Why ride across the continent? (part 2)

I am a biologist and a teacher.  That is the lens through which I see the world.  One thing that I have learned the hard way over the past 20 years or so is that the human body is excellent at scavenging and saving energy (primarily in the form of fat).  About 10 years ago, I began the process of working to reduce my energy stores by riding a bike.  I've had some significant success with this.  I am down about 60 pounds from my maximum ever weight.  I do have periods of gain and loss but the 10-year trend is down.  The point is that I dug myself a health and fitness hole, and have been climbing out of it pedal stroke by pedal stroke (and by avoiding calorie intake).  I have not learned all I need to about this subject.  I will count it as learned when I reach my target weight and stay within 10 lbs of it.

I want my students to learn from my mistakes.  I am collecting physiological data on my body and how it changes.  I will use this data in my classes.  What data am I collecting?  Weight, calorie intake, exercise (calorie expenditure), blood pressure and photos (front and side images).  I plan to stack the photos and make a time-lapse of changes in body shape.  If you have other ideas about information I should collect, please make suggestions.  I think that riding across the continent will give me some significant credibility when talking about the subject of health and fitness to my students.

What do I want them to learn? 

1. Balance eating and exercise.
2. Never let stress throw off #1.
3. Establish healthy habits now.  They will be hard to un-learn later.

Why ride across the continent? (part 1)

When I was in 6th grade, my family took a tent, clothes, grill and a trailer and camped across the country.  One day in Kentucky (if I remember correctly) we met two guys who were doing a cross country ride.  They had panniers in front and back and were carrying their tent, clothes, a small stove--basically a very small version of everything we had in our trailer.  The next day, we did some sight seeing, travelled a little, and got to another camp site.  Shortly after we set up our tent, the same two guys rode in.  I was impressed that they rode, with all that stuff, as far as we had driven.  Ever since then, I've thought it would be fun to do it myself.

The Route

We plan to ride from Washington to New Jersey.  This is our proposed route.  I will write another post to explain the background reasons for the ride.  The route is broken into 3 sections because Google Maps has a maximum number of stops.  Click on the map to see the route in Google maps.  We are looking for people along our route who would be willing to help us.  What would help us?  I'll list some things below the maps.

Washington to the Montanna/North Dakota border.

Minnesota to Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan to New Jersey



What can you do to help if you live along the route?

• Sleeping accommodations (a place to pitch a tent for example).
• Showers - even a garden hose would work
• Drinking water
• Ice - make a block of ice for us
• Advice - let us know good places to buy food, interesting things to see, etc.