![]() Incidentally, I found out too that the ferry was the easiest way to get out of Seattle and onto the highway. Like Bangalore, Seattle seemed to have lots of traffic jams. I spent an entire day at a music festival, and of course, took a trip on the famous ferry. The next couple of days were spent exploring Seattle. Though the experience was a little unnerving at first, I quickly got used to it. I set up my bike at their house and for the first time riding on the right-hand side of the road. Alan and his wife are folks I met on Warm Showers, and once I’d written to them, they readily agreed to host me for the few days that I’d be stopping by at Frasier’s city. I hadn’t trained for the ride, I didn’t have enough money to handle any unforeseen situations, and most importantly, how was I to survive without curd rice and chai. That day went by like a flash and soon, I found myself in Seattle, waiting for Alan to pick me up at the airport. I wasn’t sure if I should have gone through with the ride. This would be my first visit to the US and I was going to ride through the red states.įrom the time I checked in and sat down to wait to board I started to panic. I had read a few articles about this and heard about how the country was reacting to immigrants stealing jobs. This was the time when Trump was talking about the H1B status of Indian immigrants. Since I was really busy getting things done in time to catch my flight I hadn’t sat down to think about the task at hand. The t-shirt he wanted me to wear during the ride would reach me just before my flight took off. The evening before my flight was scheduled to leave, a friend asked if I would raise awareness about banning the online sale of dogs, and given that the topic is one rather close to the heart, I agreed. I haven’t heard my wife nagging me this much ever. Ideally, racers pack up and test everything before the race, but since it was peak season time at work, I barely managed to get the bike packed before my flight. Before I knew it, it was May and time to leave. I finally got around to picking up all the gear I could possibly need and had, at least temporarily, gotten the seemingly never-ending questions out of the way. I had tons of questions, mainly about how to handle the cold. Andrew, another racer I had met via an online forum, added me on Facebook and started to help plan my ride. With the formalities done, it was time to start buying gear. The visa officer seemed interested in the race and after a quick chat agreed to stamp my passport. Fortunately, my boss was alright with giving me the time off I needed for the trip, which was near on 3 months in itself.īy December 2017, I’d booked my tickets and applied for a visa. The hope was that about 3 months of preparation would be enough to see me across the 4100 miles. I figured that worst case, I would get a few long rides in before the race, which was set to start on June 2, 2018. So I registered for the race but kept putting off getting started with my training plan. ![]() Sadly, I did very few rides in 2017, but when we came back from Russia my wife and mum seemed to like the idea of me riding across the US. In 2017, we went to Russia and did the train ride across the country. Since I was getting married the next year and would need to take time off for that, I let the plan slide that year. The most exciting part of the race is when we would ride through Yellowstone National Park. ( ) Half the race was in the cold part of the country before getting to the warmer climates in the east. ![]() It is a 4300-mile race where you get to ride over the Rockies and the Appalachian mountains. In late 2016, I found out about a race called the Trans Am Bike Race, which starts in Astoria, Oregon and ends all the way at the other end of the USA, in Yorktown, Virginia. In between all this, I would still go out on long multiday tours across the country. I got a new job that paid reasonably well, I got married, we adopted three dogs. As with everything in life, things change. People have asked me, “Why that specific date?”, and my answer has been, “Because I can.” I had five years to figure out finances, visas, everything else, and get my folks to agree to what they considered a fool’s errand. After almost zero thought or even looking at a calendar, I set the date as 20 th June 2018. I believe that in order to do anything of this sort, I would first need to fix a date and everything else would follow. In 2013, I rode across India on a bicycle and decided then that I would someday ride across the world.
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