Adventurers Wanted

[SneakyDingo]

I guess my southern living has me confused on clothing. June is normally pretty warm in Arkansas. 80-90 during the day and 70's at night. I guess I'll need to grab some different cold weather gear.

I'm in the PNW, so we have camping friendly temperatures, but I'm also an XWA rider so I know that snow across the passes is extremely likely based on past years. Usually on the intended departure date, Memorial Day weekend, we have a few people hitting snow on the activity, or the week before, and sometimes the week after. We are quite a bit further north than New Mexico, but we're also only at around 6k ft elevation.

 

[SneakyDingo]

I am offering 10 to 1 odds that Sneakydingo shows up with his 3d printer mounted on his bike somehow, and 2 to 1 that we wind up needing it before we're done like usual I will probably show up with way more stuff than I need and ship it home at some point.

I'm not saying how I know this but it won't fit .

 

[imacbo]

Do you guys have comms? Do you plan on using comms? I dont have any and will need to buy something if you guys are planning on using them.
If using comms what do you recommend?

 

[bryanchurch06]

Do you guys have comms? Do you plan on using comms? I dont have any and will need to buy something if you guys are planning on using them.
If using comms what do you recommend?

I don't have them and I don't know that we need them as most of them time we'll be traveling at slow speeds so as long as we use good group awareness we should be fine. But I will defer to the group needs.

 

[bryanchurch06]

It looks like Deming NM is the closest town to the start point with motels and amenities, should we all plan on meeting there? Is everyone interested still good with June 1st start? I am flexible and as I've stated before my big concern with the NM section is the mud during rainy season which supposedly starts June 15th. I realize trying to plan on the weather is a fools game but that's the best info I have for now. Any members in NM your input would be appreciated.

 

[imacbo]

As of right now Im good with the start date. I do have a family and job that could change that but I should be good as long as nothing major comes up.

My rough plan as of right now is to ride from Fort Smith AR to the starting point. I'm planning on stopping in El Paso for tires and service at the Honda dealership there. Then the next day meet up for the trail. It looks like its about 1000-1100 miles to the start of the trail. 1100 miles divided by 45mph should be about a 24hour ride. I plan on trying to do roughly two 12 hour days of riding to get there. I'll lose time at the dealership and I might now be able to hold a 45mph average but that should be a decent rough guess.

My route to the start will run me though Roswell, which I have wanted to go to since I was a kid watching X-Files. Other than a dealership for tires and service that is the only thing I want to see / check out before we start.

How many miles a day are we planning on riding or how many days are you guys thinking it will take to finish the trail? What town are we going to finish in? I still have to plan my return route.

 

[bryanchurch06]

As of right now Im good with the start date. I do have a family and job that could change that but I should be good as long as nothing major comes up.

My rough plan as of right now is to ride from Fort Smith AR to the starting point. I'm planning on stopping in El Paso for tires and service at the Honda dealership there. Then the next day meet up for the trail. It looks like its about 1000-1100 miles to the start of the trail. 1100 miles divided by 45mph should be about a 24hour ride. I plan on trying to do roughly two 12 hour days of riding to get there. I'll lose time at the dealership and I might now be able to hold a 45mph average but that should be a decent rough guess.

My route to the start will run me though Roswell, which I have wanted to go to since I was a kid watching X-Files. Other than a dealership for tires and service that is the only thing I want to see / check out before we start.

How many miles a day are we planning on riding or how many days are you guys thinking it will take to finish the trail? What town are we going to finish in? I still have to plan my return route.

We figure on riding 8 to 10 hr days at 25 to 35 miles an hr depending on terrain, this could go better or worse of course. Sneakydingo and I originally planned on skipping any red or technical routes that would be to hard on the bikes. Here is a link to the route we discussed. https://www.google.com/mymaps/viewer?mid=16d53Fpc-ubhhfA797ohHbSeY1rg&hl=en

 

[bryanchurch06]

This is my route to the start, we will probably meet somewhere along the way if you want
Shared route
From Yankton to Antelope Wells via US-83 S.

