The Route

North to Albany. West to Buffalo. Southwest to Kentucky. West to San Francisco. This is a combination of a few bike routes taken from various sources:

• NYC to Albany
• Albany to Buffalo
• ACA maps (Underground Railroad -> TransAmerica -> Western Express)

It should be a little bit more than 4000 miles in total. Hopefully I'll be able to do it in about 2 months (a little more than two months is more likely). I start May 16th.

I'm going north first because it'll bypass a lot of the hilliness crossing the Appalachians and Albany to Buffalo is 380 miles of mostly bike paths tracking the Erie Canal.

The hardest part, I think, will be the Western Express (everything after Pueblo, CO). This will be largely unpopulated desert. I've got 7 water bottles expandable to 10, which should be enough to get me from town to town, and other than that, it's just preparation: repair gear and proper clothing (cotton during the day to avoid dehydration, synthetics at night to avoid hypothermia).

Here's a really big map (3MB):
http://tinyurl.com/2w7zhsw