So I am planning another cross-country attempt this summer. This time I will ride from East to West so that I finish in Victoria. There are some advantages to this. First, my family will be at the finish. They live in Victoria so I presume they will come out, secondly I will be in Toronto after about a month which should coincide with my anniversary. And thirdly because I haven’t done that part yet.
There are a few downsides to this route. Most notably is the prevailing winds. Apparently they blow West to East and so I will be riding into headwinds. I have no proof of this though since it always seemed like I had a headwind. Also I will be passing through Northern Ontario through the hottest part of the summer. My mind shrinks when I think of the black-flies and mosquitos.
I will be making some changes though. I am going to revamp this website into three sections: riding, personal stuff, and work related stuff. For the ride I have a little helmet cam as well as a Suunto heart rate monitor. I plan on posting videos of the journey so people can feel what it is like to ride this: sweat, tears and all. I am also looking for a mashup so that using an iphone I can post where I am.
For the ride itself I would like to slow down. I went way too fast. I was reading other people’s journals where they are doing 100km and writing about how far it is. I had days where I rode over 230km! So I definitely need to slow down. I would also like to eat better. I ate at truck stops and diners most of the way and I ate crap. It was good but horrible for me and I ended up with high blood pressure by the end of it. If I could get to a healthy weight again and hold it there I would be very happy.
And that is what riding is all about…being happy.