Steve's and Graham's Pacific Coast Tandem Bike Ride - Trip Overview

 

 

 

This is the blog for Steve Bateman's and Graham Dore's tandem bike ride down the Pacific Coast of the United States of America.

Hopefully this will be a case of ‘Third Time Lucky’ as the trip has already been postponed twice owing to Covid.  Our original plan was to ride a route called the Sierra Cascades down the mountain ranges a couple of hundred miles east of Pacific seaboard but worries over forest fires and another fire season well under way have led us to jump ship to this coastal route instead.  As a non-resident I find it difficult to find my way around the US fire date but statements such as ‘Year-to-date acres burned for the US is approximately 160% above the 10-year average’ are a bit off-putting.  A very nice lady at Adventure Cycling (the organisation who administer the cycling routes) said that if this fire season is anything like recent years, we would be better doing the coastal route – so, that is what we are doing.

The Pacific Coast Route is 1858 miles in length but Steve and I will also ride from Seattle, Tacoma (where we are flying to) up to the start of the official ride at Vancouver.  That will bring our total planned distance up to 2046 miles.  We have nominally 32 days to make the journey giving us a much shorter daily average than we are used to – this is because, had we ridden our originally planned Sierra Cascades route that would have been longer.  We will see how we go and possible think about an earlier flight home.  As always, our daily distance will to some extent be dictated by where we can find suitable accommodation.

We are flying to Seattle on 24th August and hope to start with a short riding day on the 25th.

We will be riding for UNICEF for which there is a JustGiving page here:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/graham-dore

In addition to being a timely and worthy cause, our choice of charity is in memory of my mother-in-law whom we lost to Covid early in 2021 – Pirkko was a generous and enthusiastic supporter of many charities but made a particular commitment to supporting UNICEF over a prolonged period.  As well as giving generously to UNICEF herself, she worked as a UNICEF representative to sell Christmas cards and other products around her local area over many years.

Any contributions would be most gratefully received.  For the avoidance of any doubt, Steve and I are funding our trip entirely ourselves - all monies contributed to the charity remain with the charity.

Hopefully we will have some interesting (but not too interesting) tales to tell along the way.

Answers to FAQ:

Yes, he is pedalling on the back – if we had £1 for every time someone has shouted out “the guy on the back isn’t pedalling” we would both be rich men!

No, we don’t swap places on the bike – Steve has no useful sight so I go on the front.