21 hr 22 min (1,277 mi)
21 hr 22 min in current traffic
Avoiding highways, Avoiding tolls,
For the best route in current traffic visit https://maps.app.goo.gl/x77X5tEM4BF6ajq27

 

[SneakyDingo]

Do you guys have comms? Do you plan on using comms? I dont have any and will need to buy something if you guys are planning on using them.
If using comms what do you recommend?

I would need motivation to use comms as it's one more thing to buy, one more thing to maintain. I'm a little old school, hand gestures and predefined behavior are what I resort to. The old SOP was to keep an eye on each other, ride with regroup, hand signals (rehashed for every riding group because there's commonality but no single uniform standard), anyone not visible gets 2 minutes to be visible again before we backtrack.

I'm also of the mindset that on this bike, I'm not hurrying. If we don't make it to the campsite that evening, that wasn't because we didn't ride fast enough, that's because we f'd up the planning and were too ambitious - no stress, relax, choose the next best option and go from there.

Should we all plan on meeting there? Is everyone interested still good with June 1st start?

I think you and I might have to discuss that one a little more RE: the meet point. IIRC (If I remember correctly) the last time we chatted we discussed meeting en route and my riding shotgun as needed as one of the simpler options. El Paso was the option that offered me the most flexibility based on your current routing.

June 1st is still a go on my books. I'll defer to whoever has more experience in this area. I have to do some stuff with work but nothing insurmountable; basically move a calendar appointment and negotiate swapping certain shifts with people. Which is easier to do when you're **checks notes** the guy that makes the shifts.

<stuff>

I'd probably benchmark that a little lower in terms of speed for stoppage and comfort reasons, but I'd also be more willing to flog the bike a little harder if there was an oil and tire change waiting at the end . Dealerships can be jerks so that's the sort of thing where I'd probably make sure that both parties are in very good understanding of how important this is to have a timely service, especially since most places can manage changing a tire and doing an oil change. Heck, I'm betting on at least one of us with an impromptu demonstration mid trip after being encouraged by some kind of unwanted road conditions.

Route and riding time, it's as @bryanchurch06 says. Getting to the end is the priority, and I'll generally defer to group comfort. Tourist not racing, I like my collarbones intact. Longer days if needed, shorter days preferred with stretching planned for - we can always take longer, do more detours and arrive earlier, but it sure is hard to make up lost time and broken components. I'm not super keen on riding after dark unless it's needed or it's very slow - part of that is safety, but a big part of that is I've never been to this part of the world before and I might miss a gorgeous view just off to the side in the dark.

How many miles a day are we planning on riding or how many days are you guys thinking it will take to finish the trail? What town are we going to finish in? I still have to plan my return route.

I'll answer this in a separate post. It requires charts n stuff.

 

[SneakyDingo]

I'll have to give a bit of an explanation with this data and I'm putting this in the open because I discussed this privately with @bryanchurch06 and I hope this helps someone else.

Some details:

• I used to work with a data visualization company, and we loved tracking this particular race over the years, so I know the last few year's data approximates the previous years.
• Route changes every year, but it's always roughly the same: It follows the CDT, it's run through checkpoints that you can analyze off, and it always starts about the same time of year, that being June 10th or so aka when we plan to ride it, so we can say comparable conditions.
• The race is generally run north to south; we are going south to north. I don't think that matters too much.
• The biggest difference is these guys are on bicycles
• The pro's and the joe's line up against each other - gear limitations, sponsorship, etc. are thrown out the window and everyone races by the same rules. It's the equivalent of class 11 Baja Bugs being competitive against Class 1, only some years the bugs either win or get very close to winning.
• There are some "rules" used by the race that I've also adhered to, that being that if you didn't finish in a certain timeframe after the winner, that's not generally considered competitive. This is used as the cutoff of the data.

My overall assessment is based around the premise that for this particular route, we are approximately twice as fast as competitive bicyclists racing this route.

