Tiffany & Adam's Great American Bike Tour
Who We Are:
Tiffany is a nine year Next Adventure veteran who grew up playing in the outdoors. Hiking, backpacking, skiing, climbing and kayaking are staples of her lifestyle. She worked in Wilderness Therapy for four years, taking teenagers on extended multi-sport weekend excursions and 3 week intensive backpacking trips. In 2009 she thru-hiked the 2,650 mile Pacific Crest Trail which runs from Mexico to Canada, and in 2010, she spent her summer working as a sea kayak guide in Alaska. So far Tiffany has worked for two companies with the word “adventure” in their name. She hopes to continue the trend.
Adam's love for cycling began in high school when he found his fathers Bridgestone in the garage, and started biking to school. His fascination with bicycles expanded and he was soon learning how to fix his own bike and volunteering at the Community Cycling Center. In 2004 Adam attended the United Bicycle Institute, where he became certified as a professional bike mechanic. Since 2006 Adam has been cycling professionally as a bike messenger.
His love of bike touring was discovered during a trip down the Pacific Coast to San Francisco in the summer of 2005. Since then he has done numerous trips to the Oregon Coast, up the Columbia Gorge and ridden from Vancouver, B.C. Back to Portland. This will be his longest tour yet.
Adam is also currently pursuing a degree in Community Development at Portland State University, and is an active volunteer for Bike Farm, a non-profit community repair shop.
As everyone knows, Next Adventure is the place to go for outdoor gear. A lesser known fact is that Next Adventure also doubles as a matchmaking service. Though we had known each other in high school, we hadn’t seen each other for 8 years and met again while Tiffany was working the register one rainy day in October of 2009. After we had been dating for almost a year, Tiffany brought up the topic of her next summer adventure. She was planning another thru-hike, but Adam suggested it would be more reasonable if we alternated who got to choose the summer activity. So of course, the adventure had to be a bike tour.
Our Adventure:
We’re going on a coast to coast bike tour, beginning on the New Jersey coast east of Philadelphia and ending in Seaside, Oregon. We will pass through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and, of course, Oregon. The trip will traverse roughly 3600 miles. With an expected average daily distance of 75 miles, travel time should be about 48 days. This number does not include rest days, side trips, detours, etc. so we are allowing at least 2 months for the whole trip.
We’re taking a four day train trip to Philadelphia where Adam has a friend who will put us up while we reassemble our bikes and organize our gear (including some sweet new stuff from Next Adventure). After that we’ll be taking local mass transit to Tom’s River, New Jersey, where we will officially start our tour. You can see a map of the first portion of our trip here.