Cycle Across America: Summary (Aug 1-Sep 21, 2026)

मंज़िल के आकर इतना क़रीब, इतने पास
बेताब बहुत हूँ, फिर भी हूँ तनिक उदास
छूट जाएँगे ये नज़ारे, ये सुहानी डगर
मेरे साथी, मेरे दोस्त, मेरे ये हमसफ़र
मुक़ाम पाने की ख़ुशी में, कुछ ग़म भी है शामिल   
रुकना कैसे हो गवारा, जब सफ़र ही हो मंज़िल 

(So close to the finish, just a short mile apart,
I am deeply eager, yet a bit sad in my heart.
I will leave it all behind as the journey ends –
The vistas, this road, my companions, my friends.
A little sorrow now blends with the elation,
For the journey itself was my destination)

These were my emotions as I was pedaling the final miles of our cross-country cycling expedition – 3,168 miles, 52 days, 14 states and 3 crazy riders. Fifty-two days earlier we had dipped our wheels in the Pacific at Santa Monica Pier and pointed them east. It was just an audacious dream then – and now this close to the dream coming true, I had mixed feelings. At noon on September 21, 2026, we rolled up to the Washington Monument – very tired, very happy – lifted our bicycles over our heads, laughed like schoolchildren, and cried a little.

This is the short version of how three friends rode across America the hard way: self-supported, carrying everything on our unpowered bicycles, with no support vehicle following behind. We dealt with extreme heat, dangerous highways, aggressive dogs, steep climbs, thunderstorms, flat tires, and more, documenting everything as we went along. The long version of this blog contains the day-by-day details.

The Team

The team consisted of Jai Rawat (that’s me!), 57; Samir Palnitkar, 58; and Anu Palnitkar, 54. The three of us are no strangers to doing slightly unreasonable things outdoors – Everest Base Camp, Kilimanjaro, the John Muir Trail, the Tour du Mont Blanc, Patagonia, Stok Kangri at over 20,000 ft, the Annapurna Circuit, and more. I have done multiple marathons, and even ran a 50-mile ultramarathon to celebrate my 50th birthday! Anu has walked 100km in 24 hours. Samir and I have also done multiple tech startups, so even in our professional lives, we know how to step out of our comfort zones.

The Idea

Back in 2018, Samir and I rode 600 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and that ride had planted a seed: traveling by bicycle gives you a perspective on a place that nothing else does. You smell it, you climb it, you earn every mile of it. We were also looking for a unique challenge – something that would really test our physical and mental strength.

So the seed grew. The plan was deliberately old-fashioned: carry everything ourselves – repair kits, food, clothes – and ride unpowered bikes with no support vehicle. We had backpacked for 21 days on the John Muir Trail, while sleeping in tents. Sure we could do this on our bikes, while sleeping in hotels. We hadn’t accounted for the surprises!

Training

I trained for about 7-8 weeks for the ride – only the final four weeks were on the new bike I bought for the expedition (see below). Ideally, I should’ve trained more, but this was all the time I could find between my travels. My training routine consisted of riding 3-4 times a week, including long rides and hill climbing; strength training with a special focus on legs, core, and back; cross training (mostly hiking); and weekly yoga classes. The preparation turned out to be adequate. I had no trouble covering the daily distance, handling the heat, headwinds, or the climbs. However, aggressive dogs and highway/freeway riding were the two things I had not accounted for or trained for! Read on to learn more 🙂

Route Planning

There are many possible routes for a cross-country ride – the TransAmerica Trail (Oregon to Virginia), the Southern Tier (San Diego, CA to Florida), the Northern Tier (Washington to Maine), and more. The Adventure Cycling Association publishes many well-researched, cycle friendly routes. After careful consideration, we decided to take the following route:

• Route 66 from Santa Monica, CA to St. Louis, MO
• Eastern Express Connector from St. Louis, MO to Indianapolis, IN
• Chicago NY route from Indianapolis, IN to Pittsburgh, PA
• GAP Trail from Pittsburgh, PA to Cumberland, MD
• C&O Canal Trail from Cumberland, MD to Washington, DC

This route helped us avoid the climbs and desolate stretches of the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies. 2026 being the centennial year for the iconic Route 66 was an added bonus. It did have its challenges, including extreme heat, deserts, and long stretched with no services. But, no route across the country is without its challenges!

