Category Archives: Eoin

Eoin’s Bike Tour from Atlanta to Bogota, Colombia

Pacific Coast Bike Tour in Northern California

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Here I am cycling along the Pacific Coast’s Highway 1 in Northern California.

When you’re working in an office most of the year, and you only get a few weeks vacation, you really need to make the most of your time off. At Urban Outfitters, we got a four-day weekend over Memorial Day, so I took the whole week off to meet up with my friend Will Clarke in Seattle to do a bike tour along the Pacific Coast in Washington and Oregon.


It was wet in Washington. Duh.

On our second day riding in Washington, it started raining. And it was forecast to rain the rest of the week too. So we decided to rent a car to get down to sunny California … where everyone’s blonde!


When in California … you gotta go blonde. And hell no, we didn’t do it ourselves. We went to the salon!

We restarted our bike tour in Eureka, California. Cycling along Highway 101 kind of sucked. It was a wide highway, so it was good to have a lot of shoulder, but it was pretty boring. The highlight along Highway 101 between Eureka and where you meet up with Highway 1 to get to the coast was definitely the Redwoods. Make sure to ride along the Avenue of the Giants through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The road was quiet and the Redwoods were enormous and impressive.

It’s a fairly remote stretch. There might have been a campground or motel, but since we’d wasted some time driving in a rental car, we made a special effort to do some wild camping, especially since we were in a Redwood forest.


Yeah, we’ve got matching tents: TarpTent Contrail.

When Highway 101 split off onto Route 1, we climbed a mountain to get to the Pacific coast. And it was so worth it. The highlight of the trip was riding along the coastal road on Route 1. I’ve done a lot of bike tours, but I think this stretch was the most scenic. God must be some kind of crazy artist.


My Surly Traveler’s Check (aka CrossCheck with S & S Couplers) with a bikepacking setup just after reaching Route 1 on the Pacific Coast in Northern California

Since the Pacific Coast road is probably the most popular bike touring route in the US, I had some idea that there’d be lots of services along the way. I was way off. Route 1 was surprisingly remote. Every once in a while, we’d pass through a small town that had a gas station, or an over-priced convenience store.


Even with my bikepacking setup, I was able to find some room to dry my laundry using my cargo net.

We biked a few days along Route 1, and it was really incredible. The riding wasn’t too difficult. There was lots of up-and-down, and twists-and-turns, but all manageable and it made for more interesting riding especially with the view to the Pacific.

Since we’d had a lot of variety already on the bike tour, we opted for more. We decided to turn off Route 1 to go to Napa Valley. It was an okay choice. We had a long climb over the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the ride through wine country was pleasant, but it didn’t come close to the beauty of the Pacific coast road. If I had to do it over, I think I’d stay on Route 1 all the way into San Francisco.

Crossing the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco was a nice way to cap off the trip. I didn’t feel all that victorious at the time though because we had to immediately think about getting back up to Seattle. We found a shitty Pakistani all-you-can-eat buffet, and considered all our options while we charged up our phones. After exhausting Craigslist, train schedules, and the idea of buying a car, we took the BART train to the airport, and rented a car through Alamo. Hertz sucked because they wouldn’t let us go over 600 miles in one day; they were going to force us to rent the car for two days. Alamo was fairly cheap, had no mileage restriction, and let us pick any size car. We ended up cramming our two bikes into a tiny car, which later made for an uncomfortable sleeping situation at the rest stop. 14 hours of driving later, and smelling like shit, we made it back to Seattle.

Bike touring the Pacific Coast in Northern California was incredible. Now I’ve gotta do the rest of California.

Biking Home: Haines City, FL to Largo, FL

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Stats: 95.33 miles, 15.7 avg, 6 hours

This was the home stretch.  I had ~100 miles to get home and surprise my mom.

My South African friends, Scott and Ross, wanted to meet me in Plant City to bike with me the rest of the way home.  I started from Haines City where my CouchSurfing host, Bekah, dropped me off.  I hauled ass ~30 miles -  I remember I was really killing it that morning!

It was awesome meeting up with Ross and Scott.  And their dad took my gear in his van so my bike would be a little lighter on the ride.  The pedestrian bridge across the Tampa Bay was closed so we had to take the Gandy.  The speed limit is pretty high, but the shoulder was wide, so it wasn’t a problem.

We made it to Scott’s house without many problems.  I picked up my gear and then the three of us rode down the Pinellas Trail towards my mom’s house.

