The Adventure Begins

Hi all! This is Denise, posting for Alan tonight as he does not have wifi at tonight's campsite. I got back to Des Moines this evening and I plan to enjoy my nice warm bed tonight. Not so much for the bikers - they're going to be a bit cold.

The bikers did arrive safely at their first destination and set up camp in the Cleveland National Forest. The picture in the lower right hand corner is a photo that Alan did send to me. It is his bike computer after today's ride. On it, you can see that he rode 5 hours 31 minutes, went 43.9 miles, avg speed of 7.9 mph, max speed of 30 mph, climbed 3,464 feet and went down 1,123 feet. There was a bit of climbing today! The other pictures are from the hostel as the group was getting ready to leave. Alan is in the solid blue jacket. There was lots of stuff going on but it was an organized process and an experience to watch.

Once everything was loaded, one of the leaders took off in a 15 passenger van, pulling the trailer with all of their gear. That leader heads on to the camp site. The second leader rides "sweep." As the last rider, the sweep makes sure that everyone makes it into camp. The picture in the lower left is the two leaders, Kathy and Dennis. Today Dennis drove the van and Kathy rode sweep.

Below the six pictures is a video of the 14 riders taking off down the street in San Diego, Ocean Beach neighborhood, and a map of the Day 1 route. Watching the group ride away gave me goose bumps. It is an amazing, impressive group of people, somewhat crazy, but extremely dedicated to riding across the country together!