Update: I’ve Upgraded to 5g
I got my second vaccine shot today! This means my free-and-clear date is May 26th, and I’m on schedule to leave RI on June 1st. Which is less than 20 days away, and I’m starting to panic! But that’s fine. Really, everything is fine. I’m fine. How are you?
A More Specific Route
I’ve spent the last week reaching out to specific design communities about setting up playtests and interviews for when I’m passing through. This is a specific route of major cities/towns I’ll be stopping in with Board Game Bike, along with estimated dates of arrival:
Hartford, CT (June 1st)
New Haven, CT (June 2nd)
Brooklyn, NY (June 4th)
Trenton, NJ (June 8th)
Philadelphia, PA (June 9th)
Cleveland, OH (June 22nd)
Columbus, OH (June 27th)
Dayton, OH (June 29th)
Indianapolis, IN (July 3rd)
Chicago, IL (July 9th)
Dekalb, IL (July 14th)
Madison, WI (July 17th)*
Minneapolis, MN (July 25th)
Fargo, ND, (August 4th)
Seattle, WA (Sept 3rd)*
*This is a firm date regardless of road conditions
Some Tough Decisions
With the goal of traveling about 3700 miles in 95 days in front of me, I had to make some tough choices.
First, since I can’t ride for 95 straight days (at least, I wouldn’t want to), I need to factor in some rest time. In addition to that, there are going to be days I won’t be riding because I’ll want to be playtesting games, interviewing designers, and otherwise interacting with these communities. So I’ve budgeted about 20 days for a combination of resting and game design work. This means that for the days that I ride, I need to accomplish about 50 miles a day.
This seems like an accomplishable goal, but not without sacrifices. In order to get this down to a “manageable” mileage, I decided to cut out the South Dakota portion of this trip. I also received an incredible response from game designers all over Michigan, and while I toyed around with several routes that would take me to the Great Lakes State, I couldn’t make it work.
Second, there are also still a few cities I might have to cut along the way - mostly ones that are out of the way (Cleveland, for example, represents a significant detour from Philly to Columbus). A lot of these decisions are going to have to be made from the road, and will depend mostly on a) how many catastrophes I encounter, b) how my body is feeling overall, and c) how often the natural beauty of a location mesmerizes me into forgetting my journey for a day and captures me in its web.
Fargo to Seattle
Between these two cities I haven’t heard from any designers that I can reasonably visit without adding at least a week to my journey. BUT, I’m actually pretty excited about this stretch. With nothing to do but bike, I’ll have the opportunity to see some beautiful parts of the country, stop in towns on a whim, and generally just escape for a while. I’m looking forward to it.
Stops in libraries and the occasional hotel will offer me the chance to also get some editing done from the first half of the trip, so that will be most of my rest time.
I hope to see you on the road!