JESS'S BIKE TOURING ESSENTIALS
We use almost everything we have with us, every day,
but there are a few things that I'm extra obsessed with....
CARGO NET
I PUT THIS OVER MY BACK RACK PACK. I CAN JUST REACH BEHIND ME AND TUCK THINGS INTO IT, LIKE MY SWEATY GLOVES, OR MY JACKET OR MY BANDANA. I ALWAYS HANG BANANAS FROM IT. AND SPROUTS. ITS JUST ALL STRETCHY AND HANDY AND I LOVE IT. DON'T TRAVEL WITHOUT ONE OF THESE!
BANDANA
My bandana is gray from my days carving coal for Zivic. Its all worn in. I use it to sit on when the ground is prickly. I drench it in water and put it on my neck when I get hot. I use it to dry the dishes. I blow my nose in it. Use it to make cheese. I wear it on my head. Its my favorite bit of cloth. Like an adult blankie.
SWISS ARMY KNIFE
Well now, what would my Swiss Half say if I didn't have one of these babies? Someone in Louisiana gave me one and I promptly gave away my pretty wood-handled (French) Opinel's... Here we've got tweezers, stabbers, cutters, pokers, diggers all in one little efficient Swiss package.
BLACK EYE-LINER...
I think I would be lost without it. It makes me feel like a lady on even the worst of days. And, NO, I would not be on this tour without it.
NANO PUFF!
Well--this thing is worth it's (very light) weight in Gold. It's as minimal looking as you can get in sporty gear (which I like) and it is AMAZING. You can wear it from 30 degrees to 75 and its always the right thing, how is that? Is it magic? I've had to sleep in this thing MANY nights, I love it. If I have to wear a puffy thing, this is it. Now, where's the coverall version?
COCOON SILK TRAVEL SHEET
Basically, singlehandedly responsible for any sleep I get in the tent. This silk sheet keeps all the synthetic camping/sleeping stuff from being in direct contact with my skin which seems to make all the difference in the world.
THE MISSION:
WHO: Zach Whitney + Jessamee Sanders
WHAT: A year-long (?) bicycle tour...
WHEN: Beginning March 2013
WHERE: Around the USA, route undetermined, 5-10K miles
WHY: Because life is too short to be settling down just yet...
HOW: By pedaling our butts off and selling lovely jewelry along the way
Zach builds things and loves to ride his bike. Jessamee designs things and loves to travel (jessamee.com, tamlinandthefall.com)
PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE! YOU ROCK OUR WORLD!
|||| THIS PAGE IS DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE WE'RE MEETING AS WE GO ||||
Avi is a dear old friend, his North East Philly factory is where we're living. This weekend he crosses the same birthday threshold that we did earlier this year! Happy Birthday Avi! His dog Appolo is young and frisky frisky frisky. Whenever Appolo comes bursting around a corner, you know Avi is not far behind; where there's smoke there's fire.
Fay is my cousin. One of my 3, (Total, both sides of the family!) very precious cousins. She married a wonderful guy named Dave who loves to wear printed t-shirts. We spent a week in their Berkeley abode, loving every minute of it. They took such good care of us--we got a whirlwind tour of San Francisco, ate lots of good food, partied into the wee morning hours, toured Pixar where Dave works and tinkered on projects together in the back yard. Fay is an amazingly wonderful friend, a super-talented artist and a beautiful part of my life that I wish I had more of. Maybe we will one day live near eachother and our future babies can grow up together.
Heather is a lady from my past, we go way back to hippy summer camp in Massachusetts. We were friends on the FB, but the last time I saw her was probably 10-15 years ago! We felt right at home in the house she's living in with her Aunt in Santa Rosa, and we spent two nights there--cooking and resting and having a generally RELAXING time. I may not be great at relaxing but Heather with her vaguely Southern accent and her very well honed relaxing skills chilled me right out. We had an awesome time. Here's a recipe for the killer flourless chocolate cake she made for us! Heaven.
