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I didn’t get a chance to finish typing up my journal and answer emails before bed yesterday. The food from my cook stove was warming for a while, but with the food and hot tea gone, night’s chill started winning the battle. Last night was just a bit cooler than my first night on tour. Not being near a big city might have been a factor.

This is the first night I used my full mummy bag. I’m talking near freezing, mummy bag pulled tight so only your mouth and nose is out kind of cold. That mummy bag was perfect. I woke up and didn’t want to get up. Unfortunately my bladder has a veto over what I want, so I stepped out into the cold.
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As soon as I realized that my recumbent would allow me to complete my dream of riding a bicycle across the country, I started research all over the web. While reading through the many trip reports of coast to coast touring cyclists, two things became clear. First, I would be riding the TransAmerica trail created by Adventure Cycling in 1976 (the year of my birth). Second, I should purchase, read, re-read, and take along Donna’s book.
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I had a good night’s sleep last night, despite the temperature. I thought about not bringing my 20 degree bag and purchasing a warmer weather bag. I’m thrilled that I didn’t talk myself into it. I needed every bit of that bag to stay warm last night. I woke up just before 7, refreshed with my headache gone. I’m sure that drinking water throughout the night helped counter the dehydration and altitude effects. I immediately went to get my $20 worth of hot shower. Seeing my campsite for the first time in the light assured that I didn’t do too bad of a job picking it out. The layer of pine needles added a nice soft accentuation to the air mattress. I setup the laptop and AA batteries to start charging in the outlets along the all of the restroom.
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I have been unable to find a pannier set that works exactly as I would like for the under-seat rack on my RANS Rocket. I like the panniers made by Arkel of all the panniers I have looked at and used.

I decided to make my own set tailored (quite literally) exactly to my needs and I borrowed quite a bit from Arkel’s design work. Below is a description of the process for those who would like to do the same.
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The bicycle tourist is greeted with two choices when starting their tour. Do I ride away from my home or pack up everything and take alternate transportation to the start? For local tours, the loop method is a good idea. Start off in one direction and ride in a big loop until you end up back home. If I had a year’s time, not just a couple months, I would enjoy a loop tour of the US. It would be ideal to leave Indiana, riding in the northern states during the warmer months and the southern states during the cooler months. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the few extra weeks it would take to get to Virginia by bicycle and luckily, my dad has nice friends.
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I have been asked many times why I wanted to ride a bicycle across the county. Having completed the trip, the question became easy to answer. It was not easy to answer before I left. My history started the same year as cross country ride. I am a bicentennial baby, born in 1976. This is the same year the Bikecentennial route was created. Thousands of cyclists rode across the country on that route, during that year. Many thousands more have crossed the United States on the same route since. The route is still maintained by the same organization with a new name: Adventure Cycling. Their maps are extremely helpful for the bicycle tourist and have kept the same basic route, with slight changes as roads are modified over the years.All of this is good and well, you say, but it still doesn’t answer the why. The truth is that I didn’t really know. I read a tour report on-line and thought it sounded interesting. Over the years it fermented into a strong desire. I wondered if this was something I could do. I started riding a Trek 520 touring bike in college. I was overweight. No nicer way to say it. Riding 50 miles in a day was a task. This wasn’t because I couldn’t physically do it, my butt just couldn’t handle the time on the bike. Yes, I had the real bike shorts. I tried three different seats. It just didn’t work. All season would be required before I could do two back to back 50 mile days. I couldn’t see myself riding across the country, when you are doing 50+ mile days every day. The idea was put on the shelf.
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I have been searching for a lightweight, waterproof bag to protect my Martin Backpacker Guitar for some time. Typical dry bags used for water sports are seriously overbuilt for bicycle touring and backpacking use, where weight is a very large factor. They use clear vinyl or heavier vinyl coated cloth and weight many pounds. My search for a waterproof bag to use with my guitar never yielded any results.

I ordered a set of front panniers and some lightweight waterproof bags to use in the panniers from Arkel. You can see the “roll over and snap” type closure of the dry bags I received. In these bags, I saw the perfect material to produce a travel guitar dry bag. I asked Arkel about getting a custom bag made, but they turned me down. Their supplier did not have the flexibility for a custom project. The design of these bags is dead simple, so I decided to just make one. This page is my first attempt at making the bag and shows a large collection of what not to do if you attempt the same thing. Hopefully there are enough tips that you will be successful. You should be able to follow this page to make waterproof bags for any shape you want to, even simple squares. Although, If Arkel carried the size I wanted, I would probably just purchase it from them as the cost for materials and time to build a bag makes their prices really reasonable. Just remember to leave the biggest side open! Read the rest of this entry »