I talked a friend into doing just the Katy trail across the state of Missouri a year ago. Like the author, I have a steel Trek 520. I did zero training — but the Katy trail is just one state.

I hated it every day — right up until we finished it. The boredom, the drudgery of every day. Now I can't wait to go again.

There was a weird thing that crept into my brain by about day 4 or so — I kind of didn't want to linger off the saddle for long. Strangely, I was starting to kind of prefer being on the saddle than to being off.

Also, having done a minimal of research, there were often unexpected happy surprises that would pop up from time to time — for example a sudden bar along the banks of the Missouri River (Cooper's Landing — not, you know, a sand bar).

I credit my friend being there for keeping me determined not to "puss out" and bail early. And he told me after he was waiting for me to bail so he could have an excuse to quit as well.

We met all manner of other riders: many, like us, on their first bike tour.

The six or so days on the saddle can be done, physically, by about anyone. I am almost 61 and over weight. I trained on the trail. I think if I had prepared before hand my ass might have been less sore — more "broken in". (It also would have been boring though.)

I made it twice in 1980s. Or maybe trice, at least piecewise.

-- Note about "prepadness". No need for that. I started at 70km per day, but eventually made 500 km in 24h. Because good back wind and too hot for camping by the road.

It takes about two weeks to totally numbify youres backside. Thereafter rockhard professional saddle is the best.

https://youtu.be/8D-S8nYCwjA?si=TZfnb2qrkiZdiYU6

Reading this, I feel slightly embarrassed about our largely unplanned 100 km family cycling tour to France 1.5 years ago. We used our standard day-to-day Peugeot bikes from the 70ies, and a relatively new children's trailer. Because our bikes were so old, I made sure to have all the tools with me to fix anything broken, despite the relatively short distance. The bikes didn't have a single mechanical failure, not even a flat tire. But halfway through our trip, the trailer had a broken spoke. I removed the spoke, hoping that the rest of wheel would hold together, but all the remaining spokes immediately started to become loose after a few kilometers. I ended up truing the wheel using the remaining spokes, and than fixating the spoke nipples to the spokes and the rim with a pack of kid's plasters. To my surprise, this actually worked. We made the remaining 50km without problems, but stopped every kilometer or so to check if any spoke had become loose.

Note that we largely cycled through the French and German countryside on dedicated bike routes on which we were the only cyclists most of the time, so this was relatively uncritical.

Some do this in 8 days

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Across_America

But 51 days is also fantastic!

I've done a much shorter route, but still long with a similar amount of preparation - Port Angeles, WA to San Francisco, CA

I can not recommend it highly enough. It took us 2 weeks which is a much more reasonable amount of time to take off. I wasn't really prepped and not in great physical shape, which made it more difficult, but it was so rewarding. That route is very popular and there are hiker / biker camp sites every 30 miles or so. About half the people you see each night are going the same direction as you, so you probably saw them last night.

I would strongly recommend the paper maps from ACA. They are fantastic, and you can get a holder that goes between your handlebars. It's really hard to use your phone as a GPS when you're out of power.

I also broke a spoke on my wheel and it wasn't a very common wheel type. The person I went with had to go 20 miles back to a bike shop and ended up buying me a whole new wheel. So getting bog-standard equipment is very helpful.

I'd love to do this one day! Curious - after reading, the part about wildlife scares me. Did you ever run into genuinely worrying situations with wildlife? Hearing about Black widow spiders alone makes me want to only do this with a van following behind me to sleep in at night!

Such a great post. I did my first bike trip last year—cycling Taiwan's Route 1 island loop last year over 3 weeks and it was one of the greatest trips of my life. Already want to do it again.

Met an Austrian guy who biked from NYC to LA in the early '90s. He had a paper list of people across the country who were bike tourer friendly who could house him, and he'd call them on payphones. He didn't have a tent, so he'd also sleep in post offices.

Very nice summary. I did a similar cross-country trip and 100% endorse many of the conclusions at the end. (The Kansas winds and the hills of the Ozarks (central Missouri) were both surprisingly challenging and demoralizing, even after the continental divide.)

The blogger recommends Warmshowers for accommodation. That's good, but costs money.

BeWelcome.org is free accommodation, like Airbnb or CouchSurfing but without money! And open-source, in many countries, and very hospitable to refugees.