The deprivation training that I will describe in the words ahead is really your key to self empowerment. It is an exercise that will not only teach you how to keep all of your energy focused on the goal, but it will provide you with a visualization tool that is very active. Just as the astronauts who first walked on the moon, exclaimed as they did so that it 'was just like drill', deprivation training will make the long distance bike road seem like a very familiar one to you. It will prepare you so well that you will then find yourself looking for ways to engineer similar practice sessions into any of those other seemingly indomitable big projects that will appear before you.
Once you finally hit the road and leave all the comforts of home behind, then, unless you prepared yourself to be able to make do with less, as this chapter will teach you, the beginning part of your ride will likely be fraught with much discomfort. It is those who fail to complete a TransAm trek who can often trace their failure back to an inability to adjust to this initial shake down period. Here in the western world, whether you are from North America, Australia, New Zealand or Europe, there are so many comforts that surround our lives that we may have a hard time knowing where our basic needs end and where the conveniences of modern day living begin. So, instead of taking a cold turkey approach to TransAm cycling to find this out, I have found that deprivation training can make all of your moments on the road ones of joy.
Most of the self-imposed denial I will talk about can wait until the last few months or weeks before you begin your ride. I'm bringing this up now, however, for several reasons. First off you need to know that a completed coast-to-coast is not like a succession of bike rides to the corner store. You cannot expect the comforts of home to greet you at the beginning or end of your daily journeys.
In addition, we will, right up front, need to show you that biking from coast to coast is far more than how far you can ride a bike in any given day or how many century rides you may have completed. It is about getting into a groove, pacing yourself while regularly making do with less until you don't notice that anything is even missing. When you reach that point, everything about your ride will be filled with the joy of true adventure.
In preparing for your ride, as you are enduring the self inflicted "hardship" that I am proposing here, it is important to understand that you must see it all as a game. A game that you can opt out of or lower the threshold of pain for at any point. It is also important to see all of this as no more than play because of the power of visualization. If you invest too much of your emotion and life force in the drama of some of the fun little exercises I will suggest that you engage yourself in, they could trigger the fear button. And one is extremely magnetic to all of that which he or she fears. So like the game of life, be sure to make this game of deprivation training one of play.
Since it is also my desire to outfit you with the mental tools you will need to play our game, it is as important to know what you don't need to make your TransAm a success as what you do. So, as your ride becomes imminent, I suggest that you come back to this chapter and put the suggestions it makes into immediate practice.
Sleep on the Floor:
Unless you are an experienced camper, one of the first adjustments you will have to make is sleeping on the ground. In a sleeping bag. You may even find yourself looking for ways to cushion the surface upon which you sleep. Here your options are limited to a Thermorest Pad. There will be those who take the time to use whatever remaining amounts of energy they have at the end of a day to blow up an air mattress in their quest to replicate home in whatever way they can. In time, however, such comfort devices will often become one more thing in the way as these cycle tourists find they are so tired at the end of a day that anywhere becomes a welcome place to rest one’s body for the night.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are those cross country cyclists who may have a hard time getting to sleep no matter how tired they are because they just can't get comfortable outside of a real bed. As they toss and turn for the first few days or weeks of their ride, inside they dread the following day's riding. And as a result, they spend most of the first part of their ride feeling deprived of sleep.
If you don't want to suffer from lost sleep in the ways I have shown, I recommend that you start sleeping on the floor. In your sleeping bag. At home. Don't, however, wait until the last few days before your ride is set to begin. Since you will want to be well rested for your final departure, and will want to sleep in a bed the last few nights before you leave, I recommend you do so every other week over the last few months before you depart with a succession of nights on the floor in the last few days before you then take off.
Cold Showers:
Because a hot shower can sometimes become an endangered commodity, I suggest you at least finish the warm ones you take at home with cooler and cooler water for more and more of the time. Besides being healthier for you, this will help to temper the level of what you can expect from this part of your personal hygiene program. You will also want to take them quicker and in the evening hours.
This last thought is so because you will want to get as many miles as you can, especially in more urban areas, before the cars and the sun get out on the road with you. You will also want to condition yourself to stop thinking of the shower as a meditation or place to relax. Because there will be so much to do in the remaining hours of light after you get off your bike each day, you will need to learn to get yourself quickly clean so you can move on to the next thing. Viewing the shower as a work station in the way I am proposing will also have readied you for the many different showers you will be using on your ride as well as the different levels of warm water you can come to expect from them.
Cook on your camp stove
It is helpful to get used to eating more simply in preparation for your TransAm a few weeks before you begin. One of the ways you can do this is to start preparing your meals on a campstove. Breakfasts as simple as a bowl of oatmeal where all you have to do is heat up the water and pour in the contents of a small bag can get you used to such road food in the morning. A can of beans when heated up, along with a few slices of good healthy bread can make for a great evening meal in this way as well.