Analysis
Most of the riders who were "competitive" rode about the same amount of time. The winners generally slept less. This has been consistent since at least 2015. Almost everyone fits into 0.8x to 1.2x the median speed of 9.7mph moving speed. Median also means keying off the middle guy, which we can see is roughly a 50-50 riding to sleeping ratio. Aka about a 12 hour day.



In terms of mileage and total time, the data looks pretty much like a straight line to me which tells me some things about the course: progression is approximately constant for the riders with no exceptionally difficult portions that made them all or some of them stumble, like getting caught in a snowstorm or a section of mud that caused all of them to move much more slowly. Based on this, we can approximate that most of the riders are riding about 4 mph average and at a fairly constant speed, 6.6 mph if you limit it to the top 10 finishers. We also know their rest % ratio so we can estimate this to be a 8 mph moving to 13.2 mph moving speed.



Assessment
I said my overall premise is based on being about twice as fast as the riders on this course. That means that we're riding somewhere in the range of 16 mph to 27 mph, with a good estimate being ~20 mph across the entire course. This translates to:

• More sleep and rest time if we want it.
• Shorter days if we want it.
• More beer time.
• More finding a campsite and setting up time.
• ... or time that we can spend with short days because we found a hotel that had vacancies during bad weather.
• More time to do oil changes, get flat tires and not stress about it, etc.
• Finishing sooner (if we want it).
• More time for being distracted, side tracking, tourist activities.
• Going slower on tricky sections.

In addition to this, we can skip things we don't like because no one will DQ us. Based on gpsKevin's map data, CDT data, the fact I'll likely cut off the Canadian section, my estimate is 16-18d, with a possibility of finishing in around 14d. I am actually budgeting for double that, because no one at work will complain if I come back sooner, and sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation (like to strip down the bike and clean it afterwards).

RE: Finish line, I don't have my US passport yet after becoming a citizen last year and since getting a citizenship invalidated my green card, I need a US passport to cross the border. Even if I get it, I think I'll skip the Canadian section as I live in Seattle and the US Border crossing is about the last "easy navigation" place for me to turn around and head back to Seattle.

 

[bryanchurch06]

I'm fine with El Paso as a meeting point, as far from the border as possible though, I picked up freight in El Paso in 2014 when I was driving a truck and I think it's probably still the same if not worse so as little time there as possible? If there's a member with more experience or info on the town I'd welcome the information as I spent the majority of my time at truck stops, if anyone can recommend a safe motel for the group we're grateful I'm sure.
I'm not making any political statements just my personal exp with the town if you live there and I've offended you I apologize.

 

[SneakyDingo]

El Paso?

One of the things to remember is you're not driving point to point, you're driving U-Haul drop to U-Haul drop, so that will control our rendezvous a little.

Originally our 2 person plan had had two possibilities, El Paso being the closest airport and Albuquerque airport being the other nearby option with a longer drive. For me, I'd defer to your opinion there, but both options kinda suck with regards to crime. Once the bikes are out of the truck, puttering over to Columbus for overnight lodging is the next most attractive option, followed by Deming, and I'd require little encouragement to accidentally wheel the bikes into the rooms.

If instead we decided to say, "Let's have multiple people get bikes to Honda Powersports" then El Paso's "Viva Powersports" is the only way to go. The other options are too far away. An indirect route to Hachita puts us at 130 miles of riding, probably about one tank of fuel. I think multiple CT125's turning up would probably be enough to get slightly preferential treatment in that sense. This was my original fallback plan if for some reason you had to bail.

Hachita Food Mart & Gas Station seems like the most reasonable option to say to everyone, "we're going to meet here at this time". Aside from having no protective cover from the elements, there's no real downsides. It's a pretty easy location with gassing up and resupply. It'd be on the route in and the route out, giving us two chances to pick up stragglers or anyone who wanted to sleep in more.

 

[bryanchurch06]

One of the things to remember is you're not driving point to point, you're driving U-Haul drop to U-Haul drop, so that will control our rendezvous a little.

