VIDEO: Packing your Bicycle for Amtrak

We’ve taken our bicycles so many times on Amtrak that it’s easy to forget how intimidating it can be. Most stations don’t offer a lot of help, so you are left to your own devices with prepping your bicycle for the bike box. With that in mind, I thought I’d make a little instructional video. Admittedly, not the most exciting, but hopefully it will take out some of the anxiety of bringing your bike on Amtrak.

Unless your on the few Amtrak lines that allow unboxed roll-on of your bicycle, you WILL have to box your bike. Aside from the pure mechanics of prepping your bike, it is a good idea to call the station you plan to depart from and arrive at to make sure it is a manned baggage station. If it isn’t, you won’t be able to load or unload your bike!

To box your bike for the train only requires two simple procedures: 1) remove your pedals 2) turn or remove your handlebars. These two modifications narrow your bike so it can be easily pushed into the bicycle box.

It is a good idea to have an adjustable wrench (that you know opens wide enough to fit over the pedal flats), a multi-tool, a sharpie (to write your info on the box) and your own roll of packing tape. We’ve been to some stations where they had no tape so we had to make an emergency run to go get some. Now we just carry our own. While you’re calling, you should also ask to see if they have a supply of bicycle boxes at the station.

We hope the video was helpful and will encourage you to take your bicycle on the train!

Dream of a dream…

After a day in Yosemite we decided to bolt back to Long Beach. As much as we wanted to stay an extra day and pedal further south, Long Beach was calling. We needed to make some money. My birthday was on Friday and I wanted to spend it with friends. After almost four months on the road, we both had a need to see some familiar friendly faces.

So we took a bus. Then a train. Then another bus.

We watch the scenery change from a warm, temperature controlled seat with a window. First the majesty of Yosemite’s great peaks shrouded in morning rain. It is mysterious and poignant. We want to stay but we can’t.

The scenery flattens to foothills, to rolling farm land, to nothing. We take a combination of the YART bus from Yosemite to Merced, to an Amtrak train from Merced to Bakersfield and then an Amtrak bus from Bakersfield to Long Beach. We are traveling at what feels like incredible speeds compared to our pace during the last four months.

We pass through the grapevine at night. It is black except for the lights of cars on the road. At some point we peak the pass and there are city lights. Los Angeles is near. The amount of pavement compared to uncovered earth increases until it is all asphalt, concrete and glass. The only trees are those confined to four foot squares of dirt in sidewalks.

Soon we are home, or rather close to where our last home was – before we sold everything. It feels strange to be back, knowing that we don’t want to be done yet. Have we failed? Did we succeed? What does it mean to be back?

As we ride home I notice all the changes. The city is largely the same, but slightly different – a Bizzaro Long Beach. There are more med pot collectives, the small art supply store I use to frequent is going out of business, some storefronts are shuttered, some are different. It’s as if you went to bed and while you were sleeping, someone moved your furniture without telling you.

We’ve been here a few days now – transients in our old city. We’ve been to Happy Hour and it felt good. It felt like “home” or as close to home as we are allowed to feel. It was good to see old friends, to tell stories, to catch up on what is happening. For the last four months we’ve been without our network of friends or family, sort of roaming untethered in our vast land. While extremely liberating, it can also be extremely lonely. We are social animals.

I’m updating from what use to be my local coffeeshop. I am falling back into my old routines and it feels strange.

I can’t tell if being in Long Beach again is a dream or if our bicycling for the last four months is the dream. Things are infinitely strange like this.

The plan now, dear readers and fans is to make some cold hard cash and keep going – to monetize. It sounds so crass to think of it in those terms, to think that all that stands between us and this beautifully fluid life is petty cash.

We are working on some e-books and real books about our journey, Laura is selling her jewelry and bike mustaches. I’m trying to book some photoshoots.

We want to go, to keep moving and we will. But for a few weeks, atleast, we will be here in Long Beach. If you have any suggestions for products, books, etc., Send us an email. If you are an outdoor/bicycle/clothing company and want to see your gear tested, photographed and ridden across these united states, email us. If you’ve got any leads or ideas to help us keep the momentum, email us.

Vid. Update: The Day before THE DAY

Apologies in advance for the bad framing and shaky cam..was holding the iPhone with my free arm. Wow that’s tiring : )

Our home is not our home…

There is a critical mass of things that are needed to make 4 walls feel like a home. We’ve been having a mad dash to get rid of things and it was within the last two weeks we hit that tipping point. It happens quietly when you’re not looking. But at some point as you spin around in the middle of your apartment you realize it feels colder and less inviting – everything is unfamiliar again just like when you first moved in.

I’m writing in what use to be my office/darkroom/studio and now it’s just a room. The desk is gone, the enlarger is gone, the shelves, cameras, boxes of prints and negatives. Any evidence that I worked here for five years, except perhaps a few marks on the wall, have all been neatly boxed and stored.

It’s just four white walls nows. It’s not our home anymore. Home is the road. Home is each other.

Our saddest happy hour…

When I was at UCLA I had the notion that I would study something I loved, Literature, and would balance it with another less appealing but would maybe-pay-the-bills sort of major…like Economics. Needless to say, I didn’t last very long as a double major in Literature and Economics. I did stick around long enough in Econ 101 to learn about something called “transaction opportunity costs.” I learned that an transaction opportunity cost is the incurred cost of making an exchange. Aside from the nominal price of what you buy, there are the hidden costs of production, distribution, etc., Blahblahblah.

