Planning – spring, 2016

Hi, you’ve reached the site of Dave Galvin’s blog for his bike trip across the U.S.  I live in Seattle, Washington, USA, on a houseboat on Lake Union, with my supportive spouse, Mary Sue, and two aging cats; our two wonderful kids, Nicholas and Veronica, are in their late 20s, launched and doing well as young adults. My address is galvind53@gmail.com .

[Here I am with Mary Sue on a Cascade RAW trip, Lake Chelan, WA in the background, 2013.]

I will retire after more than 40 years of nonstop work in late April, 2016. My plan right out of the gate is to bicycle across the country, west-to-east, over the summer of 2016. Such a cross-country trip has been on my bucket list for a while, and I’m retiring at age 63 precisely in order to do crazy things like this while my body is still able. We’ll see how the legs and butt do over the coming adventure.

I am a life-long cyclist and have commuted to work here in Seattle for 30+ years, rain or shine, all year round. I’ve done week-long, 500-mile, supported trips courtesy of Cascade Bicycle Club (the Ride Around Washington or “RAW”) and Cycle Oregon.  I’ve never done longer journeys on my wheels. I’m a life-long backpacker, have done 300-miles over 4 weeks on the Appalachian Trail in Maine many years ago, and have been on the summit of Mt. Rainier 5 times. So I figure I can do this.

My friend, Neil Wechsler, owner of Montlake Bike Shop in Seattle, and, primarily, his store manager, Gary Tegantvoort, helped me to assemble a touring bike up for the challenge. I’ll give you all the specs in a separate post. My bike is solid, heavy… and I love it.  I’ve already got well over 1,000 miles on it, and it cruises. I haven’t named it yet — maybe that will come during this time that we spend together.

I’m testing this blog space, and hope to add photos, maps and a link to my Garmin data so that we all can track where I am and how I’ve done day by day. I plan to post approximately weekly so you won’t get exhausted reading about what I get exhausted doing each day.

Right now, snow in the passes permitting, I plan to leave the extreme Northwest corner of the lower 48 at Neah Bay, Washington, in mid May and ride the “Northern Tier” route as mapped by the Adventure Cycling Association (www.adventurecycling.org ), arriving at the extreme Northeast corner of the 48 states in Eastport, Maine by late August.  I’ve got a wedding to get back to in Washington in early September!

Thanks for connecting with me. Give me a shout so I know who is reading and so I can answer any-and-all questions about this crazy trip.  — Dave