FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Lots of people have asked me questions about the bike trip, and I’m sure you’ll find more complete answers to these questions under the Bike Tour 2014 page

Who are you? Why do you have a blog?

I recently bicycled from San Diego to Montreal in big, upside down L across North America. I biked over 6500 miles over the course of six months. If you want to know more about the details of my bike trip, you can check out this post. I created this blog to casually keep my family and friends updated, and to motivate myself to write consistently after years of barely writing emails.

Why did you bike across the country?

Too many reasons to count. But mostly because I wanted to, and I was willing to make the time to do so. I didn’t have any hard obligations keeping me in one place or another. I’m a nurse and therefore have a skill set and career that is flexible. My parents and family members are all healthy. My boyfriend is incredible and supportive. I wanted to do this while I am still as unattached and mobile as can be. I’m young, healthy, and excited to live every moment as fully and passionately as possible. And I LOVE to bike.

Did you go with anyone else? Why/why not?

I spent about two and a half months riding with other people, and about three and a half months riding solo. It was the first time I had ever spent significant time traveling alone. How everyone says solo travel is, like, super-empowering-for-women? Yeah, totally true. It was incredible to bike thousands of miles alone, encounter problems and work through them, decide what I wanted from my day and then go do it. I never had to limit myself to anyone else’s schedule.

Waking up to a morning of biking after camping in a field

There are obvious comforts that traveling with another person affords; at the same time, the point of this journey was not to be comfortable. I want to adventure, and push my comfort zone, and go places that I might not go at home. Traveling with others risks that you act the way that person expects you to act. The parts of yourself that you express the most tend to be the parts of yourself that the other person knows. Throughout the journey, I had a great mix of biking and interacting with people who I knew and could rely on, and relying on the kindness of small town America.

Where’s that pretty picture of the dandelions from?

Laura, Steph, and I were biking from Pittsburgh to DC. Steph has an incredible eye for what is going to make a good photo. This dandelion was climbing out of the concrete, finding light and water in the man-made lifeless wall. All photo credit goes to Stephanie Shih!

How did you maintain a relationship on your bike trip?

Chris and I are pretty independent people. We support each other in whatever ways we can, but ultimately have very different ideas of what fun is and have different interests. Despite thousands of miles between us, we talked at least three times a week while I was biking. When I didn’t have consistent cell service, I’d find gas stations with WiFi and call Chris through the internet.  We got pretty good at using our smartphones efficiently, which was a huge leap for both of us! And we saw each other twice over the course of the bike trip, which also made it easier. We put effort into maintaining and strengthening our relationship, despite the distance, and it worked.