A long delayed update. Victory.

So. I completed the full tour, all 11,000 km. Got home September 30th. Read my Twitter for a day by day log of the trip. I learned a whole lot, including the fact that bike touring is possibly my favorite thing ever, and that ending one can be a highly depressing experience as my body chemistry shifts to dealing with being less active for the winter. I'm sitting here on my bed in January already plotting my next trip, probably a slightly smaller one this year, but in the mean time I'll be writing up my trip and what I learned on it, interspersed with tips for anyone else wanting to attempt this kind of adventure.

Stage One: Prince George, BC to Larrabee State Park, WA

View Stage One in a larger map
From the Frozen North to the beaches of Washington. 800 km out of +11,000 km

So it's finally happening. After deciding about a month an a half ago that I needed to do something big with my summer, I'm finally ready to start. My bike is packed, my gear is gathered, and I've been going on practice runs until my legs are ready to fall off. Sunday morning, it begins. Even if it's snowing. Which, given the weather so far this week, it probably will be.

I'm giving myself a lot of leeway in terms of time for this stage of the journey, once I start heading east I'm going to have to be covering a full 700 kilometers a week to get back home before snow flies. But considering that even alone this leg of the trip is going to be longer than anything I've ever done before, giving myself some slack seems like a good idea.

The route is going to be taking me South from my own driveway Northwest of Prince George along the Cariboo highway, which I'll stick to until switching to the Trans-Canada Highway at Cache Creek. Once I've reached Hope, I'll take the Lougheed Highway west, then follow minor roads down to the border and through the upper extremities of Washington. In Larrabee I can dip my wheels in the Pacific Ocean and officially start my trans-continental journey.

As I said in the intro, I'm going to be logging my day to day progress on Twitter since my smartphone frankly isn't smart enough to handle blogger without tripping over its own eyeballs. (It's an Android, in case someone out there wants to feel justifiably smug about their choice of phone.) You can still see the updates on this page though via that handy-dandy Twitter box on the right. Blog updates are going to be limited to whenever I can borrow somebody's computer.

A Brief Introduction

Hello, my name is Levi Ammundsen, I am 20 years old, Canadian, and in two days (April 15th) I am going to be taking off on a gigantic +11,000 kilometer bicycle ride across and around the USA and Canada. A rough summary of my route is that I'll be first traveling south from BC to touch the Pacific Ocean in Washingon, then biking east across the entire United States to touch the Atlantic in Massachusetts. Then north back into Canada. Then west across the Canadian Shield to home in BC again.

On my way, I will be promoting awareness of the Human Rights Crisis in North Korea, and raising money for Liberty in North Korea to aid in the escape of refugees across China.  Check out the link to my fundraising page to the right to learn more about the situation there, or browse the list of resources also featured in the right column.

To see updates of my moment-to-moment travels, follow my Twitter.

Also, like this on Facebook and spread the word.