In 15 days, I’m headed for Quito, Ecuador, for the start of my big South America adventure of 2019: The Andes Trail 2019 organized by Bike Dreams.

It was a great day yesterday because the last official thing I must have arranged before the trip, my Bolivian visa, came in the mail. I’ve finished most of my shopping and all of my medical preparations and really just have to work on the bike itself and a few post-bike-trip reservations (like my ticket back home!) Next week I’ll do an overhaul of the bike, replacing some parts like the chain, brake pads, rear tire, rear cluster and have the shock serviced. Then on June 30, the bike goes in a box, and on July 3rd, we fly out to Quito.

We’ll will vacation in the Galapagos for 3 weeks until July 23, then I’ll have a week to get acclimated to the 9,200′ elevation in Quito and get some practice biking. By July 30, all the riders will be assembled at the Hotel Ambassador, and we then start officially riding on August 2, where we ride 28 km north to the equator for a starting ceremony, then back to Quito. On August 3, we head south until we arrive December 17 in Ushuaia! We plan to ride 10,943 km in 142 days (109 riding days) with over 110,000 meters of climbing. 70% of the route is paved.

The day after we arrive in Ushuaia, Grace is coming back down and we’ll head off to Antarctica for 2 weeks. Christmas and New Years 2020 in Antarctica! We’re going on a G-Adventures trip called Quest for the Antarctic Circle. We plan to come home January 7, 2020.

My friend Jim Sowers wanted to know about the trip so he suggested interviewing me about it. We made 6 clips:

• Part 1, Introduction, 2:15
• Part 2, About the bike, 2:09
• Part 3, Tour logistics, 3:09
• Part 4, More about the tour, 3:31
• Part 5, Video and photography, 2:09
• Part 6, What’s in my garage? 2:46

I first decided back in 2016 that I wanted to ride from Quito to Ushuaia, most of the length of South America. I loved the idea of the “Andes Trail” tour run by Bike-Dreams so signed up in August 2018. I was surprised then that the tour, which didn’t start for a year, was nearly full. I reserved my place and quickly decided that I would do it on bike instead of unicycle. The 100 km per day average (with some days of 100 miles) with hard conditions and few rest days made it an easy decision.

I hadn’t ridden a bike much since I switched to unicycle over 20 years ago. So I looked for the right bike and found it in the Salsa Cutthroat. It’s a Gravel bike, and I added a front shock. More recently I’ve changed the tires from knobby MTB tires to 42c Specialized Sawtooths. I am hoping these are beefy enough for thousands of km of dirt and gravel and roll fast and easy. I bought the bike at the beginning of 2018 and have ridden it about 2,000 miles so far, and love it!

Travel plans are not all complete yet but I am flying to Quito on July 3, then will be in the Galapagos from July 5-23. After Grace flies home on the 25th, I’ll stay in Quito to train a bit for the tour which officially kicks off on August 2 with a ride north to the equator for the official start. On August 3, we ride south from Quito.

Here is the info about the tour. And here’s where it goes:

Here you can see all the crazy people I’m doing this with. We train “together” via a club on Strava.

I’ll be writing about my experiences in South America in 2019 here. It all starts on July 3 when I fly to Quito, Ecuador. The bike tour I’m going on starts in early August at the equator near Quito, and ends in Ushuaia, Argentina, 11,000 km and 4 1/2 months later.