I was excited and relieved to deliver the manuscript for Cycling the Pacific Coast: Canada to Mexico to my publisher. It's been my "3 R's" project for the last two years (research, riding and writing :-}).
And that middle R has been quite an odyssey.
I don't have exact mileage numbers, but have probably ridden about 3,500 miles in the research phase. The entire route from Vancouver B.C. to the Mexico border is 1,900 miles. Then there's alternate routes on Vancouver Island and around the Olympic Peninsula (another 400 miles), routes into and out of Portland, Oregon (another 200 miles), two wine country tours (50 miles) and city tours in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego (about 150 miles), not to mention all the re-riding of route sections.
Boy are my legs tired.
But my heart and mind are filled with experiences and warm feelings for the joys of bicycling down our amazing Pacific coast. It's an adventure like no other.
Look for the book to be released by the good folks at Mountaineers Books next fall, autumn 2017.