We need help! aka more about our route

A lot of you have been asking specifically what states, towns and roads we'll be following this summer on our trip. Below is the Google Maps version of our route, going West to East from San Francisco to Yorktown, VA.

Feel free to zoom in on the map below and scroll West to East, following our route. Additionally, you can click on the "View Bike the US for MS: TransAm in a larger map" link below the map for a bigger picture

Since we're planning on camping every night along the way, if you have any connections along the route where we might be able to stay, share a meal or get a warm shower, it would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact Seth or Jack or leave a comment on this post! Thanks for watching out for us!
View Bike the US for MS : TransAm in a larger map

The Final Countdown

There are 16 days before we start our trip of a lifetime. A lot has developed over the past few weeks. Seth has successfully finished his first year of teaching and is back home in Iowa and Minnesota relaxing with his family and friends. Jack has eight more days of teaching and will fly out to San Francisco to meet Seth and get going.

At this point, I'd say our excitement outweighs any other feeling we've got going on. A lot of people have been asking about our adventure recently, so this will be our best feeble attempt to update y'all on what's going on in our lives.

Sure, we could've trained just a little more, broken down our bikes and put them together just one more time and discussed our route for just another half hour, but there's something to be said about excitement and a positive attitude fueling our early days.

We're going to have tired legs, sunburnt arms and dirty clothes. Times won't always be easy and we will be pushed further mentally than we ever have before. But you know what?

We get to spend 2.5 months without any work obligations spending each day with each other slowly trodding across our beautiful country on a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

What can be better than that?

Here's to the adventure.

Practice Run

Lunch at Uptown Cafe in Victoria, VA.

As the first year of teaching is getting close to the end we thought it would be a good idea to do a practice run. This summer we will be biking from San Francisco, CA to Virginia Beach, VA. Lets get it.

Lesson #1: People are inherently kind and giving.

Late Friday night we laid everything out on the living floor. Bikes shorts, jerseys, change of socks, food, camp stove, sleeping bags, tent, water, bike tools, and sunscreen. This weekend was our test run. We packed up the bikes and after a minor hiccup Saturday morning that involved driving 70 miles round trip to Durham to buy and install a $7 bike tube we were ready to hit the road.

Tent, stove, camping gear packed away.

Our destination was 80 miles north to Twin Lakes State Park in central Virginia. Jack took responsibility for the route, giving us turn by turn directions from the handwritten post-it note he was carrying in his back pocket.

Lesson #2: The confederate lives on.

We rode past a handful of Confederate Flags riding through the rural back country of northern North Carolina and southern Virginia. The ride on Saturday took a little over 6.5 hour. The forecast called for rain all afternoon, but we somehow missed the storm and rolled into the campground at sunset. Before we could even unpack the gear from our panniers a nice man appeared from the campsite next to us with a plate of four hamburgers, fixings, and a pot of creamed corn. “You guys hungry?”

Lesson #3: When married, take time away from everything to spend time with your partner.

Lou and Julie were having a weekend together away from the kids (2 and 6 years old). Shortly after getting the tent set up it began to rain. Jack and I retreated to the campground bathrooms and stashed our bikes in the bathroom to protect them from the rain. We waited out the worst of storm in the bathroom stretching after a long day on the bike.

We fell asleep a little after 11 pm, finding calm in the soft sound of the Avett Brothers coming from Jack’s iPod. We woke a little after 8 am and packed up camp as we had a breakfast of peanut butter bagels and fruit.

Packing our panniers, biking with weight on the bike and biking with our new pedals and clips became more and more comfortable throughout the weekend. The ride home was gorgeous, with most of the 80 miles back home to North Carolina being on back country highways.

Minor flooding on  bridge over Kerr Lake.

Thankful for this weekend and glad to get a solid practice run in before we leave in a month from San Francisco. Thank you Lou and Julie, looking forward to having kids one day.

Back home at Jack's in Oxford, NC.

Why are we doing this?

After a roller-coaster first year of teaching, new friends Seth and Jack talked about doing something memorable to take advantage of their first summer as teachers. A lifelong dream of Jack's has always been to ride cross country, and from the first day he had a partner-in-crime, Seth, who was looking for a good adventure as well. The two have talked, planned, bought gear and trained like crazy over the past eight months in preparation for their maiden voyage.

Seth and Jack decided on a route and will be taking two bike routes cross country. Mixing the vast openness, solitude and sweeping mountains of the west with the rolling hills and green farms of the east, the duo will bike from San Francisco, CA to Yorktown, VA starting June 11, 2013.

We will take the Western Express Route from San Francisco to Pueblo, and the TransAmerica Trail from Pueblo, CO to Yorktown, VA

Who are we?

Jack Rodenfels

As a native of Columbus, OH, Jack has proudly adopted North Carolina as his home over the last 5+ years. Jack has been seriously biking since he left Ohio and went to college at Elon University, and has always dreamed of the day he could take a summer and ride cross country... a perk of having his current job as a middle school English teacher in Henderson, NC. An eternal lover of small market sports franchises, he looks forward to his beloved Pittsburgh Pirates breaking their 20 year sub .500 streak with text updates from the road this summer. Some of his favorite things include a good microbrew, arguing with his Michigan roommate about Ohio State dominance and cultivating his dream of becoming a semi-professional whiffle ball player.

Seth Saeugling

Seth was born and raised in the Midwest college town of Iowa City, Iowa and then ventured north to Minnesota for college and then onto rural Warren County, North Carolina to teach high school. The heartland raised him. His dreams are to live in a renovated shipping container in the woods, play basketball overseas, be a highly effective teacher, spend time learning from Assatta Shakur in Cuba, and to be a great dad. He’s most at peace when on the pickup basketball court, playing chess, reading, surrounded by the family, and spending time outside in pretty nature. Ball is life. He met Jack in Houston last summer while training to be a teacher. When Jack told him about the bike trip and when he asked if he’d be up for joining he responded, in the words of Tupac, “Let’s ride.”