Now that the holidays are winding down, we’re looking forward to our first bike trip of the new year and are headed down to California! While not extraordinarily exotic, it does promise some desperately needed sun. Our plan is to take Amtrak Coast Starlight down from Portland to Paso Robles, spend a night or two there, then work our way to San Luis Obispo and explore the town. From SLO, we’ll ride down south as far as Ventura (maybe a side trip into Ojai), then hop Amtrak into Los Angeles to visit family and friends. Then using the Amtrak Surfliner, go down to San Diego where we’ll begin the desert portion of our trip, riding through Julian to Anza Borrego, Salton Sea then turn North towards Palm Springs.

That’s the rough plan anyway. Things always change.

Aside from putting some real loaded miles on our Vayas, one goal is to travel with a lens focused on bicycle tourism to see what works and what doesn’t. So we need your help. If you’ve got any tips on communities, advocacy groups or businesses (restaurants, lodging,etc.,) that are bike friendly and actively reaching out to cyclists let us know. We’d love to interview them and put a few more arrows in the quiver for when we go to DC to speak at the National Bike Summit!

One goal for 2013 is to advocate for bicycle travel in some big ways. We feel that we’ve done a pretty good job at getting individuals excited about hopping on their bikes and exploring. The next step, is to get communities and cities excited about bicycle tourism and travel. We occupy an interesting space, a nexus between adventure and advocacy and we plan to go gangbusters on the advocacy in the coming year.

We need your help with suggestions of people to talk to and some places to stay along the way. Or, if you’d like for us to speak at your community while we travel, let us know! Or if you just want to meet up and grab a beer. You can email us or send us a message via our contact page.

This trip, like our previous trips, is paid for out of our own pockets with funds from our ebook, shirt, headbadge sales and articles and photos we sell along the way. It sounds a lot more glamorous than the reality of the situation, believe me, but we feel strongly about the future of bike travel and are trying our best to help spread the word. So if you can help in any way with a nights stay, let us know.

California, here we come!