I love the idea of epic adventures. I'm especially intrigued when it's a challenging (aka crazy) idea that is met with puzzled looks and "that doesn't sound fun" responses from people. This time around, the adventure is a bike-supported cross-country run along the length of the East Coast Greenway. Shan will run and I will ride my bike with all of our gear in tow, with a goal to bring awareness and raise money for the East Coast Greenway Alliance. Biking across the country has been on my mind for some time now, and this is a perfectly insane way to do it - I can't wait!
What about Shan? Running across the country, averaging 40 miles a day, with a lone crew chief driving his camper van is crazy enough. Why do it again? This time around, our runner will survive on bike support alone. At night he will curl up with his support crew on an inflatable sleeping pad in a very small tent or a different cheap motel every night instead of a quilt-covered mattress in the safety and comfort of the van (see how cozy it looks in the photo?). Food? We won't be able to make big grocery runs, and we won't have the room to store extra ingredients or fancy things like hot sauce and spices. We won't even have a kitchen. We'll be winging it, scraping together the best high-calorie, protein-dense meals we can find, sometimes from local restaurants; other times creatively crafted over a tiny camp stove. Laundry? Uh, we'll have to figure that out once we get moving. Some of this will be easy, most of it hard, but all of it will be "fun".
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