San Diego, CA to Jacksonville, FL.

Roughly 2700miles, over 28 days I estimate. See the route page for a detailed breakdown of mileage and altitudes.

The rough plan:

Fly in to San Diego with bike case (if so, ship to location in Jacksonville on arrival), alternatively a disposable box.

Aim to cover 100+miles a day, which would leave a few spare days for any problems that crop up.

The route is somewhat flat as it skips the mountains in Utah. Roughly, the hilliest section of the trip is Phoenix to El Paso, 400 miles with a total of 18,500 feet or ~4600 feet per 100miles. Whereas most of the rest of the route will be ~600-1000 feet per 100miles (based of 200 miles from Baton Rouge to Mobile, at 1600 feet total).

Also this is based off roughly 80% of the Southern Tier ACA route, so generally the roads should be cycle suitable.

Regarding accommodation, the cheaper the better!

• Camping (stealth camping maybe)
• Local facilities, it seems people have quite a bit of luck camping at Fire stations etc, which is great.
• Cheap motels if forced to.

Totally self reliance is the key to not getting stranded, particularly the longer, hotter stretches in New Mexico and Arizona. Although we’ll be skipping Death Valley and other hot spots, up to 10 litres of water each may be required for some days. Although the route caters for not too many long stretches between small towns at least. Obvious items such as spare tubes, a spare folding tyre, ability to fix broken chains and at worst a derailleur or gear hanger.

Rough costings:

Flights:

London -> San Diego & Jacksonville -> London: £550 including bike transport.

Day to day costings, various on the group size, but expecting to be as small as possible: $30-40/day. Larger the group, the costs would come down significantly.

Anyhow, if anyone’s interesting in joining us on the trip, hit me up @easyjo or jo@easyjo.com. Thinking either October 2011, or early in 2012.

825 Miles / 1,328 km
36,821 feet climbed / 11,223 metres
Average Mileage: 82.5 miles/day
Calories burnt from cycling alone, ~43,000

Also, it’s not too late to Donate!

You can view the entire route in the post below, or here

Photos at flickr..

You can view the Track-Us page directly, or view the map below, which updates every 15mins when we are cycling.

Bring on Barcelona!

The kit below, some bits missing, but the majority of what I’ll be taking:

Bike kit

And the bike packed….

Packed bike

Found over on the rather cool Honest Fare food blog I instantly had to try out this recipe.

So here is my guide (slightly altered from the original to cater to my taste):

Ingredients
1 Banana
1 Apple
1/2 Mango
1 handful of Parsley
2 big handfuls of Spinnach
1 inch of minced Ginger (I upped this because i liked the after-kick)
5 large ice cubes
1/2 – 1 cup of Soy Milk
4 Strawberries

Method
Simply blend the hell out of all this stuff!!! I go with everything apart from the ice to start and add that once everything is almost fully blended together.

I have actually consumed this smoothie as a meal replacement on a few ocassions. Its a pretty filling beast of a drink and the quantities above should allow you to create a large glass with plenty left over for breakfast in the morning.

Enjoy.

GPS Devices

Garmin 705:

Garmin Edge 705

This will be replacing the Garmin forerunner 405 for GPS data display, due to lack of mapping and accurate direction data.

The Garmin Edge 705 was a fairly recent purchase, allowing us to have turn by turn directions, GPS data logging, cadence, speed, HRM stats as well as all the standard cycle computer functionality. Due to be tested in Europe next week to Paris & back!

Polaris Iridium GPS Tracker:

Polaris Tracker

The Polaris tracker is being kindly provided by Trident Sensors LTD.

The sensor, primarily designed for yacht, ships and other vehicle tracking, the polaris sensor will be providing GPS updates online, so our current position can be tracked online via some Google Maps in near realtime (stay tuned for more details).

Cameras

MD-80 MiniDV 720p:

MD-80 camera

The MD-80 is a small, cheap 720p camera. The camera is available for £12-£16 on ebay, and takes SD or SDHC cards (up to 8gb max).

Providing up to 30fps at 720p it’s a perfect cheap alternative to a FlipHD or ActionCam. We’ll be testing this on Paris and will provide a couple of short videos.. Also neatly clamps onto handlebars.

Canon 50d / IXUS 970IS:

50d & 970 IS

I’m currently debating on what camera to take.

Either the 50d with the 24-105mm.

Or the much lighter/compact Ixus 970IS…. decisions.

Weight difference 1.4kg (50d + 24-105mm), compared to around 150 grams for the ixus.

Other smaller items include: MIFI 3G modem for providing an adhoc wireless network, hopefully using some local french & spanish sim cards. A Devotec Solar charger for providing some USB power. An AA battery powered USB charger, for providing USB power for the Garmin 705, MIFI & iPhones. I’ll also be taking an I-Gotu GPS data logger for extra data logging (in the very unlikely event the 705 & Polaris fails!).

Pete also cycled from Godalming to Brighton and back, roughly the kind of distances we’ll be covering each day during the trip.

Now only 8 days till our training ride to Paris (and back)..

You can sponsor us by visiting: http://www.justgiving.com/barcelonabike

Yes i was stupid enough to do this race on a mountain bike!

So Jo and I (Pete) both managed to complete the Jigsaw 20:20 Duathlon, this Saturday just gone. Myself in a time of 3 hours 45 minutes and Jo in an impressive 2 hours 39 minutes. The race was won by Lee Kemp in an amazing time of 1 hour 53 minutes with a total of 48 participants altogether.

The event took place at Dunsfold Aerodrome (the same location used for the BBC show ‘Top Gear’), on what was surely the hottest day of the year to date. Extreme heat, personally, made this event even more of a challenge that it already was but extremely good fun nonetheless. A gorgeous 10km run round half the Aerodrome before cutting out and into the woods surrounding the area, had a fantastic variety of running surfaces: road, field and trails. The 20 mile cycle consisted of 5 laps round the outer perimeter of the Aerodrome before dismounting and repeating the initial run.

This was my first experience of a multi discipline race and i must admit it was hard. Although my first transition from running to bike was a comfortable one, the second transition from cycling back to running was painful with cramp setting in early on the second run. I did enjoy the challenge though and it was an extremely rewarding experience. Fortunately the delayed aches over the weekend were limited which is promising and i hope to find another Duathlon to partake in very soon.

Jo, having a little more long distance event experience over myself and a successful triathlon event under his belt, cruised round the course in good time; especially considering the Midnight Sun Marathon he had run the weekend prior. A very commendable effort.

This has been a good step forward in both of our training regimes for the Barcelona ride that lies ahead. A warm up trip to Paris has been organised and more local rides are scheduled.

We’re competing in the Jigsaw 20/20 (10km run, 20mile bike, 10km run) on Saturday 26th June as a bit of training. An event run by the charity we’re supporting for the Barcelona bike, the race is around Dunsfold park, the 10km runs are trail runs, with the bike being 5 loops of the Dunsfold Aerodrome.

For more info visit the race site, Jigsaw 20/20

For donation and sponsorship, please visit our sponsorship page for Barcelona.