The toaster
I know one TransAm vet who when asked what she missed most about home when she was on her ride answered with one word. Toast. If you're someone who makes much use of the toaster, you may want to give up your warm bread fix for the last few weeks before you begin.
Living out of a bag
Get used to it. Whether sag wagons carry your items for you or you do, you will still have to get used to doing your life out of bags. There will be totes in which you stuff your sleeping bag, satchels for the tent you will be using, even little purses for your toiletries and other personal care items. Everything you will come to know your very existence as will all be containerized in this way. Even your on the bike needs will all be fulfilled out of a bag.
Cameras, address books, sunglasses, sun screens and snack food items will be stored away for quick access in the bike's glovebox, your handlebar bag.If yours is a sag supported ride, you may not want to be dependent on the base camp once you are actually rolling into your day, so a windbreaker or a sweater and a few basic bike repair tools might find their way into the rear panniers you may decide to bring along.
No matter how you do your TransAm, living out of a bag requires some adjustment. No longer will you be able to leave certain items laying around for your next day's use. And even if having small children already forces you to keep certain items out of sight, you still won't be able to return them to their familiar hiding spots. Not at all. Your new bag life will require an even more heightened presence of mind - an awareness that often doesn't become second nature until your ride is almost done. That toothbrush and toothpaste that you used after a meal suddenly doesn't just perfunctorily go back into a familiar cabinet or drawer. Not at all. Since a competent TransAm'er is always thinking a few steps ahead, you must think about where these items will go in and amongst all your other gear so you can access them easily the next time you need them.
When aspiring bike racers used to ask the legendary bicycle racer, Eddy Mercyx, how to perfect their craft, he answered with two words, "Ride Lots". While how long it takes you to complete your daily ride should be of no consequence, his advice can help to make your TransAm a much more effective and enjoyable one. How do I do that you ask when there are the realities of your work world schedule, or how you need to dress and look, or after the job errands to run, or inclement weather, or those long distances you need to cover, or a whole litany of other "valid" excuses you can make? The answer is simple, substitute as many of your car trips for bike trips as you can.
Don't just always do so only when it's easy, convenient or when the weather is perfect for biking. Pay particular attention to those times when the going appears hard because as I'll repeat over and over again throughout this chapter (and book), it is better to have overtrained than not to have trained enough. For example, if you've got to be somewhere where you must look nice and it is windy and cold outside after you took the time to pack the clothes you will wear the night before and you just get out and make your ride a reality, this little victory will help you on your bike tour. Whether it's insufferable wind, mile high mountain passes or the miles and miles of desolate desert and sage brush that will likely appear before you on a few parts of your TransAm, you will have a working knowledge of the fact that the hardest part of any such challenge is just in thinking about it.
You may even consider going car free, if not all the way, at least in the last month or two before you leave. In the paragraph before the last one, I put quote marks around the word 'valid' because every one of your excuses is a lifestyle choice centered around the automobile and not the bicycle. While it may take time to make the needed adjustments that will be required for you to do without your car such as moving closer to your work and/or relying more heavily on faxes, computers and parcel post ("How to Become More Car Free"), you will have to learn to instantly make do without a car when you do begin your TransAm. So if you want to circumvent such cold turkey trauma, try to get as car free as possible.
It is this lifestyle that will teach you how to consolidate trips. Because it is your legs and not the remains of old dinosaurs that fuel your travel when on two wheels, you will not make the same kinds of frivolous trips that are more easily made in a car. When using your own energy, you will begin to think each trip through in advance as you decide what you can and can't do without buying, seeing or doing. Training yourself in this way will make it easier to resist the temptation of any detour that could lead you away from your goal.
As the experienced cyclist you will soon become, if your are not one already, you will know that just as what goes up must come down, that which leaves must come back whenever going for a bike ride. And whatever sight, activity or purchase you may want to enjoy has the consequence of your not only having to get there but your then having to return from wherever it was that you went. It is this energy that you will want to minimize as you keep yourself focused and hungry only for the goal of completing your TransAm ride.
Stop that air conditioner
Unlike in your car, as long as you keep moving on a bicycle, you will not be uncomfortable because of the heat. It is when you stop on hot days, however, that everything from the flies and mosquitoes and oftentimes insufferable warmth will make you long for the safety of a cool air conditioned room. There are ways around this problem. Obviously don't stop as much during the heat of the day. and when you do stop, try to make such periods of off road activity brief. But there will be times when you will have to or want to bring your efforts to a halt.
If your bike breaks down or there are sights you want to see (along the way, of course) and you haven't prepared yourself to be able to do either in the absence of a climate controlled environment, your entire experience will likely be a miserable one. Because such temperatures will also often continue into the early evening hours when you are setting up camp, one way to increase your comfort factor before you get out on the open road is to conduct less and less of your life in air conditioned climates as your ride date approaches. This includes your car, if you happen to drive and the house you live in. If your home is shared by others, just spending more time outdoors, and sleeping in your backyard or on a balcony or deck can help you accomplish this.
