San Francisco to New York City by bicycle
Hi!
In early 2019 I came up with the probably weird idea to ride my bike from San Francisco to New York City.
The trip, which started April 28th, 2019 in San Francisco, was about 4300 miles (6900 km) long and came with a challenge of 210.000 feet in elevation gain. It took roughly 60 days to complete the full journey.
The first part of the trip – roughly 3000 miles from San Francisco to Lexington, Kentucky – I did by myself. In Lexington, my son Tim then joined me in June 2019 on his bike for the remainder to New York City. That was another 1000 miles.
You can find more infos about the trip itself on the Trip page.
While on the trip, I did my best to update this site with a blog post every day and push those updates to my Twitter account, too, once I had embarked on the journey. You can read all the daily blog posts on the Posts page.
In search of the American Dream and curious to see what’s I would find out there, I left San Francisco on my bike on April 28th, 2019.
It was an epic trip!
Björn Goerke
Wow!! This truly is taking the pleasure of living life when you can!!! Amazing idea – Wish you a splendid and a safe one Björn ……. as ever… a rock solid inspiration.. so glad to have met you in Life! Thank you…
Thanks, Shilpa! 🙂
I’ve followed with rapt attention since the start of your epic journey – seeing places that many Americans won’t see in their lifetimes. Hopefully, I’ve been able to offer some helpful things, but just really happy you’ve decided to share this with all of us 😎👍
Thanks a lot, Tom, for the kind feedback! And all the encouragement and tips during the ride via Twitter!
Nice one. Maybe it will end in more than a blog. Who knows👍
I feel like your doing the right thing and it helped me to get up and also add sports to my week🙂 thanks for that and keep rolling
~Florian
Thanks for the kind feedfback, Florian! And I am happy to hear that I inspired you to add sports to your weekly schedule! Have fun! 🙂
truly inspiring, may the force be with you!
Thanks! 🙂
“When God was done designing Colorado, she…” I really like that your God is a she 🙂
What else should she be??? 😊
Congratulations Björn. A great journey and a fantastic inspiration. I invite you to join me in one of the multistage Trail Runs across the alps. Keep going.
Martin
Sounds like a plan 🙂
Epic trip – congratulation. I‘m currently planing a C2C from San Francisco to Boston starting next June. Did you plan your trip with Komoot? And can you share some infos about your bike i.e. tubeless or with tubes, with clicks or without. Best, Albert
Hi Albert, I am getting jealous already hearing about your plans 🙂
Some infos about the route planning I’ve put into the “The Trip” section. I did the route planning upfront with a rough idea where to get to every day — just to have a picture of what to expect, where to stay, where to eat or fill up supplies. Ended up with a plan that I updated and adjusted as I moved along on the trip afterwards. So it was only a rough plan to have something to measure myself against. I knew when I had to arrive in Lexington and NYC, so wanted to make sure it’s doable and I have an idea every day what’s to come. The plan was built by following the main cross country bike tours that you find at the Adventure Cycling Route Network (https://www.adventurecycling.org/). They offer paper maps (nope), an own app (well…) and GPS data (to load into your favourite navigation map or GPS editing software). I purchased the GPS data of the relevant routes (like The Western Express from CA to UT, etc.), and stitched it together with some intermediate short connections via Google Maps where they didn’t happen to cross each other somewhere. I then used Komoot and Google Maps while on the trip, but with the purchased and uploaded GPS data, not with their own routing functionality. I doubt there’s good coverage of user provided routes on Komoot to cover the entire US. I can definitely recommend the Adventure Cycling Routes which have been “handcrafted” by bike clubs and enthusiasts apparently. For almost the entire trip I was guided along acceptable roads and trails, it only got hairy when I had to follow Google Maps for some stretches in between — it only tells you where bikes are allowed to go, not where it is advisable. So I recommend spending the money on the Adventure Cycling routes (it’s well worth the money, and it’s not expensive).
Bike stores you’ll mainly find in larger towns and cities. So take spare tires. I have no experience with tubeless, so went with tubes which I blew around half a dozen and a few on the tour. But not too concerning many. I think the most perfect setup for the bike (and everything else you take) is not to be exactly one way or the other, but be flexible and adapt as needed. It’s a long trip and you’ll hit every imaginable situation you can get into on a bike. So being able to change tires quickly because you’ve worn the tire, is easier with tubes than tubeless, I think, even though the tubeless ones won’t blow. Same applies to clicks or no clicks: When in Kansas going straight on the shoulder of a backroad highway or going up some the hill on some backroad, clicks are the way to go — but in dense traffic in cities or towns which you will hit as well, I prefer being very quick in changing between stopping and going. I chose to go with a mixed setup, one side of the Shimano paddle was click, the backside was without. I did not take racing bike shoes, but “touring” ones where the click was not extruding the sole of the shoe, but completely embedded — so you can use it for clicks, without clicks and you can even walk around conveniently when doing some sightseeing, shopping or on a lunch break on foot.
Hope that answers a few of your questions — feel free to reach out if there’s more infos I can share.
All the best and enjoy the epic journey!
Björn