The Journey
My trip will take me from the start of Route 1 in Fort Kent, Maine, all the way down to the end of Route 1 in the Florida Keys. I'm not actually following Route 1 all the way, but it's a fun, symbolic beginning and end to the journey.
Along the way I'll be stopping in (or simply passing through) at least 44 cities/towns and 14 states, across ~3,200 miles.
The longest day is technically ~161 miles from Boston to New Bedford, but it includes a ~54 mile ferry, but even without the ferry, it will still be longest day. The shortest day is 35 miles from Titusville to Cape Canaveral. I'll be spending a lot of time here so I can (hopefully!) catch the launch of NASA's Europa Clipper on a Falcon Heavy!
I think the most difficult day of riding will be the 5th day of the trip, from Bangor to Bar Harbor. It's about 88 miles with nearly 6000 feet of climbing. Some days are a bit longer, but nothing will reach this much climbing. The easiest day will probably be Titusville to Cape Canaveral; a quick 35 miles with a measly 420 feet of climbing; I hit ~200 on my 2.5 mile commute home!
Here is a link to a collection of all 43 days of cycling on RideWithGPS, the app I'm using to map all of my rides. You can see more info about each day's ride and any photos I've posted. https://ridewithgps.com/collections/2245415?privacy_code=zbGGDFEcLaZsbEwIwMy67YvZHA9zSyJy
Some simple little graphs for the daily conditions for each day of the trip. This includes distance, elevation gained/lost, sunrise/sunset times, daylight hours, temperatures, chance of the day being "muggy" (or worse), the chance of rain, and wind conditions. Eventually I'll probably add the actual conditions for each day, just to compare to what was expected.
Once the trip concludes I'll add metrics like speed and heart rate. Let me know what else I should track!
Most days are between 50-100 miles, with only one day exceeding 100. Ignoring the ~50-mile ferry, it's only like 105. About 6 other days are below 50 miles, making them relatively easy.
This is simply "Elevation Gained / Distance" and can give a basic sense of the difficulty of a ride. It's not perfect, though, as it doesn't really take into acocunt the total length of the trip. A 10-mile ride and a 100-mile ride can very easily have the same average incline, but obviously the 100-mile ride is harder.
I think I've picked a good time of year to take this trip: the northeast should be nicely temperate and the south shouldn't be oppressively hot. That said, there's really no avoiding the heat and humidity in Florida, but at least it'll be flat...
It still blows my mind how flat Florida is and I cannot wait to get there and just cruise without a care in the world. Maine can kiss my ass... .
This is a simple way I came up with the gauge the "effective" difficulty of ride. Take the average incline from the previous plot and add it to the distance. The units make no sense, but the relative scaling seems pretty reasonable. Most rides will be dictated by their length, but steeper rides will be harder. The big spike is an outlier due to the ferry ride that day.
Wind is often the ultimate enemy of cycling (even more so than hills), and rain doesn't help. Looks like the typical wind speed and rain chance are minimal during the hardest days but spike in Florida. Again, at least it'll be flat...