Another broader and more symbolic way to look at a transactionopportunity cost is that when you choose to do something, you simultaneously choose NOT to do other things.

WIth our launch date ever inching closer (4 DAYS!!!) this concept keeps popping up in my head. Last night, Laura and I went to our last happy hour with our friends. Now, this isn’t any regular happy hour. It has been a tradition of 5 years that every Friday we would all meet at (4 to 16 people…the happy hour would expand and contract during the evening) around 6:30pm, have a few beers and decompress. 5 YEARS! Every week with only a few exceptions. For many of us, this was the most regularly scheduled and attended thing we did.

It was a real life Facebook every Friday.

Last night was our last happy hour with our friends here in Long Beach. While there was still laughs, there was also an undercurrent of sadness as we all knew that this configuration of friends was going to change. Happy hour will no doubt go on without us but this era where we were present has come to an end.

Last night has been the saddest so far for me (which will probably be out-saddened by our farewell party on Wednesday) and that is when this whole idea of transaction opportunity cost popped into my head again.

This Friday happy hour, this group of friends that we’ve grown close to over the years is our biggest cost. Leaving them for a while and all the sadness that it entails is part of the price we pay to go on our adventure. I understand the flip side as well, that the world is ours to explore, but losing this warm cozy nest, our support group is a deep debt that we will always feel. For me, it has also been the most difficult aspect of going away.

So we raise our glasses once more to you, our happy hour friends, whose lives have been so intertwined with our own. While we won’t be present, you can bet that every Friday at 6:30pm our glasses will be tilt towards Long Beach.

Its Later than You Think

You work and work for years and years, you’re always on the go
You never take a minute off, too busy makin’ dough
Someday you say, you’ll have your fun, when you’re a millionaire
Imagine all the fun you’ll have in your old rockin’ chair

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think

You’re gonna take that ocean trip, no matter come what may
You’ve got your reservations made, but you just can’t get away
Next year for sure, you’ll see the world, you’ll really get around
But how far can you travel when you’re six feet underground?

Your heart of hearts, your dream of dreams, your ravishing brunette
She’s left you and she’s now become somebody else’s pet
Lay down that gun, don’t try my friend to reach the great beyond
You’ll have more fun by reaching for a redhead or a blond

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think

You never go to night clubs and you just don’t care to dance
You don’t have time for silly things like moonlight and romance
You only think of dollar bills tied neatly in a stack
But when you kiss a dollar bill, it doesn’t kiss you back

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think

A blurb about our Blurb

I put together our first photo book of bike touring images. All these photos are from our bike tour from Paso Robles to Ventura, CA via the Carrizo Plain. Carrizo is one of the most remote areas in California with dramatic vistas of – nothing. On the trip we had to carry food for several days and about two gallons of water.

One of our goals as we travel is to put together a series of books of our travels and the interesting people we meet. We quite haven’t decided if it makes sense to do a book per person, or by region or by season…too hard to tell right now. A lot of this project is very organic and is open change.

Regardless, I put one together to test the print quality and to see if it would work for our needs. The book itself is printed and distributed through Blurb. The book size is 7×7 inches. I love the square format for photo books and this size is just the right size. I’ve had different photo books made and I’m really pleased with the quality of the Blurb books.

You can order a copy here and help keep us going!

First iPhone vid…

Just an hour before our presentation. Hope to see you guys there!

Of Phones and Photos

Testing out our latest piece of gear, an iPhone! As part of our attempt to update our travels in real-ish time, I buckled with my vow to never use AT&T (had really crappy customer service years ago) and got an iPhone.

I have to say, I’ve been really pleased with it and am super impressed with it’s camera/Internet integration. I’ve been geeking out with it the last few days and am really looking forward to using it on our journey. I’ve been taking some snaps to document our packing and to familiarize myself with the controls.

Here’s a few snaps taken with it (and this post was written with it as well)!

Health Coverage Found!

Like looking for a needle in a haystack, finding decent and affordable health insurance has been a huge pain in the rear. I was actually beginning to wonder if it was an impossibility. And Russ and I were beginning to weigh the pros and cons of going with a cheapo policy that was liable to not cover everything in a dire emergency. Wading through health insurance quotes is not for the weak, I tell ya!

In the middle of all this, while searching the internet for options, I ran across this post by some like-minded souls about a recent trip to the emergency room – and the peace of mind that came from being in France and being covered by the lovely French social healthcare system. It simultaneously made me feel like anything could happen so we should be thoroughly covered and made me want to just flee the US for someplace with a better health system.

How did it all work out? Well, I spent hours and hours searching online and talking to various insurance agents. It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in that the first quote was too big and the second quote was too small and, finally, the last quote was pretty much perfect.

In working with a really lovely and bubbly insurance agent (Hi Lydia!), she found a plan through Celtic that covers us in the case of something catastrophic and also allows a few doctor visits at a low $30 co-pay. The deductible is rather high ($5,000), but there’s an out-of-pocket limit, which means that, if anything major happens, there’s only so much we’ll have to pay (which is what insurance is for, right?). Whew.

We have both been approved and now we’re just waiting to sign the paperwork. And we have both let out a huge sigh of relief in knowing that we’re not running off into the world at risk of who-knows-what. Plus, we don’t have to sit and watch the news headlines and wonder just how long it’ll take for universal healthcare to make its way into our daily lives.

P.S. If anyone needs insurance, we can definitely recommend a good agent!