Watches and Calendars
When you begin your TransAm, in order to get used to the helter skelter way in which time will seem to pass, sometimes slow, sometimes fast and never predictable, you will need to make some adjustments. Gone will be the very signs which before structured your day as you leave behind traffic jams, coffee breaks, and the crowds busying about for lunch breaks and then the drive home. You will be on nature's own time clock. You will find yourself paying more attention to how high the sun sits in the suddenly massive sky and how long the shadows are that stand in its way.
Before long, you won't even know what day of the week it is. Nor will you need to unless you are near an urban center (in such a case, rush hour traffic and the location of nearby recreational lakes and parks which generate increased road use during the late morning and afternoon weekend hours are important to be aware of so you can plan your riding around them). So, to prepare yourself for the time warp you will find yourself entering on your ride, I suggest that you stop wearing a watch or carrying around a daily planner. It is in this way that you will learn to have more of your life in present time; to be in the now, to savor as much of the now as you possibly can.
In this way, for example, you will have taught yourself to more fully breathe in the tree covered mountain ascents and awe inspiring vistas that will soon greet you. Instead of only seeing such climbing as the work required to get you to the very short term reward, the descent, you will pay less and less attention to how long it is taking you to get to your destination as you just let the riding envelop you. You will be less mindful of how others are doing the ride, if you are part of a group, as you also make it more of a daily on the road meditation.
A Different Approach to Hygiene
Because life on the road is so different from the daily routine of any life that is based out of a home, you won't be able to keep yourself as squeaky clean as you may have before become accustomed to. In fact, you can expect yourself to feel a little dirtier by comparison. You don't have to be a soiled, smelly mess but you can't expect to feel as though you always just climbed out of your morning shower. In fact you may even find yourself wearing what used to be yesterday's laundry more than you can believe.
If the thought of putting on the same biking attire more than once is appalling, learn how to handwash. To see whether you want to go through the daily effort of having clean cycling wear each and every day, after all of your future training rides, don't just get into the habit of tossing your riding wear in the hamper, but wash each article by hand in the kitchen sink. Since you will need to bring an extra change of clothes with you out on the open road, you can then make your bike a mobile clothes line by bungie cording your wet wear onto the rear rack until it dries out as you roll into your day.
Men might want to not shave on weekends of the last month before they take off just so they can see what it feels like to enter a day as less than perfect. Women on the other hand might want to follow the same routine for make-up. In both cases, both sexes might want to think about giving up such activities once they are actually in transit. Men might want to just grow beards and women might want to leave their cosmetics behind.
Start thinking of toilet paper as a necessity instead of a luxury. There will be moments on the road where bathrooms will not be anywhere to be found and as you relieve yourself in nature, how you will wipe yourself then becomes a concern of the utmost importance. It is here that a leaf (make sure it's not poisonous) can do the job. But most of you will have thought far enough ahead to bring along, a few toilet tissues. So, in the case of the paper, since you will want to leave as little of it as you can behind, teach yourself to make do with less of the stuff while you are still at home.
Don't just unconsciously pull two feet of paper off the roll, try instead to use half of whatever you used to use. See how little you make can do with. Since effectively cycling the US is always an exercise in being conscious of the economy of every movement you make, even something as basic as wiping yourself needs to be scrutinized in just such a way.
You will also need to get used to basing much of your hygiene efforts out of one towel. If after a shower or bath, you need to dry yourself with a freshly washed drying mechanism, do a rethink on that "need" as well. Make yourself instead reuse the same towel as many times as you can. In the last few weeks before you take off, you might even pretend you're already on the road by hand washing it once the smell then goes bad.
Kill Your TV Set!!
If you can't begin or end your day without the daily news, if you like to have the TV on for background noise or if sports, old movies or certain sitcoms have acquired a hold on you, you may consider watching as little TV as you can in preparation for the almost total quiet of the TransAm road. As you pedal across the US, it is in the silence that you will get to know yourself pretty well. And as the Greenway builders that all of us are, the job of selling the world on our vision of a safe, interconnected two-wheel America means feeling good about ourselves. Since we will want to remove the chatter of the world from our thinking in order to develop such a relationship with self, eliminate as much TV as you can from your life.
Life Without the News:
However it is that you get your news, by radio, the television or the daily newspaper, try to wean yourself off of it as your ride begins to approach. What you will be endeavoring to do with your TransAm requires a mind that only knows good and an attitude that only expects the best. To build a wave of such impregnable momentum into your ride, you will want to get away from anything that moves any way but positive. Be like the proverbial ostrich who buries his head in the sand whenever reports of negativity threaten. Focus only on the good and in addition to building your leg muscles, you will be strengthening your consciousness for the Grand Success that your completed TransAm will mean for you.
There is so much more we can talk about here, but to keep you on schedule in your march across America, we have got to keep moving. It is my hope that the preceding words help you to get more of a glimpse of the size of the challenge you have availed yourself to. Thanks for you!!
