We are two older women in our late sixties who love travelling by bike. My friend Mary Anne and I have shared many adventures on our bikes including riding across Canada, riding the Pacific Coast Route from Vancouver to San Diego. This will be the third adventure we will undertake together, the second self-supported one. 

"Why do you want to ride a heavy bike, loaded with stuff, through all kinds of weather? Camping, mosquitoes, using yucky showers? Especially at your age?" The last sentence is not always articulated but often implied. Why indeed! Because sometimes it's miserable, sometimes it's hard, sometimes it hurts, and all the time it's glorious! In my experience there is no other experience that tops it - feeling of freedom, being outdoors, feeling every bump in the road, smelling the air, feeling the wind, the sun, the rain on my face. I feel alive on my bike, the world comes alive.  What more is there? 

Travelling by car is too boring and too fast to really see your surroundings, and too environmentally costly. Travelling by foot is just too slow (for me anyway) so the bike has become my chosen mode of transportation.

So why not pick one of the hardest sections of the country to bike - the Rocky Mountains - and go over them from West to East and then go through them from South to North and go over them again from East to West?  Sounds crazy? Probably. But we will take on the challenge.

I have 4 weeks of vacation, we will go as far as we can or as far as we have time for within that 4 week span. This trip I would like to do a bit differently than previous ones - not be so tied to a schedule. We have a tentative itinerary but it will remain very flexible so we may not get as far some days, or we may have  great weather and a good tail wind and want to go farther. We may want to stay an extra unplanned day somewhere, and I want to be able to do that. So who knows where we will end up by July 12. But wherever it is, join us on our journey there.