Tyler is a young vegetable farmer who we met at Sunset Beach State Park in Oregon and stayed with in Arcata CA for a night. He and his fellow farming housemates were gathered around the kitchen table making plum wine the night we were there; all denim, long-hair and cowboy hats elbow-deep in ripe golden fruit.... a California dream life...
Carol and her husband John told us where there were dead Sperm-Whale remains to be found on the beach. It was amazing to see the size of the bones. It had been sitting there for more than a month by the time we saw it. Tres Interesting. These two Las Vegans were out adventuring in their RV. Bought us lunch.
Hiker Biker camp-sites are a West Coast Thing. I’d never heard of them before but almost every park has a site set aside for people arriving on foot or on bicycles. They cost about $5, there are no reservations, and they accommodate as many people as necessary. Parks that have been booked a year in advance still make room for us—which is awesome. Its also totally essential—sometimes the only option if we don’t have enough water to wild camp….or if we're desperate for a shower (which is almost all the time). You might have noticed that we’ve been posting a lot of other cyclists recently and it’s because we spend the evenings with fellow pedalers riding the same popular route down this very pretty part of the country. Its fun to swap stories and little tricks and see how everyone else does things. We spent a really nice evening with Erin + Gordon, drinking beer and sitting around a fire surrounded by giant Redwoods.
Alaskan Queen, Living in Queens.
Hm. I wonder what Zach is gonna look like in about 35 years. This is Gordon, he was awesome.
Student, riding on her own, riding and writing. Check out her blog at: cyclingandrecyclingblog.wordpress.com
Sweet Canadian Physical Trainer and wanderer. Headed to San Diego and then across the South to St Augustine FL on the so-called Southern Tier Route. He’s putting on approximately 60-90 miles/ day…but doesn’t have a speedometer or odometer, so he’s not exactly sure. I really enjoyed his congenial demeanor, shaggy hair and simple approach to cycle-touring. If we were going slightly farther every day we might have been lucky enough to ride with him for a day…good luck Mattias! Go to New Orleans or Southern Louisiana!
Minstrel Joe sold all his belongings, picked up a bicycle and a guitar and was busking his way around Oregon when we met him. He possessed the first BioLite Stove we’ve seen in action. The BioLite is a genius contraption-- a little stove that runs off twigs or other small kindling, cooking your food and simultaneously CHARGING your phone or other small device via a USB charger. I think it also has a lantern powered by the heat. Damn! Its one of those perfect examples of Smart Design.
He said if I repeated his name 3 times I would remember it....and what do you know? The man was right.
This Irish Wanda (yep, you guessed it....PEN NAME!) is a brave, sweet girl. First solo girl cycle tourist we've had a chance to hang with. We met her at the grocery store, watched her bike for her as she went inside to shop, then we rode the last 15 miles to our camp together. It was our first night on the Pacific coast and her company was a nice addition to our evening camping ritual. She's sharp, funny and does indeed like potatoes. You don't get a photo because this lass prefers to remain anonymous. You CAN however read her very entertaining blog here.
These Portland sweeties put us up for 3 nights in their amazing abode in North East. I went to RISD with the green-eyed Rehanah, but we hadn't been in touch for years so it was a really nice surprise to hook up and spend a couple of days with her and her man Dave. These two do a lot of hiking and climbing and mountain biking--always off on some weekend warrioring adventure or other. It was awesome to hang out and do some work on the necklaces in their veggie-garden-filled back yard, they made us feel right at home. Thanks Rehanah!
There's a little bike shop on Hawthorne St. in Portland called Coventry Cycles (one of the city's 100+ bike shops btw). They deal primarily in recumbents, and they are one of the west coast's premier dealers. Recumbents are seated bikes, they go really fast and look really funny--they're especially great form people who can't ride an upright bike due to age, back pain, knee pain or a physical disability. For quite a while now Zach has been interested in trying out tandem-y recumbent-y bikes to see if he might be able to use one with his friend Sam who has some developmental disabilities. We went to check out the Hase Pino and ended up chatting for a long time with Edee. She recently completed a degree that focused on physical rehabilitation using recumbents so it was really interesting to pick her brain and soak in some of her enthusiasm for these weird speedy machines.