Originally our 2 person plan had had two possibilities, El Paso being the closest airport and Albuquerque airport being the other nearby option with a longer drive. For me, I'd defer to your opinion there, but both options kinda suck with regards to crime. Once the bikes are out of the truck, puttering over to Columbus for overnight lodging is the next most attractive option, followed by Deming, and I'd require little encouragement to accidentally wheel the bikes into the rooms.

If instead we decided to say, "Let's have multiple people get bikes to Honda Powersports" then El Paso's "Viva Powersports" is the only way to go. The other options are too far away. An indirect route to Hachita puts us at 130 miles of riding, probably about one tank of fuel. I think multiple CT125's turning up would probably be enough to get slightly preferential treatment in that sense. This was my original fallback plan if for some reason you had to bail.

Hachita Food Mart & Gas Station seems like the most reasonable option to say to everyone, "we're going to meet here at this time". Aside from having no protective cover from the ei lements, there's no real downsides. It's a pretty easy location with gassing up and resupply. It'd be on the route in and the route out, giving us two chances to pick up stragglers or anyone who wanted to sleep in more.

I like the idea of everyone meeting at the Honda dealership in El Paso or Deming? Again i will defer to the group, like you i had 2 plans doing the trip by myself or with others, still trying to decide if I'm going to spend the money on uhaul or a much cheaper 3 day ride with nice motels on the bike. Let me state also I am in no way trying to be the leader of this little adventure, to be honest we are all adults so a leader is not required more of a coordinator is better and on that respect i nominate Sneakydingo as he seems to have the best skills for the jobs, let's be honest the man's a list making animal, and proper planning goes a long way. Plus it takes the pressure off me and I get to just ride

 

[SneakyDingo]

Deming's Honda is a car dealership, not a Powersports, which does limit it somewhat. Not sure if a car dealership can change tires on motorcycles for @imacbo, I've never tried asking.

The biggest reason I'm basing my plans off @bryanchurch06's agenda is apart from him being the madman that started this whole idea, we seem to have the same idea of what travel looks like to us. If you're familiar with the c90 adventures Ed March splitting up with Rachel, this will make a little more sense. He talks a little about how different people experience travel differently. You can imagine how frustrating it will be for both parties if is on a super tight timeline and can't afford any delays, and that person is partnered up with someone who wants to take all the side roads, all the detours and do all the things. So I'm fine with sharing knowledge, sharing planning, helping get things set up, but if all of that is just to have a rabbits and tortoises split in the group, I'd still be happy, and chances are Bryan will be right there next to me being happy too.

The other reason and why I've got plans, lists and backups is because this trip has a very, very large barrier for me just to get to the start line. You can think of it as a V1 speed - a commit to taking off, because you can't stop before the end of the runway. That V1 speed is very, very early this year for me.

 

[bryanchurch06]

Deming's Honda is a car dealership, not a Powersports, which does limit it somewhat. Not sure if a car dealership can change tires on motorcycles for @imacbo, I've never tried asking.

The biggest reason I'm basing my plans off @bryanchurch06's agenda is apart from him being the madman that started this whole idea, we seem to have the same idea of what travel looks like to us. If you're familiar with the c90 adventures Ed March splitting up with Rachel, this will make a little more sense. He talks a little about how different people experience travel differently. You can imagine how frustrating it will be for both parties if is on a super tight timeline and can't afford any delays, and that person is partnered up with someone who wants to take all the side roads, all the detours and do all the things. So I'm fine with sharing knowledge, sharing planning, helping get things set up, but if all of that is just to have a rabbits and tortoises split in the group, I'd still be happy, and chances are Bryan will be right there next to me being happy too.

The other reason and why I've got plans, lists and backups is because this trip has a very, very large barrier for me just to get to the start line. You can think of it as a V1 speed - a commit to taking off, because you can't stop before the end of the runway. That V1 speed is very, very early this year for me.

