i can add notes and pictues to this site. That's what i'm hoping at any rate.

• Do i stay in campgrounds where there will be showers? Or just off the road wherever i can pitch a tent? Some combination?
• Do i stay in a cheap hotel once a month just for a break?

• What to do about meals? Once a week in a restaurant and all others out of my panniers? Probably, but what food to pack? All cold food or do i try any cooking? (Adds weight and bulk but... oatmeal in the morning would be nice — taste and carbs — and instant ramen for lunch/dinner would be easy & cheap.)

• Had the bike serviced just before the end of the year so it's ready now.
• Do i make plans to stop somewhere at about the 2,000 mile mark to get a tune-up while on the road?

• I'll do a short 9-10 day training ride on the GIT at the end of March, beginning of April. This should also tell me if all the equipment is working OK.