Hi everybody, Chad here.

I first took up cycling while attending the University of Oregon, mostly for practical purposes. During the pandemic when I was spending nearly all of my time stuck in my apartment I also spent a great deal of time poring over maps of all the places I could go and all the things I could see once I graduated.

That eventually happened in June 2022, and over the summer I took up cycling recreationally. At some point while Dad was planning this trip after many years of anticipation, he asked me half-jokingly if I would like to come along. I had never ridden my bike more than 40 miles at a time before that, and had never expressed the slightest interest in a lengthy, arduous trip like this. So, of course I said yes. Rare is the place I see on a map and don’t want to go there at least once, and a trans-America trip is an adventure to remember, whatever form it takes. After all I’ve never really been to the Midwest or the East Coast aside from a few visits with family. In fact, I’ve only been to four of the fifteen states on this route.

Having spent the last nine months or so training mostly by riding loops in the mountains of southern Oregon, I’m looking forward to new places I would never go otherwise and a style of riding that I’ve never experienced before.