‘The Plan’

Last year, I posted a blog, The American Adventure, when I outlined my ‘Plan’ to cycle across America.

Calling it ‘The Plan’, on reflection, was a bit of an exaggeration. A more accurate description would be ‘an overly optimistic and grandiose assessment of my understanding of what exactly I was letting myself in for and just how much preparation was involved’.

‘The Plan’ makes it sound as though I had given this some significant thought, had some experience, carried out some research, and formulated my ideas based on some knowledge and wisdom. I hadn’t!

As I recall, ‘The Plan’ was simply the output of a conversation with my husband when I suggested that it might be fun to cycle across America. A conversation that, possibly fuelled by a glass or three of Prosecco, at some point in the evening evolved from ‘it might be fun’ to ‘I’m going to do it.’

I’m not even sure, that at any point in the conversation, my husband agreed that it might be fun or that he would join me. It is possible that he didn’t ever articulate any such sentiment nor whether he thought it might be feasible or even vaguely desirable. However, several months later he finds himself having negotiated a sabbatical from work, having bought a new bike and we find ourselves committed to this joint venture.

And so, ‘The Plan’ quickly became ‘Our Plan’. ‘Our Plan’ might suggest, we had discussed our hopes and expectations in undertaking such a challenge and that we had agreed on an approach as to how we might do this. We hadn’t!

While undertaking much research and giving some thought as to how we might work out the logistics of cycling across America, I wondered if at some point, common sense might prevail and we would decide it was one adventure too far for us. However, in truth, we were both excited by the prospect. The miles, the climbs, the number of days away from home or the enormous amount of planning still required, have done nothing to dissuade us from embracing this challenge.

We must have talked a convincing ‘Plan’ as our friends Caroline and Paul are joining us for the entire challenge. We now appear to have planning headquarters, a planning committee, dedicated times when we meet each week, an endless agenda of items for discussion, and still so many things to organise.

For those of you interested, I’ll summarise ‘Our Plan’ as it evolves. For those of you who aren’t interested, my apologies.

Images Source: ClipArt Library

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