a lot of folks have been very supportive and encouraging of my riding in the upcoming "great mississippi river ride" as it's officially known; a 1700-mile bike ride from new orleans to minneapolis.  and they've asked whether or not i am going to tweet along the ride, as i did when jesse and i drove across country in january.  after some thought, the answer is "no." at least not on a regular basis to track my entire journey.  it would just be too impractical.  unlike the drive west, where from the comfort of the passenger seat of our mini it was easy to just pick up my phone, snap a pix and add 140 characters of text, doing all that while on a bike would mean more constant stops.  yes, i'll probably take some pictures and tweet now and again along the way, but i figure it will be better to track my day's progress after a nice hot shower and in the comfort of a motel room or coffee shop rather than along the roadside.

so, first things first.  here i am blogging.  a first in and of itself for me.  and, a bit of fun and idiotic humor as well.  i was talking with my colleague and fellow blogger rob rogers, about the realization that while i read other people's blogs, i didn't actually know how to write my own.  so, with his help and a bit of trial and humorous error, here we are.

and so, to answer the questions, "why the hell are you riding 1700 miles?  is this for another one of your cause rides?  aids?  diabetes?  alzheimer's?  and how much money do i need to write a check for this time?"  and answers to all the above are very simple:  because i want to see if i can do it.  and, no, it's not for any cause other than maybe an early 60th birthday present to myself.

i actually wanted to ride across america.  didn't matter where.  guess it was kind of a mt. everest thing -- because it's there.  that feeling came from years of doing various aids rides across different parts of america.  i've ridden from raleigh, north carolina, up to washington, d.c.  rode from boston to new york a bunch of times.  rode from minneapolis to chicago as well as across much of montana.  in every ride, i always felt a bit sad that the ride was ending.  i kept wanting to keep the momentum going; to get back on the bike the next morning and ride that next leg of some long journey.  yes, some of that had to do with the nature of those aids ride in particular.  they were, in their way, very spiritual.  and it was a great community that formed during the course of a week living and riding together.  but it was also about the actual riding.

after some research, i found a number of cycling tour companies that organized trans-america bike rides.  i even found one cause, the american lung association, that organized a transcon ride that went into canada for portions of the ride.  they came in all shapes and sizes.  seattle to portland, maine.  los angeles to boston.  san fran to washington, d.c.  san diego to savannah.  northern tiers, over the rockies, or across the more southern routes through texas and the southland.

of all the options, i liked the course the american lung association ride was taking.  starting in seattle,  weaving back and forth across the canadian border, and hitting both the canadian rockies as well as the northern part of the appalachians in new england before finally ending up in portland, maine sounded very cool.  having ridden across montana years ago, i traversed the continental divide (the northern rockies) three times.  so i was accustomed to killer mountain climbs and undaunted by the elevations on that course.  however, two other aspects of the ride made it a no-go (and it had nothing to do with yet another fund-raiser ride).  the first was that we'd be sleeping in tents.  having done that throughout my years of aids-rides, i just couldn't get excited about parking myself in a sleeping bag every night for that many miles.  nor showering in who-knows-where places.  but the stake in the heart, and i totally understand why the ala was doing this, was the idea that the riders would also have to take turns acting as cooks for their fellow riders and support crew.  unlike the aids rides, which had a moveable support city of cook tents, tractor trailers with full shower facilities, medical tents, etc., the ala realized it could save a ton of money by having the riders themselves do a lot of this work.  yeah, thanks but no thanks.  i wasn't looking for a bed in a four seasons hotel every night, but some middle ground on creature comforts for that long a ride seemed to me to be in order.

so i settled on the los angeles to boston ride.  4200 miles if memory serves me correctly.  and something like 63 days.  and the timing was right.  middle of the summer, so there'd be less issues with work.  there's actually a "fast ride"  version across the same route that's done in around 35 days.  but you have to be in much better shape and, probably, much younger to do that.  can you say triathelete?

in a serendipitous conversation with the head of talent at my parent company, i told him about my planned ride.  knowing that it would take me out of the office for over two months, i wanted to get a temperature read on that situation.  i was even prepared for that issue by offering either an unpaid leave of absence as a worse-case scenario or, hopefully, making the case that my 16+ years of service qualified me for some kind of sabbatical.

the sabbatical was right out.  note even up for discussion.  even the unpaid leave wasn't the issue. it was totally about that many days out of the office and off of work.  so a compromise was suggested.  "find a shorter ride!"  i had alternatives.  many of the various rides across america can be done in sections.  for instance, the l.a. to boston ride is broken up into four sections that can each be ridden separately.  technically, i could, for the next four years, ride one section per year and, thus, actually say i've ridden across america.  but, for me, it's not the bragging rights.  i'd want to see if i could push myself over 60+ days and over the rockies to complete the journey in one fell swoop.  maybe i'll do those section in years to come but not this go 'round.

so compromise it would have to be if i was going to do something this year.

years ago, my friend and former business partner, larry star, and i talked about doing a ride called the "headwaters of the mississippi."  larry and i used to ride together in the summer mornings around montclair before commuting into new york for work.  we could go out when the sun was up before six a.m. and still get a good 15-mile ride in before heading into work.  on weekends, we might venture farther out to morristown or totowa for 50+ mile rides.  and, because of our work in multiple sclerosis and diabetes, we got involved in many of those one-day rides to support local and national charities.

larry rode in the first boston-to-new york aids ride.  i hadn't even heard of that ride before he decided to go.  i can't remember why i didn't ride in it, but i helped the cause by driving larry and his friends up to boston, bikes in tow.   i did the aids ride the following year and fell in love with those longer-distance rides.  so when he mentioned the "headwaters of the mississippi" ride, it sounded great for a number of reasons.  i loved the idea of that longer distance.  and i really liked the romance of visiting all the towns across all the states through which the mississippi flowed.  i still can't remember why we never went on that ride.  don't remember if it was due to work or timing or whatever.  anyway, we never went.

well, as you know by now, there's a tour company that still organizes the ride.  only now, it's called the "great mississippi river ride."  unlike the famous "ragbrai" ride across iowa, i don't think they did the dipping of the tires ritual.  ragbrai (which stands for "register's annual great bicycle ride across iowa") tradition has it that riders dip their back tires in the missouri river before the start and their front tires in the mississippi at the end.  not sure we'll be dipping tires in the gulf of mexico for starters.  also not sure what actually qualifies as a feeder into what becomes the mighty mississippi.  many some nearby lake around minneapolis would do.

well, that's enough for now.  more on the ride later.