The Gear

I bought a new Specialized Roubaix SL8 Comp with electronic shifting for this ride. It wasn’t cheap, but I wanted a road bike that could also handle some gravel. The Insta360 camera worked really well for third-person videos. Here are some of the videos from the ride: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHyKRtHDBaBc&si=Ov4zj7RtlPZKIYfS. I have embedded one of them below, of us riding through the Petrified Forest National Park:

Here’s a list of everything I carried and my thoughts on what worked well and what didn’t: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rrsWbSM3VFtivkKh1y_DNiWSNFsMADKbmr3BQRZCChg/edit?usp=sharing

Act I . Days 1-36. Route 66

Santa Monica to St. Louis, on Route 66 – historic, hot, and funky!

Day 1 immediately erased any notions of smooth sailing. We started early in the morning and meandered through LA, stopping at various sights, indulging in donuts, and chatting with people. Soon we found ourselves battling 96°F heat, which gave Anu cramps and nausea severe enough to force a stop of a few hours. Next was a flat tire. By the time we reached our hotel, 13 hours had passed since we set off!

Lesson learned: we would have to start earlier and minimize sightseeing to beat the heat. From then on, the plan was to finish each day’s ride by around 1pm.

Day 2 introduced a new challenge – we found our map taking us onto Interstate 15. We did not know that Route 66 is no longer a contiguous road – it has since been broken up into highways, freeways, frontage roads, and streets. Riding on the shoulder of an interstate was not something we had anticipated at all. Imagine big rigs thundering past at 75 mph! The draft alone can topple you over if you aren’t careful. Anu, who had come into this with the least cycling experience, completely froze. But, she is incredibly strong, and she overcame this fear – and every other adversity and obstacle that came her way.

Day 3 got us into the unforgiving Mojave Desert with temperatures hitting 120°F!. Furthermore, the 200-mile Mojave Desert span from Barstow, CA to Oatman, AZ has very few facilities. So we decided to drive that section rather than risk becoming three burnt skeletons by the side of the road 🙂 “Safety first” was our mantra.

Then Route 66 began to work its magic. We went through small towns with quirky signs, eclectic shops, funky sculptures, and learned a lot of history along the way.

We encountered the famous wild donkeys in Oatman, AZ, climbed the grueling Sitgreaves Pass, and rode under the starry skies through the Hualapai Valley. In Seligman, AZ, we visited the shop of Angel Delgadillo, the now 99-year-old barber who saved Route 66 back in 1987 after it had been officially decommissioned. What an amazing story. We also slipped into Petrified Forest National Park before the official opening time and had it to ourselves for nearly two hours. We rode through the beautiful mesas of New Mexico, crossed the Continental Divide at 7,882 feet, and spray-painted the cars at Cadillac Ranch – probably the quirkiest attraction along Route 66. On day 21, we arrived in Adrian, TX, population 130. It is famous for being the exact midpoint of Route 66

Oklahoma gave us the Blue Whale, cowboy boots, and Dawn Welch of the Rock Cafe – the real-life inspiration for Sally Carrera in the film Cars. Kansas has only a 13-mile segment of Route 66, but Galena, KS has the ultimate Cars memorabilia. Missouri rolled us through the Ozarks. All this while, the journey kept surprising us with the small-town hospitality. Ted in Kingman fixed Anu’s wheel for free, I got a free coffee at a New Mexico convenience store, and Todd in Oklahoma offered us water and Gatorade as we rode past his house – the list goes on. Political rhetoric aside, we felt equally welcome in both red and blue states, without encountering any racism. People are nice everywhere.

Day 34 also saw an unfortunate accident, when Anu accidentally grabbed her front brake and summersaulted over her bike. She was badly bruised and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance for a checkup. We forced her to rest for a couple of days, but she was back in the saddle after that. Her determination and strength are simply amazing.

Act II . Days 37-46. The Heartland (Midwest)

On Day 37 we rolled out of St. Louis and said a bittersweet farewell to Route 66 beneath the Gateway Arch. Thirty-six days on one road is long enough to fall in love with it — and to understand what was lost when the Interstates bypassed the towns that depended on it. Progress leaves scars. We had ridden through many of those towns.

We crossed the Mississippi on the Chain of Rocks Bridge and entered a different America — flatter, greener, and covered in endless fields of corn and soybeans in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Along the way, we passed Vandalia, where Lincoln launched his political career; saw the fire-breathing dragon of Kaskaskia; the birthplace of the Coca-Cola bottle; the Indy 500 race track; and more.

Act III . Days 47-51. The Appalachians and the GAP Trail

Day 47 (Cambridge, OH to Wheeling, WV) delivered the hardest climb of the ride: almost 4,000 ft of climbing on grades up to 12.5% on McGregor Hill. My legs complained, but they were overruled. I was determined to complete the ride without ever losing to a climb!

