Dear Andrew:

I have been immensely enjoying your blog for some time now. It basically mirrors my own feelings about globalization. (Perhaps the reason why I find it so intelligent. ;>)) That is to say I am. 1) dubious about excessive claims, ala Friedman.

2) Frankly scared about what it means for the United States' future standard of living. I am also worried about our apparent inability to get our collective act together and respond effectively. The US will be able to live comfortably through the balance of my lifetime, I'm sure, but I worry about how my 3 year old grandson will fare.

3) As a humanitarian and egalitarian, I am unable to ignore the benefits of hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of absolute poverty by the process.

This may seem far off point, but:

You perform an extremely valuable service, thus I think you are entitled to an occasional self-indulgence. As one of the other posts noted, if you are boring we can just skip those posts.

Good biking!!

You'll meet interesting people on the ride. And you won't be that tired; there will be a bunch of time after the ride for discussion, reflection, and writing.

I'm interested. My wife and i frequently commute by bike and if the roads here were a bit more bike friendly, we would do more. looking forward to following your progress.

Real McCoy...26.2

And...

Having thought on this...you need to do it...

And high at the end...that "I *did it!" is amazing.

At least once or you'll never forgive.

["actually fu*king" goes in there]

Please post! I'm a longtime biker who's fallen off the wagon the last several years, and desperately needs to get off my ass and ride more. It'll pump me up--I hope!

Of course, post from the ride. With pictures. I'm stuck in the desert where it's 100 degrees. I'll be living vicariously through you for a week.

Go for it, that is if you are up to it after about 60 miles on a bike per day! I think it would be very cool. Check on doing pictures too.

If this is what it takes to get a week of posts focused on these issues then do the ride, PDA at the ready, early and often. As you mention, a great opportunity to talk to many converging issues.

Even with pre-defined talking points, at least one other similarly inspirational route would leave one with little time and energy to express them (assuming one could even connect to the internet) - Tour de Taos, Albuquerque to Taos 150, and back, in two days. But the pueblos would never provide you with a Toll House issue.

I'd be interested. I think you'd probably have to prep a lot of material in advance, since I can't imagine you'll learn a ton about how the world works being in the saddle for nearly an average of 70 miles a day... but I'd enjoy hearing about the people you meet, their passions, maybe pictures...

The early returns are in. I'm blogging from the bike ride.

I have the good fortune to live in Davis, CA, the U.S. city with both the most bike lane miles per capita, and (reportedly) the most bike commuters per capita. I've ridden my bike to work for the last 20 years, about 15 minutes each way, and normally ride home for lunch too because I have a job which keeps me on my butt the whole time. I'm very enthusiastic about bike commuting but wonder just how much difference I'm making in CO2 production and how applicable it might be to the rest of the population.

Of course I could be someone spending 45 minutes each way in an automobile, driving by myself, so there's certainly a difference there. But it seems obvious that the real difference is that I live close enough to work to make bike riding feasible. How about everyone else? How could we get the biggest CO2 delta?

I think there's a lot of potential for what I think of as Very Light Vehicles (VLVs). Vehicles closer to bicycles in weight and speed could cover the commutes of 1-20 miles in a reasonable time and probably get 100-150 mpg easily. They could be all electric, electric-assisted bicycles, or small internal combustion engines (perhaps running on propane or natural gas). They would probably have to be limited to 20 mph for safety, and operate in places similar to where you could ride a bike.

Maybe you could ponder this during your ride? We need to get out of our cars if we're really going to make a difference, and bicycles, even tho I think they're really really cool, are just not going to cut it for most people. But they are making a real difference in our town, primarily with traffic congestion and parking. We have the bike lanes though, due to a lot of foresight 20 years ago. It has really paid off here and we could still do a lot more.

Or just post a picture. It will simplify things for maximum blog enjoyment. Then you can add a caption of the day tied into globalization.

I'll have to second (third?, twenty-fourth?) the idea. I expect you'll have some great things to say.

And of course, after a long day's bike, you'll want nothing more than to sit down in front of a computer and hammer out a few thousand words.

Regardless, your readers will appreciate it. :-)

As an avid biker, I say anything that gets people on a bike and out of their cars is a great thing on so many levels.

Yes, please do post. I think you'll be surprised how well you will do physically (I did a 6-day, 300 mile ride last year, my first such adventure, and thanks to my training, by the last day was flying on my bike). There is no substitute to seeing the world on a vehicle that let's you stop easily and smell, taste, hear constantly. Enjoy!

As an avid cyclist who grew up in So-Cal, (or as you bay area folk like to say, "Lower California" LOL) and someone who has done the California AIDS ride several times I would be particularly interested in a 'travelblog'. In fact, if I wasn't living in Baltimore MD now I would probably be doing the ride myself.