It was strange biking on those really familiar roads, returning home.  It felt only half-real.  I pulled up into my mom’s driveway, a few minutes before she would probably be home.  I got a key from the neighbor — he was shocked to see me — and opened up the garage.  Just after I took this photo (using a ladder as a tripod), I saw my mom’s car coming around the corner.  I ran inside and tried to hide to surprise her, but she was too quick.  I saw her face as the car pulled in.  She was amazed.  She couldn’t believe I was home.  It was a great moment for both of us.

My mom and I celebrated by going out for a humble pizza party.  It was great to be back, and not have to think about biking any more.

My sister, Eleanor, knew when I was coming home, and she kept the secret from my mom.  But Eleanor wanted to surprise her too.  Eleanor arrived the next day.  I picked her up from the airport and then we drove over to pick up mom from work.  Eleanor hid in the trunk …

SURPRISE!!

Cycling through a Storm: Orlando Airport to Poinciana

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It was about 140 miles from Orlando to Tampa.  I was lucky to find a CouchSurfing host that wasn’t too far off my route, about 40 miles from the airport.  I was arriving into Orlando at 2pm, and it took me a couple hours to get all situated and get my bike re-assembled.  I left at 4pm, and I had to bike 40 miles to my host, Bekah.  There was a really dark cloud looming.

Biking on the ramps to exit the airport was bizarre.

My cell phone had been robbed months before in Guatemala, and I never got it replaced because it wasn’t necessary.  But now that I was back in the US, I stopped at the AT&T store to get a new phone, as I was probably eligible for a free one.  But the AT&T rep told me I wasn’t.  She gave me a SIM card though! :)

There was a Subway in the same plaza.  Mmmm meatball marinara.  It had been a while.  I took it to eat it at the tables outside.  There were some homeless people hanging out there.  The lady was friendly, and worked up to asking me for a sandwich.  I was feeling great, really pumped by this returning-home adventure, so I handed her my credit card and told her she could get whatever she wanted.  She came out with a sandwich and an extra large drink.  Dumbass buying a huge drink when you can just get refills.  It’s not like she was rushing off anywhere.  I figured that’s why she’s homeless.  Bad decisions like these.

The rain started pouring when I was at Subway.  I figured it would just be about an hour, as Florida storms usually quick. But the rain kept coming.  It was getting close to 7pm, and the light was fading.  I asked the guy at Subway if I could use the phone, and I called Bekah.  I told her that I was waiting for the storm to cool off and she said that she could just come and get me.  I would have felt bad for her to have to drive ~25 miles each way to pick me up, so I refused politely.  Plus it’s an ego thing.

Since it was getting late and the rain wasn’t dying down, I figured I had to just do it, and get out there.  I took off my shirt, said goodbye to my homeless friends, and plunged into the abyss.  Do or Die Baby!!

Right away it was bad.  So much water on the road.  Passing cars were chucking it up at me.  And I was wearing my glasses!  I could barely see through all the water beads on the lenses and in the fading light.  I was a little jittery too, especially when semi-trucks passed spraying mist at me.  I imagined myself slipping on my bike, getting crushed and killed under a truck, and my mom finding out that I was only a couple hour’s drive away.  “Just don’t fall.  Don’t fall.”

It got worse as I turned off from a lighted strip of road with plazas onto a country road in pitch black.  The only light was from the headlights of passing cars.

I was looking for my turnoff.  There weren’t many cross-streets, but when I checked my cyclo-computer again, I figured that I had gone ~3 miles past the turn, but maybe not.  I wasn’t sure.  I wanted to ask someone.  But there was nothing on that road.  I stopped at a gated community that was under development.  There was no one around; no one was living in the houses yet.  I think I yelled at that point.  Then I stood by the road and tried to wave down a car to ask directions.  No one stopped.  Remember though, I was a shirtless cyclist out in the middle of nowhere in the dark.

So I decided to backtrack.  A couple of miles back, I saw a residential area, so I turned in there.  I pulled up to a house that had a light on, put on my shirt, and knocked on the door.  I tried to come across as harmless as possible because I knew this was weird.  A middle-aged guy answered the door, and I told him the situation and asked directions.  He invited me inside to use his phone so I could call my host.  This guy was really trusting.  Once I got the directions down, I headed out.

