I’m riding my bike from San Francisco to Seattle. Here are some details:

• Route – I’ll hop off BART in San Francisco and head along the coast until I reach the Oregon-Washington border. At that point, I may cut inland at Astoria to head towards Portland for Thanksgiving with my family, then back out the mouth of the Columbia to the Pacific coast again, north until I hit Bremerton or Bainbridge and take the ferry across to Seattle. The entire route is about 1100 miles.
• Time – As long as it takes. I have three months or so before I go back into the Peace Corps and no commitments. I’ll leave in roughly 3 weeks depending on when I can take care of appointments required by the Peace Corps.
• Distance – I’m shooting for a super conservative 30 miles a day average — that’s only about 2.5 hours a day riding at my average speed. Some days I’ll ride more, some days I’ll hang out and rest up. That will put me back in Seattle in a little more than four weeks.
• Money – I’ll be on shoestring with around $1000 to burn on the journey. That’s a little over $30 a day. I’m going to try to raise more for a cushion before I leave.
• Lodging – Camp as much as possible. Occasionally, I’ll stay in a motel or B&B to clean up or if the weather gets really bad.
• Equipment – I sold my delicate racer and bought something a little more durable and tour friendly. It has fat 700x32C tires. (I’ll post an equipment page soon.)
• Luggage – I will travel light with a tiny 1-man tent, sleeping bag, therm-a-rest mattress, spare parts, 3 changes of clothes, basic toiletries and my iPhone. No laptop or anything like that.
• Safety – I don’t want my family and friends to freak out so I’ve put a lot of thought into safety.
  • The bike is equipped with two red rear flashers, 3M reflector tape on the fender, and there is reflective materials sewn into the panniers (bike bags).
  • My current GPS location is posted (even now) on here at Davey-Dave.com. (See it on the right?) I’ll make that link back to the main map so you can see my speed and direction too.
  • There is already a widget on the right sidebar of this blog that allows you to send an instance TXT message to my cellphone for free (note: you need to be signed up and signed in to see it).
  • I can post updates to my blog every day from my cellphone and will probably do that providing I’m in range. I also have the capability to twitter on the road.
  • There are two headlights mounted on the handlebars and one on my helmet.
  • I will have a med-kit and I carry health insurance.
  • I’ll be managing my heart rate with a monitor on my bike computer.
  • I will have spare batteries for my lights and bike computer, a 60 hour back-up battery for my iPhone that I got in Hong Kong and a my cellphone from Samoa as a back-up.
  • I am carrying a small amount of cash, a debit card and a pre-paid Visa.
  • I have the three guide books by Adventure Cycling Association specifically for riding this route on a bike.
  • Back up plans include stopping in Greyhound and Amtrak Portland.