The trip to Utah to visit family has been delayed. There are just too many critical things unresolved right now:
I’ve taken the entire week off of work hoping to resolve all of this and be able to still get on the road but if I’m not able I’ll just leave anyway next week despite working along the way and only travel when not working. The good news is that Starlink is rock solid on my car so I can work from anywhere along the way and I have full access to all communication methods for work through my phone so I can even drive during some of the meetings.
After doing the following rough estimate on RideWithGPS.com it looks like it will take me a little over a month to get to San Diego for TwitchCon from SLC heading past the Grand Canyon and going slowly (three hours per day at 13 mph) on Route 66. There are are roughly nine weeks from July 24th until September 20th. Even if I totally flubbed the estimate or have a week-long set back along the way I should be able to make that rather comfortably—especially since almost every mile is well-documented by Adventure Cyclist maps and should have a ton of other bike tourists along the route.
The question is how to do I get back. I cannot fly. Shipping my gear would cost almost 1000 dollars. I could try a train but they don’t look like they go there. I also really want to take the Southern Tier section through Quartzite back up into Utah, but that is in October. It’s really risky traveling north into Utah at higher elevation in October. There will be several sub-freezing days on that return trip for sure if I do. I could just plan to stay in hotels every night of that return trip in order to avoid having to pack heavy for winter. Besides, my fingers don’t work in winter temperatures and I would have a hard time working. If I kept the cycling to the warmest part of the day, and just didn’t bike on cold days at all, and planned to stay in some sort of indoor lodging after the first unbearably cold night, I could do it. But there are a lot of variables there. I like testing boundaries, perhaps after a month on the road headed to San Diego I’ll be able to make a solid decision. Absolute worst case scenario, I rent a car, pack the bike and gear, and just drive the rest of the way home. (Or have someone in my Utah family come get me and pay them.)