I think I arrived at my host’s house at around 10pm.  Bekah was outside waiting for me and said she was worried I wouldn’t show up — that I got killed on the way.  Bekah and I had a pasta dinner, talked for a while, and then went to bed.  Pretty standard, but really perfect; I was exhausted.

Return to the USA: Bogota to Orlando

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As my time with Jessica was finishing up, I started thinking of what I’d do next.  The plan was to continue South to Ecuador, maybe even Peru.  But that was a lot of mountain, and I wasn’t really pumped about it.  After 6 months of cycling, it was all becoming the same.  A new place wasn’t all that exciting anymore.

I looked at return flights to the US from Bogota and compared it against leaving from other major cities that I might be passing through, like Quito and Lima.  One-way flights from other South American cities were ~$500.  But I found flights from Bogota to Orlando on Jetblue for $80!!  And this was a flight that was only a week away.  That’s the bargain basement price of Destiny.

It was a relief to know my trip was over.  I’d had enough.

Getting a cardboard bike box in Bogota was harder than I thought.  I went to the Bicycle Shop part of town (that’s how Bogota was set up — all the shops of a certain type were in one part of town), and asked for a box at every store, but nobody had one, or they were too stingy with their boxes.  In the US, bike shops want to give them away.  One store had a box that was fit for a smaller bike and they wanted to charge me for it.  An option of one choice.  Then I had to walk it back a couple miles to the hostel.

Jetblue charged me for bringing the boxed bike.  I think it was $50.

On September 1, 2009, I flew into Orlando, back to  the US.  My mom lives in Tampa and my plan was to surprise her, so I didn’t tell her I was coming back.  So, my ride out of the airport was my bike.  I had to put it back together.

I got a pretty good amount of attention for re-assembling my bike by baggage claim, but not many people asked what I was doing; mostly just stares.  One couple, who were in town to visit Disney World, asked where I had biked to.  I told them Colombia.  “Columbia, South Carolina!”

6-Month Bike Tour Expense Report

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Here are my monthly expenses during my 6-month bike tour.  February includes the cost of my new Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike along with panniers, racks, etc; July includes a $130 flight from Panama City to Cartagena; and August includes my $150 return flight from Bogota to Orlando (with a $60 charge for my bike).  Oh, and I had my camera stolen twice in June (the first time on a bus in Guatemala, and the second time in the mail), which cost about $250.

Month Expenses
Feb (Bike) $1,573
Mar $685
Apr $797
May $428
Jun $954
Jul $819
Aug $769
Total $6,026

As you can see, bike touring is cheap!

I was in the US in March and April, and in May I entered Mexico and continued South.  In June and July, I was passing through Central America, and in August, I was in Colombia.

In the US, I didn’t pay for any accommodation.  We either stealth camped, camped at church grounds, or found a host through CouchSurfing.org or WarmShowers.org.  In Mexico, I was hosted by a lot of CouchSurfers, but those opportunities dwindled in Central America.  However, motel-like accommodation in Central America (residencias) were super cheap — mostly about $5 per night for a private room with a fan. And I stealth camped when I was in a pinch.

Food is expensive in the US, so we ate camp food (mac & cheese, instant mashed potatoes, baked beans) a lot, but many times we benefited from the kindness of our hosts.  But we would sometimes get a gift from a stranger.  I remember one time in Louisiana, I was hanging out outside a post office waiting for Ryan and an older Cajun Indian man asked me about what we were doing.  After I told him our plans to cycle to Panama, he handed me a $20.  I tried to refuse, but he wanted me to take it, “Lunch is on me.  I like supporting with these kinds of things.”

In Mexico, Central America, and Colombia, prepared food was very inexpensive.  Actually, I found that the cost of buying food at the grocery store was about the same as buying a prepared meal at a family-run restaurant.  So it was an easy choice for me — I ate at small restaurants the entire time.  This was great for two reasons: (1) I got rid of my camping cookware to cut down on bulk, and (2) eating local food is an important cultural experience.

So in summary, food was definitely the largest expense.  It’s interesting to see in the monthly cost breakdown that my expenses in the US were similar to when I was in Latin America.  It speaks to the high food prices in the US as we never paid for accommodation and many times we were fed by our hosts.  In Latin America, I paid for most of my food and accommodation, yet my expenses weren’t significantly higher.  I loved being hosted as my favorite memories are from meeting people along the way, but the flexibility of being able roll into a town at the end of the day and finding a cheap place to stay was great.