Coast To Coast. Repeat. Repeat.

This spring and summer, I've been reading not one, not two, but three blogs about people making their way across the country without cars.

The Un-Road Trip, which I may have mentioned before, wrapped at the end of June after about two months of Boaz Frankel working his way from Portland across the US and then back again on anything except a gas-powered car. In all, I believe he used 100 types of vehicles, many of them just as demos (such as pogo sticks and unicycles), but he did kayak and ride a couch bike for a sizeable distance. His goal was to bring awareness to how much we use our cars but how little we really need to.

Another one of my favorite blogs is An Adventure Called Bicycling. I stumbled on this one because she owns an Xtracycle and I am not steeped in that culture. RJ and her friend are following the Transamerica route from Oregon to Virginia. She doesn't blog every day, but when she does, it's wonderful...a lovely marriage of beautiful photographs and simple writing. This might be my favorite post of hers and I told her so, even though she doesn't know me from any other IP address.

The final blog about getting from coast to coast is Duzer Does America. Full disclosure: I love this guy. He is riding a three-speed cruiser with a trailer from Cali to DC and raising money for Community Cycles...an awesome bike organization in Boulder that does a lot of things for bike advocacy and ownership and gets Boulder kids on bikes. It says a lot about this guy (who I believe is older than I) that one of his his school teachers rode with him for a week, he gets offerings for housing from random strangers along the way, and a bunch of friends and strangers have taken time off work to ride with him, if even for a few hours. He is bringing bike joy to America. His post yesterday had news that his right crank snapped off only 80 miles from DC, but he's powering through with one leg.

Ryan Van Duzer just wants people to give money to Community Cycles!

All of these blogs have me thinking about getting on my bike and doing something a bit more serious than just grocery shopping. I'd need to improve my bike fitness and confidence and find some time around running and work and everything else, but it's in my brain.