Hello everyone! It’s been 16 years since my bicycle trip across America, and I’ve finally updated all the broken YouTube links (goodbye, Shockwave Flash!) and Google Maps APIs. The site obviously still looks dated, but at least it’s functional now. I also applied a very light editing touch to a couple pages (mostly misspellings) and added a little more info in places. I want to go through and do another pass to tighten things up again (the first few pages still look bad to me) but I’ll probably get to it in 2041.
I’ve gained some experience and wisdom in the last 16 years, so I’ll answer some questions that absolutely no one has asked the author of a completely dead blog.
Should I do something like this?
First of all, yes, you should do something like this if you can. The real world is brutal, and it’s so easy to get into a routine that feels almost impossible to break out of. There are realistically very few moments in your life where something like a huge months long trip is going to be possible. So if you have the ability and the interest in doing something like this, you should do it!
How do you feel about your trip now that it’s 16 years later?
Obviously extremely strongly because I just spent 15 or 20 hours of my life editing a blog that no one reads.
Is there anything you wish you had done that you didn’t on the trip? Do you have any advice for someone planning something like this?
I’m very biased right now because I just spent many hours trying to noodle out what roads I took, but if I had written down turn by turn directions as I did this future Kyle would have been very grateful. Also more information on where I stopped each day, where I ate, and things like that would have been nice to have 16 years later when the details are much more fuzzy.
Beyond that though, no, not really. This trip was originally going to be an around the world trip, but realistically I had no money when this trip happened (it was completely financed by credit card debt), and I don’t think that would have been financially feasible in 2009.
My advice to anyone planning something like this is to save as much information as you can in real time, and make it as big as you can feasibly make it when it’s happening. I think I did a pretty decent job on the first point (this blog does exist after all), and a very good job on the second.
What’s happened in life since 2009?
I went back to my old job in September of 2009 (in a new role), met my future wife in 2010, moved in together in 2012, bought a house together in 2013, got married in 2014, and had kids in 2015 and 2017. I did a good job saving money (and have a wife who wants to work) so quit my job in 2023 and am now a stay at home dad, more or less.
No, I mean, like what’s happened that would be worthy to be included in the blog since 2009
Yeah, like I said above it’s easy to get into a routine and very hard to escape from it. Quitting my job was something I fantasized about probably since like 2014, but I never ended up doing it until 2023. There was always a reason to stay on a bit longer, and it was actually nice to have two incomes for a bit longer as well. So FINALLY doing that was living by the ethos of this blog. Beyond that there were a few changes I’ve made in the last five years that have been beneficial, and I’ve done some pretty interesting traveling, but only for a week or so at a time. I’m passable (high A2?) at a couple of foreign languages, and spend a lot of free time learning those.
So, are you going to do something worthy of future blog posts soon?
One never knows, but I don’t have that sort of travel planned in the immediate future. I think in a few years once the kids are older it will be more of a live possibility.
Should everyone do something like this once in their lives?
I would have said yes 100% in 2009, but I have to say no in 2025. I think a lot of people would find something like this horrible in every possible way. If physical pain or discomfort is a real turn off you shouldn’t do this. If being completely at the mercy of, and powerless to every single driver who passes you, hundreds or thousands of times a day, every day, for months on end is a turn off you shouldn’t do this. If having weird conversations that are occasionally hard to get out of with people who are on the fringes of society is a turn off you shouldn’t do this. If being viewed as someone who is on the fringes of society who many people will absolutely not want to talk to is a turn off you shouldn’t do this.
BUT, I do think that everyone, everywhere, should do something uncomfortable in life. Regularly. Change is so good for people, forcing them to confront new things, seeing the world in a different light. So many people are terrified of change, of discomfort, of their routine being shattered and having to reinvent themselves. But if you are up to it mentally, it’s good. I think everyone should be mildly uncomfortable every day. So I hope everyone says yes to something they are unsure about, comes out of their shell every once in a while, and does something uncomfortable. But it should be something that you feel could be good for you and is theoretically possible, and a bike trip might not be that for everyone.
Anything else?
No, not really. I think my conclusion post to the trip from 2009 still holds up, so read that over if you want more. If you are do have specific questions feel free to post them here or @kyleaskine on Twitter.
Get out there and do something scary!
Kyle Askine
January 28, 2025