Having cut short my original plans for what to do with my deferral year, I’ve found myself with a lot of time on my hands. Sometime around… oh, last week or the week before, an idea came to me: why not hop on a bicycle and use it to see a big chunk of the country? Certainly I’ve never done anything like this before, but I enjoy biking, I’d love to see the country, and well, it wouldn’t hurt to have one more mad adventure before starting into the life of a first-year associate in some New York law firm.
So I’ve started doing a little bit of research, but it still seems to be a lot to wrap my head around. It seems that there’s going to be camping involved–fair enough. I’ve never really done any of that either, but I’m willing to learn or otherwise figure it out as I go. The where seems a bit odd–I’ve read tales of city parks, folks’ yards, and any old bit of ground that’s a bit secluded and not fenced off or posted “No Trespassing,” as well as the more quotidian commercial campgrounds. Food–where to get it, how to make it on the road, all of that. Er… how to use the restroom, even.
Then, the bike part itself. I suspect that my old and ever more beat up mountain bike is not the answer–the one braze-on that used to hold my water bottle cage is half-broken. Where I’d stick all the other junk one sort of needs on this sort of adventure is entirely beyond me.
Oh, did I mention that I’d like to set out in about a month? 
Don’t have a start date for work yet, but if it’s fairly normal, I’d just about need to start out at that point to have a shot at making it a (mostly) cross-country trek, starting from here in Ohio. I’m not wedded to it being cross-country–I’ve entertained the notion of going up into the northeast, or down into the south. But since the Adventure Cycling Association has a well-defined cross-country route that I could pick up in Kentucky, going cross-country is, in some ways, a bit simpler than what might otherwise be a less adventurous plan.
Anyway, it’s this huge thing, or it feels like it. So I’m looking for a little bit of advice and guidance from those’ve you who’ve done it, or something like it, before. I figure this place’s got at least one or two other oddballs of this particular persuasion! 