Planning has never been my forte (and still isn't). I made no plans out of High School, which landed me in Community College. I chose my major (Business Administration) not out of proper planning, but just because it occurred to me one day that I'd taken several classes needed to get an AS degree in business, so I decided it would be my major. I changed that major after jumping on a plane to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago, a trail I'd literally read nothing about, putting my faith in my friends who, for their part, did very minimal planning. I came back and applied to Humboldt State without even looking at their website. Service in the Peace Corps was decided on a whim, although sustained by a long and very involved application process. And I applied to just one graduate program: San Jose State, ultimately chosen because they didn't require a GRE score - a test I adamantly did not want to take. So, as you can see, I learned my lesson on the bike trip but have never applied it. This has had one negative impact and one positive impact on my life. The negative is that things haven't always worked out as I'd hoped. The positive is that, even so, I've done a lot of interesting things. Too much planning can cause inertia, while too little can cause erratic, but exciting, behavior.
The bicycle trip was largely erratic. But then again, if we had planned, we might not have done it. As noted in Part I, we were dropped off in the rain. That rain never really stopped in Oregon, aside from when it snowed on us as we made our way through the Cascades. We got rained on in Idaho, and again in Montana. The only difference in Montana is that the temperature dropped significantly as well, and we were freezing. In a sleepy town called Twin Bridges we endured one of our coldest nights in the chicken barn at the town's fairground. We spent the day trying (and failing) to find a backyard to camp in, but ended up sneaking into the fairground's only barn without a lock on it, and drifted in and out of a sleepless night wondering if we'd wake up in a hypothermic state of shock or the local jail for trespassing. As we pedaled through AMAZING Yellowstone, we were rained on sporadically. In Colorado, we counted on an evening shower every day. It was about that time that we took a close look at our maps and the annual rainfall graph they provided on the back. This is where the poor planning comes in: WE WERE BASICALLY FOLLOWING THE AVERAGE RAINFALL HIGHS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. That is, we left Oregon and Idaho in May, one of their rainiest months. We made it to Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado in June, one of their rainiest months. Kansas was alright, although it was unseasonably hot (that is, June is a hot month, but they were having record highs!). We also inched our way through the midwest as tornado season started, nervous the whole time. And then we made it to the eastern states in time for their infamous humidity. Fittingly, we reached Yorktown, our destination, wet and tired, spending our last night in the tent trying to keep the rain from leaking in and soaking us as a storm passed over Virginia.
This lack of planning explains why we had next to nobody riding with us. Most people take an east to west route because you hit the eastern states BEFORE they get uncomfortably hot, and the western states AFTER they've endured the rainy spring. We rode alone the entire time, just crossing people's paths as they traveled against us. This lack of planning had the unfortunate result of making us uncomfortable practically the entire time, but the positive effect of having actually cycled across the USA. I don't think we would have made the trip otherwise. It needed to be done on my summer break from school, so May to July was the only possibility. And it needed to be convenient. It was easy to get our bikes up to Oregon and begin the trip. It would have been much more difficult to start from the east. So, in the end, having survived, I am glad we didn't consult the maps for the answer to the most primordial question before traveling: Is this trip a good idea? It was not, but we didn't know it, even as we tried to outrun a lightning storm in Montana - even as Josh got scared, abandoned his bike and hid behind a tree as lightning struck all around us. By the time we realized it, we had miles behind us and there was no way we'd turn back and give up.
So let this be a testament for poor planning. You may not enjoy that which you undertake, but you will do it nonetheless. And there are always good stories afterwards. And there was NOTHING better than an evening ride in Missouri when the sun was setting, the temperature sank, and the oppressive humidity turned into the most perfect weather in the world, allowing you to contemplate the mystery of life as you glided down an Ozark hillside. (Don't consider the counter-argument that there are tragic stories associated with ill-planning as well. Just don't.)
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