About the Ride

This summer we will bicycle 3,500 miles (5,600 km) across the United States, from New York City to San Francisco, to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The ride will take about 50 days and will cross 16 states, three mountain ranges, and a 500-mile-wide desert. It will be a self-supported tour, meaning we'll be carrying all of our gear on our bikes.

NEW! - We have been featured in a recent Harbus article (Harbus is the student newspaper of Harvard Business School).

• Why are we doing this?
• Route
• Route highlights
• Schedule
• How to join
• Updates from the road
• Meals and lodging
• Gear

Why are we doing this?

Because we love adventures, bicycles, and the Great Outdoors. More importantly, we've seen people we love struggle with cancer. This bike ride will give us a chance to support cancer patients, while conquering a personal challenge.

Our goals are five-fold:

• To raise funds to provide support and resources for people with cancer. All proceeds will benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation. See our Get Involved page for details.

• To have an adventure of a lifetime. The expedition is a physical, mental, logistical, and organizational challenge — and we want to take it on!

• To experience the culture and people of the American heartland. We've traveled extensively along both coasts and internationally, and are now eager to explore the country's interior.

• To get in shape. Just imagine doing eight-hour workouts every day for two months!

• Last but not least, Maksim is using this bike ride as a research platform for his Harvard Business School field study on nonprofit fundraising. Click here for more information.

Route

Our route roughly follows the U.S. Highway 50:

On a more detailed level, the route consists of the following mix of roads:

• U.S. Highway 1 from New York City to Washington, D.C.
• U.S. Highway 50 from Washington to Pueblo, Colorado.
• Western Express Route from Pueblo to San Francisco.

Here's an interactive map and a table of milestones.

The route traverses 16 states and D.C.:

1. New York
2. New Jersey
3. Pennsylvania
4. Delaware
5. Maryland
6. District of Columbia
7. Virginia
8. West Virginia
9. Ohio
10. Indiana
11. Illinois
12. Missouri
13. Kansas
14. Colorado
15. Utah
16. Nevada
17. California

Some of the notable places along our route are New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Carson City, Lake Tahoe, Sacramento, San Francisco.

Route highlights

We are already feeling butterflies in our stomachs in anticipation of a few especially tough portions of the trip:

• The Utah-Nevada section of Route 50, known as the "Loneliest Road in America", traverses a scorching 500 miles of the Great Basin Desert. This portion of the trip includes some 90-mile stretches with no services, water, or shade. Dozens of sharp uphills and downhills accentuate the challenge.

• We'll cross three mountain ranges: the Appalachians, the Rockies, and the Sierras. Our ride's highest point, the Monarch Pass in the Rockies, sits at an elevation of 11,312 ft (3,448 m) above sea level.
  

Schedule

Start date: Sunday, June 24, 2007
End date: mid-August, 2007

We will ride 6-8 hours per day, with 3-4 hours of rest throughout. Estimating our average speed as 10 mph, we plan to cover about 70 miles per day.

The trip is long and complex; headwinds, bad weather, breakdowns, and other contingencies are likely. Therefore, detailed day-by-day advance scheduling is impossible. In the spirit of adventure, we will be flexible, take things as they come, and improvise.

How to join

Want to ride with us? See our Get Involved page.

Updates from the road

We will keep a journal of the expedition and will keep you updated via our blog and photos:

• For our blogs, see the contact page
• Photos

In addition, we are planning to make a documentary film about the expedition. Stay tuned.

Here are a few photos from our previous rides:

• New York - Boston (August 2005)
• Boston - New York (April 2006)
• Boston - Plymouth - Boston (October 2006)
• Boston - New York (May 2007)

Meals and lodging

Lodging? Ha! Most nights we are going to camp out. In addition, Devin claims that he knows the secret to getting churches to let us sleep over on their premises, so we'll try to take advantage of that. We may spend an occasional night at a motel or a B&B.

To minimize weight, we will not carry cooking gear. Instead, we'll be buying our meals at the many cafés, restaurants, and grocery stores along the route.

Gear

Our expedition will be long and fraught with contingencies. One way we are minimizing our dependence on chance and each other is by requiring that every rider invest in high-end cycling and outdoors equipment. Your gear must be ultralight, must pack tight to minimize air drag, and must be well broken in before the ride. You must be a fully autonomous entity, prepared to handle any emergency, as well as separation from the group.

Here's a long-distance cycling gear list.

On the right is a picture of Blue Pony — isn't she a beauty?