This is my sister. Gerrit is her man. I'll leave it at that, otherwise I'll write a book. Mosier, Oregon for a week.
I can see why my sister and Gerrit have become close with these two lovely, blond, Oregonian farmers. They've got a small diversified vegetable farm, a couple of pigs, a goat, a little barn, a wonderful cozy house tucked into a hillside and a ton of good natured, easy, funLovin' personality to top it all off. Not to mention, they're amazing cooks! They fed us a dinner bursting with just-picked veggies cooked on the grill, fresh-caught jack-salmon, hazlenuts and wild rice....home-made vanilla ice cream to go along with the blackberry pie that Sita and I made from berries we picked the day before. Sitting there at the picnic table under the lights as the dusk faded into dark I got a nice big dose of Summer Magical.... for more info about Laurel + Paul's farm check out their WEBSITE.
These guys are into Physics, thats why they look so craxy...its hard to keep all that brain inside a mere human skull. Stefen, fellow researcher Mattias, and Zach. Stefen, Stephen, Steffen....I can't spell it right, forgive me!
We always know when we're back on an established bike route because we start crossing paths with other bicycle tourists. Now that we're on the West Coast I think we're in for a lot more of that. We ran into all these folks within a day or so of eachother as we headed through Washington going South into Oregon. I think these guys pretty much prove that 60 is the new 40. And 70....the new 50??
MET THESE TWO OUTSIDE OF OLYMPIA, THEY'RE CYCLING FOR THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT. HER FIRST OFFICIAL DAY OF RETIREMENT, THEIR FIRST DAY OF TOURING, AND THEY'RE HEADED FROM COAST TO COAST ON A TANDEM RECUMBENT WITH A WINDSHIELD!
THESE TWO HAVE BEEN ON MANY A TOUR, AND IT WAS NICE TO SEE SOME OTHERS WITH A LOT OF GEAR! ANOTHER 60+ COUPLE RIDING THE SAME AMOUNT AS WE ARE....THEIR BLOG HERE
BAY AREA LARRY. WE MET HIM A FEW HUNDRED FEET BEFORE GOING OVER A PASS WHERE WE PROMPTLY PULLED OVER FOR THE CUSTOMARY GREETING AND INFO SWAP. HE SHARED HIS CANDY WITH US. VERY NICE GUY. HIS BLOG HERE.
DAVID, 71. DOUBLE PHD. OCEANOGRAPHY AND MEDICINE. FORMER ROAD RACER. RIDING FROM RENO TO CANADA, PUTTING DOWN ABOUT 80 MILES/DAY. MET HIM JUST BEFORE HITTING 'OLD MAN PASS' :) (NO JOKE!)
Been a few years since I stayed in a Youth Hostel. This one was in Vancouver BC, the cheapest single room in the whole city at $35/night. We needed a little time to ourselves which is why we weren't staying with Warm Showers hosts, also why we didn't stay in the $10/night dorms (we couldn't lock up our stuff either). There were a ton of people staying in this glorified squat-palace. Sunday morning, walking down-stairs I could barely see through the pot smoke. German Surfer guy (above with the bread) had been there for a year, working construction and saving up so he could do a 17 month stint in Indonesia. He was very stoked about trying to bake bread in the crazy oven in the shared kitchen. He sat on a chair, looking in on it every 2 minutes for the whole 45 minutes it had to bake, super cute. Then triumph. He cut slices and jammed them up with raspberry jam, shared with everyone, it came out great.
PE Teach. Trainer. Triathelete. (Former) Freestyle Jumproper! What's left to say? 52 and fit as a fiddle. Met him at the Nudie Hot Springs in CO. (This is out of order).
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