THE ROUTE

The Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) created the TransAmerica bike route in 1976, in honor of the USA Bicentennial. It runs 4,218 miles from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia. They since added the Northern Tier, 4,293 miles from Washington to Maine; and the Southern Tier 3,022 miles from San Diego, CA to St. Augustine, FL. Hundreds of riders do them annually. As we ride from mid-September through mid-November, weather dictated the Southern Tier as our choice. The others would become too cold. Not to mention, the Southern Tier is enough of a challenge at 1,000 fewer miles! We bought the ACA 7-part printed map set.

ACA Southern Tier Maps

Most blogs I read were cyclists going west to east and I think I’ve read about 80% of bikers go that way. The idea of prevailing winds going west to east are correct when flying thousands of feet in the air as flights east are faster than those flying west. But from blogs I read it seems down on the ground we are just as likely to have winds blow in our face as at our back.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out and if we net more tailwind or headwinds?  At this point we shipped our bikes on 9/8/21 and the bike store in San Diego has received them so we are locked into west to east. I’m psyching myself out each day when I look at the weather in Arizona and see the heat wave over 100 each day and our weather next week. 

Welton, AZ Weather - see 106º on Wed 9/22 

Our proposed route follows the ACA maps but may vary according to weather, bike issues, getting lost, fatigue or other unexpected plot twists. While having the following plan helps us have an idea of where we will be and when, we guess this won’t hold firm and we will need at least 2 days more due to reasons above. 

Our Proposed Route

That’s a whole lotta Texas! 

We are eager to visit southern cities with reputations for great fun like Austin and New Orleans and equally excited for small towns in the middle of seemingly nowhere. If you know anybody along route we ought to connect with, feel free to send us their contact. I will be reaching out to those of you on route! In our experience on other adventures, it’s more often the random places and random people we meet that are most memorable. This past week, we hosted 3 different riders ourselves through Warm Showers and will try to follow their collective advice to slow down, unclip from our pedals and talk with people! 

Tom, our 1st WS host and now guest and friend in NY, Sept 2021

© Copyright Mark Segal 2021.

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