How To Become a Cross Country Cyclist in 10 Easy Steps

My cross country bicycle tour is slated to begin the first week of May. Check out my online journal; "Three Spokes and a Mirror" at this link:

Marc's Coast to Coast Bicycle Trip!

I continually get questions from people asking what it's like on a long distance bicycle tour. Well my girlfriend sent me an email recently from an unknown cyclist who happened to capture the essence of life on the road.

Given my experience touring across North Carolina (x 2) I can attest the description appearing below is pretty darn accurate. Hilariously accurate.......

Here it is- Enjoy!

"As many of you know I cycled coast to coast in 2000. As time passes a person forgets the hard parts and tends to remember the good parts of the trip. I remember what it was REALLY like after reading this epilogue from a friends website……….

Step 1.
Get a spaghetti strainer and several small sponges. Soak the sponges in salt-water and paste them to the inside of the spaghetti strainer. Place the strainer on your head. Find a busy road. Stand by the side of the road and do deep knee-bends for 8 hours. This will acclimatize you to a days ride.

Step 2.
Take some sandpaper and rub your rear-end and then insides of your legs for about 20 minutes. Rinse with salt water. Repeat. Then, sit on a softball for 8 hours. Do this daily.

Step 3.
Each day, take two twenty dollar bills and tear them into small pieces. Place the pieces on a dinner-plate, douse them with lighter fluid and burn them. Inhale the smoke (simulating car-fumes). Rub the ashes on your face. Then go to a local motel and ask for a room.

Step 4.
Take a 1-quart plastic bottle. Fill it from the utility sink of a local gas-station (where the mechanics wash their hands). Let the bottle sit in the sun for 2 or 3 hours until it is good and tepid. Seal the bottle up (kinda,sorta) and drag it through a ditch or swamp. Walk to a busy road. Place your spaghetti strainer on your head and drink the swill-water from the bottle while doing deep knee-bends along the side of the road.

Step 5.
Get some of those Dutch wooden-shoes. Coat them with gear-oil. Go to the local supermarket (preferably one with tile floors). Put the oil-coated shoes on your feet and go shopping.

Step 6.
Think of a song from the 1980’s you really hated. Buy the CD and play 20 seconds of that song over and over and over for about 6 hours. Do more deep knee-bends.

Step 7.
Hill Training: Do your deep knee-bends with the salt-soaked spaghetti strainer on your head, while you drink the warm swill water and listen to the 80’s song over and over (I would recommend “I’m a Cowboy/On a Steel Horse I Ride!” by Bon Jovi). At the end of 4 hours, climb onto the hood of a friends car and have him drive like a lunatic down the twistiest road in the area while you hang on for dear life.

Step 8.
Humiliation Training: Wash your car and wipe it down with a chamois-cloth. Make sure you get a healthy amount of residual soap and road-grit embedded in the chamois. Put the chamois on your body like a loin-cloth, then wrap your thighs and middle section with cellophane. Make sure it’s really snug. Paint yourself from the waist down with black latex paint. Cut an onion in half and rub it into your arm-pits. Put on a brightly-colored shirt and your Dutch oil-coated wooden shoes and go shopping in a crowded mall.

Step 9.
Foul Weather Training: Take everything that is important to you, pack it in a nylon bag and place it in the shower. Get in the shower with it. Run water from hot to cold. Get out and without drying off, go shopping at a local convenience store. Leave wet, important stuff on the sidewalk. Go inside and buy $10 worth of Gatorade and Fig Newton’s.

Step 10.
Headwinds Training: Buy a huge map of the entire country. Spread it out in front of you. Have a friend hold a hair-dryer in your face. Stick your feet in toffee and try to pull your knees to your chest while your friend tries to shove you into a ditch or into traffic with his free hand. Every 20 minutes or so, look at the huge map and marvel at the fact that you have gone nowhere after so much hard work and suffering. Fold the map in front of a window-fan set to high."

I can't wait!

Later,

Marc