Then the reward came in the form of the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) trail. 150 miles of rail-trail – a trail built on an old railway line. That meant 150 traffic-free, low-gradient miles through small towns, tunnels, viaducts, bridges, and waterfalls, riding under a canopy of trees alongside the Monongahela, Yough, and Casselman rivers. It is one of the most popular trails in the USA, with over 1 million visitors a year, of whom about 100,000 complete the entire trail. We met a lot of riders who were doing the entire GAP trail. Of course, they were duly impressed when they found out that we were at the tail end of our cross-country ride and took pictures with us 🙂

After weeks of sharing the road with speeding vehicles, the GAP trail was an absolute delight. Unfortunately, this is where Anu had a second accident. On Day 51, when we were close to finishing the GAP trail, she slipped on the gravel trail and injured herself again. It was another bad fall, with a lot of nasty bruises. Undeterred, she got back up and completed the ride anyway.

Our original plan was to ride the C&O Canal Trail to DC after the GAP. However, the weather turned on us, and we had to abandon that idea. The C&O Trail gets extremely muddy in the rain and would’ve been impassable on our road bikes. So we drove to Virginia and took the Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail instead to the finish instead.

The Finish Line

On day 52, we started from Broadlands, Virginia, on the W&OD Trail and rolled into the Washington Monument at noon. And with it, Anu became the first woman of Indian origin to complete an unsupported cycle ride across the USA, and Samir and I became the first persons of Indian origin over 50 to do the same.

“Oh my God! It feels so unreal,” commented Anu, summing up exactly what Samir and I felt too. A number of friends and family members were waiting for us at the finish line. I celebrated the way I do at the end of every big adventure: with a headstand!

The Challenges

This ride tested us in ways no training plan had prepared us for.

• Aggressive dogs. Every single dog, even a little tiny thing sitting in a stroller barked at us. On lonely rural stretches, dogs came charging out of yards and after us down the road. It was frightening. You cannot reason with a dog, and you cannot out-sprint one on a loaded bike. Fortunately we did not get bit but Anu did fall down once when multiple dogs charged her.
• Freeway and highway riding. Route 66 put us on the shoulder of an interstate, with big rigs thundering past at 75 mph. But even more scary were rolling highways with little to no shoulders creating blind zones with every crest of the road.
• Heat. Day 1 hit 96°F and gave Anu cramps and nausea; the Mojave touched 120°F. We learned to start early and finish by 1 p.m., because riding through peak heat was not just miserable — it was dangerous.
• Headwinds. Some days the wind was simply brutal We battled 15mph headwinds in Oklahoma – even going downhill required pedaling hard.
• Planning every single day. Planning logistics was as much a challenge as the physical and mental test. Each day had to be mapped before we rode it: the mileage, where we would find food and water, where supplies ran out, where we would sleep, and how to dodge the peak heat and the afternoon thunderstorms.

Personal Growth

I had always been the jester of our trio — the jokes, the fun, the song quizzes, the funny captions. But somewhere between the long, quiet miles, disconnected from everything else, I also connected with my creative self. The ride gave me hours of uninterrupted time with my own thoughts, something ordinary life rarely allows. I started capturing my experiences, emotions, and the sights into poems. The poem at the top of this blog is one of them, written as the finish drew near, when I was already a little sad that the journey was ending.

I came home a cyclist who writes poetry — or a poet who cycles. Either way, it is the part of the journey I am most determined to keep.

Some Press Coverage

Our ride got covered by several publications. Here are some of the links:

• The Des Moines Register: Indian-origin trio completes 3,168 mi (5,100 km) Cycle across America Expedition in 52 days without a support vehicle
• indicanews: Entrepreneur Jai Rawat completes 3,168-mile unsupported cross-country bicycle ride
• The American Bazaar: From Santa Monica to the Washington Monument: Indian American cyclist trio make history in 52 days
• India West: Three Cyclists Complete 3,168-Mile Ride From LA To DC In 52 Days

Thanks

This ride would not have been possible without the support of our families and friends. My wife, Jyoti Rawat, spent nearly two months at home cheering me on, along with my kids, Rishika, Yashvi, and Rohan. Samir and Anu’s sons, Aditya and Sahil drove or flew hundreds of miles twice to meet us twice en route and again at the finish. Kaustubh drove three and a half hours each way to spend four hours with us, armed with homemade laddoos. Sushil Gupta drove hours with his whole family, then carried our bags in his car the next day. Atanu and Ratna made a 700 mile round trip just cheer us for two hours. Shuvvobrato woke up before dawn to meet as 6:30am in Pittsburgh. We also had over 500 people following us on a WhatsApp group and encouraging us every day. We were overwhelmed with the love and support from everyone. Thank you.