Cross-Country American Road Trip
Sam Scipio and I bikepacking through Montana in 2019
Audio version of this blogpost.
I love me a good cross-country American road trip. Seeing how much of a mess everything is at the moment, it’s one of the few times these days I can really get excited about my home country.
Before we start driving, we’ll make a pit stop in NYC where I have the honor of being a guest at the Dadbod Cycling Coffee Ride on September 13th at 9am in Prospect Park.
From there we’re flying to Virginia to start our road trip! This time, we’re attempting to enjoy the journey and do a bit less running from one place to the next. The start is not super rushed, but we do have back to back 9+ hour drives to knock down on our way to Colorado.
I’m excited about a few things in regards to this upcoming adventure. When I was racing professionally, I had to say “no” to a lot of important life moments happening for my friends and family. It was super frustrating, because I was at the age where folks were still getting married and having babies. To be honest, I haven’t met most of my friend’s kids, and that makes me sad. But I do hope to remedy that in the near future.
So yes, I’m excited about being able to say yes to friends. A birthday party, a wedding, a random meetup, who knows what else?! I’m also excited to spend some time exploring and recreating in nature. Once we leave Colorado we’re heading to Yellowstone National Park.
I visited once before when I rode through Montana with my friend Sam. We retraced one of the test routes of the Buffalo Soldiers unit commissioned to trial the efficiency of bikes as military transportation. Sam convinced me I would be fine on a Gravel bike… and in reality I only fell once, but it was very much mountain bike terrain, and it’s amazing to think that the soldiers rode on even more unmanaged routes over a century ago. If you’ve never heard about that, it’s VERY cool, please go learn more. And if you wanna see recaps from my trip, there’s a highlight that links to all the reels on my instagram.
Anywho, we had quite a few mishaps on that journey which meant i spent less than a day inside the park. It was a super cool experience, but very rushed. This time, Will and I will spend a few days camping, and doing stuff. I can’t wait.
From there we’re gonna go birdwatching somewhere in Idaho. Will is very into birdwatching, so i’m gonna get me a set of binoculars and conquer my fear of owls. I’m less excited about that part of the trip, but who knows, I might become a birder afterwards! We shall see.
From there we have a bit of a gap, and we’re stilll deciding how to spend our time before I have a few sponsor obligations. Once those are done, we’ll head to Joshua Tree for some more exploring, then LA for this year’s Thee Abundance Intermediate Camp sponsored by Bronco Wild Fund October 10-12.
I haven’t officially announced it yet, but plan to do so tomorrow. If you know any women of color in Southern California who might be interested/ benefit from my offerings, send them my way! It’s gonna be a good one! It always is.
From there we’ll make our way back east, which will be a bit more of a hustle so we can catch our flight back to Spain, but who knows what we might find the time to get into along the way!
That seems like enough of an update for now! Lookout for the camp announcement and help spread the word if you don’t mind! I have lots of thoughts about how I’d like to proceed with Thee Abundance Project and start focusing more on the community parts of cycling that get people into the racing part in the first place.
More on that later! Thanks for reading!