Either way brother, I will meet you at a start of your choosing and finish with you in the conus as I don't have a passport. You have my word on that. And to be honest I am damn glad to have your company. Anything I can do to help just ask, I will be DM you my contact info and as soon as we have the group figured out we should all share contact info.

 

[imacbo]

I dont have a passport either so my trip will end at the border. You guys are more than welcome to keep going without me LOL. I looks like roughly 3-4 days to the starting line. Appox 14 days on the trail and 5 days home. I should have no problems take that amount of vaction time from work.

I havent spoke with the dealership in El Paso yet, I was going to wait until it got closer and then set up an appointment for tires and oil change. If I have to I'll order tires online and have them shipped to the dealership. If no one else shows up here then after the service I should be able to make it the start the next day. Im thinking May 30th for the service. May 31st to get to the starting line and be ready to go on the 1st. This will have me leaving my house on Saturday the 27th or Sunday the 28th.

Im going to be kind of cheap on the trip and eat a lot of camp food with restaurant / fast food every couple of days. I also plan on trying to limit the amount of hotel stays due to the crazy cost of a room. If we have enough people to split the room cost then I would change my mind on that. Im cool with stealth camping to save money as well.

 

[bryanchurch06]

I dont have a passport either so my trip will end at the border. You guys are more than welcome to keep going without me LOL. I looks like roughly 3-4 days to the starting line. Appox 14 days on the trail and 5 days home. I should have no problems take that amount of vaction time from work.

I havent spoke with the dealership in El Paso yet, I was going to wait until it got closer and then set up an appointment for tires and oil change. If I have to I'll order tires online and have them shipped to the dealership. If no one else shows up here then after the service I should be able to make it the start the next day. Im thinking May 30th for the service. May 31st to get to the starting line and be ready to go on the 1st. This will have me leaving my house on Saturday the 27th or Sunday the 28th.

Im going to be kind of cheap on the trip and eat a lot of camp food with restaurant / fast food every couple of days. I also plan on trying to limit the amount of hotel stays due to the crazy cost of a room. If we have enough people to split the room cost then I would change my mind on that.

Unfortunately my camp cooking usually is boiling water for dehydrated meals, and motels will be expensive, we can free camp stealth camp to keep costs down, if I decide to do a uhaul I can meet you somewhere along the route if you like. I will DM you my contact info so we can coordinate, so far you, Sneakydingo and I are the only confirmed with a few other maybes.

 

[imacbo]

Camp cooking for me is a Knorrs Rice meal (Appox $1.50 per package) a package of Tuna (Appox $1.25 per package) and a Folgers Single coffee pack (Appox .25 per cup). Around 3 bucks a day is pretty cheap. I sometimes add some snacks for during the day but normally one meal a day will be fine for 3 or 4 days before I need to eat something more substantial.

 

[SneakyDingo]

We'll each have relatively different ideas for what's expensive and that was a consideration in this trip.

There's no getting around it - where I live is really expensive, so traveling to other places in the USA will feel like my ongoing costs are cheaper than if I was doing that at home. For two data indexing reasons I expect the reverse will apply for the two of you, where things will seem more expensive, and that's a consideration I have as I look through necessary expenses we can't avoid. I'll likely be following the wisdom of Amanda Zito here: we camp and be cheap when we can, and when it makes sense to spend more we won't think too hard about it.

It's also worth noting that at the end of the trip, I'll be putting together a cost analysis of the overall trip so others can gauge whether they can afford a trip like this. It helped Ang from SomeGuyRides figure out his TAT costs, and I hope that also applies to future CDT riders.

My camp cooking is also pretty basic for a trip like this; I'm also Team Dehydrated meals, just add water. I suspect doing a 200 km up view looking at the route that food and drinks will not be that big an issue, it's more likely being cold and me forgetting about the boiling point of water being lower will be a bigger problem.

 

[imacbo]

What is the bug pressure going to be like? Will a bivy and tarp work for camping or will a full tent be needed?