Homework

Between now and our departure, we have a lot of things to get squared away. Tasks include everything from shopping to building endurance through riding trips and exercise, as well as a variety of administrative efforts such as travel arrangements, logistics (shipping the bikes), and navigation recon.
I’ve just started the latter and I reckon it will take me about a month or so to input the necessary GPS coordinates, organize the routes, and transfer them to the GPS receivers. Sam Correrro has done a marvelous job of preparing maps and corresponding roll charts, which in itself is a tremendous time saving exercise.
In reviewing what to do and what not to do with riders that had recently completed the trip, was the suggestion to built the GPS files myself. In doing so, I would become substantially more intimate with the details of the route. And it’s those details that may make the difference in completing a segment of the route on-time or taking a series of wrong turns that puts the whole trip behind schedule.
With this in mind, I started working on the Tennessee maps tonight. And for whatever reason, I really hadn’t considered several things about the trip that really should be included; for example, riding the legendary Dragon’s Tail. This is one stretch of pavement I still haven’t ridden that has a place on my bucket list. Without engaging in the simple process of building our routes and just buying the pre-made files, I may have missed something so obvious and quite deserving of our attention.
How this revelation will change the duration of the trip, I’m not certain, but I’m looking forward to what the planning efforts will reveal in shaping our eventual route.