We were gonna get married this fall!
So yeah…
As it became clear that the pandemic wouldn't let up before the date we'd planned for our wedding, we had the idea to bike across the country instead. This was something we'd talked about before, though more as a kind of dream trip. But when we started to research, we realized not only that we could make it happen this year, but that the trip made rescheduling the wedding a little less heartbreaking.
Sara & Beau & Bikes
Sara's been excited about bicycles since a friend gifted her a vintage Fuji road bike back in 2010-ish. She's had a few bikes and made a number of longer rides, including the New York Century (100 miles!) in 2018. All Sara's bikes are named after songs by The Decemberists. Here's some of them, and some of her biking adventures (not in order):
When we lived in Brooklyn, our 3 bikes took up a lot of our apartment (they were basically most of our wall art).
Beau was given one of these bikes when he joined the Peace Corps. It was a terrible bike. Eventually the derailleur broke and he was stuck in one gear for the last several months of his service. Weee…
Later Beau got a single-speed Fairdale Coaster to commute around Austin, which he still rides and loves unless he's biking alongside one of Sara's vintage speedsters. He's a less accomplished biker, but he's done a few long rides, topping out at about 55 miles on an all-night 5-borough donut ride.
Bikecamping in 2020
We're approaching this project as the ultimate endeavor in social distancing — we're bringing masks and sanitizer, we're keeping the six feet, and we're seeing how often we can turn that six feet into six hundred.
Also, the timing works out: Sara's a theater director whose near-future gigs have been postponed. Beau's a writer trying to pitch his first novel in the midst of a global health crisis. Our schedules are open; we're ready for adventure. We just hope we aren't leaving so late in the season that we get brutalized by the cold when we hit Idaho & environs. Wish us luck.
All for now.