Help planning a distance ride

Alright, so I rode in RTL and it was absolutely amazing. There was so much to see and being on the road was so fun.
I feel like I need to raise the bar for myself. I’ve only been unicycling for about 10 months and cokering for about 4 months and I feel I am excelling quite well at it. I reread what Unicycle Max did and I want to do something similar but farther.
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days and figure that I want to do 1000miles (1600km) from Niagara Falls to Montreal and loop back. It seems doable and I think I could do it in about or less than a month. I would rely on sponsors and any help I could get to do this semi-unsupported. I also want to be able to raise money for school, like Unicycle Max did (I am very much inspired by his method :o ).

This idea is still in it’s infancy and I would like input on how I would go about planning such a ride from physical and mental prep to what I would need to bring and how to go about getting sponsors, donations and publicity for it.

Please give me suggestions.

I’ve done a fair bit of bike touring and some unicycle touring. I always worked on the principle that if you aren’t fit at the start, you surely will be after a day or two. The only thing that is going to be a problem is if you injure yourself - if you were fine with RTL you should be good to go.

If you don’t have tons of money to spend, I would first attempt to get in touch with anyone you know (or anyone people you know knows) along the route and find some places to stay, as that’s always going to be the biggest complication / expense. Dependent on the route, you might want some kind of emergency shelter so you can sleep in the woods if need be, but getting into lightweight camping is expensive, and carrying heavy camping gear is a real hassle on a unicycle. Don’t worry about some unplanned days, but its worth having some known stopping points to save having to organise them along the way.

Are there many youth hostels / bunkhouses etc. that might be on the route? That’s always a good one if you’re skint and can’t find any free accommodation, random people you meet will also often offer you places to crash - I think that’s what max did?

In terms of raising money etc. I don’t know what the answer is - we had free education when I did my degree, and university is still pretty cheap now, so it’d be weird for someone to do that over here, but obviously it’s different in Canada / US.

Joe

Like Joe said, you can live pretty cheaply while cycle touring if you’re careful. I used to carry absolutely minimal camping/survival kit in case of emergencies, but rarely used it (very cramped lightweight tent, OK occasionally but not exactly comfortable). My tent wasn’t that expensive (less than £100 a few years ago) and only weighs two or three pounds. On a unicycle I’d be tempted to save even more weight and not take a tent at all (all my real touring has been on bikes), perhaps a bivvy or just a space blanket for utter emergencies, and just sleep in the cheapest accommodation possible/blag a place to crash if you’re the friendly sort, as Joe said. In my experience there’s absolutely no need to carry any cooking gear - but that may be different if you’re touring somewhere really cold.

As long as you don’t set yourself ridiculous daily distance goals you’ll have a great time. Don’t run out of water.

I do find the part about “raising money for school” odd though… If people were paid for cycle touring I’d be very rich by now :smiley: But if you can get paid for being on holiday then good for you mate!

Have fun.

Rob

Well, I was also thinking of raising money for a charity and maybe a precentage of the money could go toward my education. I don’t want to seem cheap by doing this just for myself either.

Hey James, It’ll be mainly you who will reap the rewards of this upcoming travel experience. Don’t let the issue of sponsors/donations/publicity get in the way of you just DOING it. Try to get them, sure, maybe you have an aptitude for that kind of self-promotion. But, if you can’t rally the world for your cause - don’t worry - just go!