See ya next year Jeff!

Place makers #4 and #5 into Ovando at 10:45 am.  
Rob Davidson of New Zealand, age 50 and Bradley Ryan of CA age 28

Rob Davidson rocks! 

Am pretty amazed at how clean the route is .. going northbound, we get to see what's been dropped by the southbound riders from at least Wyoming all the way up to Banff and it's next to nothing ( unless they drop Bud Light blue cans ! ). 

Not completely clean. Someone in front of me kept dropping red gummy bears on the ground ( like once every 200 miles or more ). I didn't eat them, but then I'm not from NZ.
As far as limiting the GD, I personally think that will be a non issue. I think the numbers racing it will peak soon, if they haven't already. There are other events popping up which are just as interesting.
Hopefully the number of people touring the route ( and other routes ) will keep on increasing though, 'cause that would be very good for all of us

Is there anybody out there prepping for this biggie rather than TD '17?

Its only a 5000 mile ride, as off road as Billy can make it and it does go to some fun places on its way from the east coat to the Pacific.

Chime in please.

I am gong to be living vicariously through you, Rob. Ride accordingly.

I only just got my head around the length of the TD.

I guess what I'm asking is how would I know when "I'm ready" to consider an attempt the TD? What kind of tours should I have done before I attempt the big one?

I don't think you will ever know that you are 100% ready. I've raced the Tour Divide twice now. Both times I wasn't completely sure that I could finish. My advice, especially since you already ride a fair bit, is to decide when you're going to attempt the TD, ramp up your mileage (slowly) to something that you figure you can handle, mix in hard days and easy days, and stay as consistent as possible over the coming years before your attempt. Being comfortable living outdoors is a huge bonus for TD, so you've got that going for you eh? There are quite a few TDrs in southern Ontario, sitting down and having a chat with one or more of us would be quite beneficial.

Does anyone have a link to map cues for the reroute around Rawlins thru Wamsutter?  I have the GPX file but I am a map guy first. 

I looked around in all my emails and related bits and pieces to see if I could see anything about cues for the Basin. Nothing. I’m sure there is something out there, somewhere. There is a short stretch (couple of miles) where cues really won’t help though. The portion of the route that runs along the edge of the ridge is not on a well-defined trail. You will probably have to trust your GPS there.

[Riding with a sense of Adventure]

True Racers never make wrong turns! There is only 'Riding with a sense of Adventure'. Also known as...er...wrong turns. 

Tip-O-Day: 1. Use GPS. 2. Set background blank, no map. 3. Follow arrow on red line. You will have no problems (unless you miss that dang turn going up Stemple Pass because you're daydreaming! Drat!  )

never-done-that...twice

Well. If we’re talking about wrong turns, I’ve done four of those on the same day. The first occurred because my head was down and I was walking up a steep pitch, the gps was swinging wildly and I didn’t realize that the track turned off to the left before the top of the climb. Ooops. The second occurred when I got back down to the turn and followed the track the wrong way. The realization that I was at the bottom of the climb that I’d just spent the morning walking was a bit painful. My third wrong turn occurred because I had the wrong track loaded. I had an older track in the GPS and was following that instead of the current race track. It took a while to figure out that I wasn’t on the course even though the line was there on the GPS. Fortunately I did have the correct track in the GPS and I knew just enough to switch back to it. And once I got back to where I’d left the correct track … yeah I turned and went backwards.
Incidentally, I was watching the track of a friend of a friend on an ITT two years ago. He had a long slow slog into Lima, checked into a motel, got up in the morning and rode back out to Bannock Rd. Actually he rode backwards for eight hours before realizing that he’d messed up. That was painful to watch. At least he got to sleep in a motel two nights running.

Chris,

That info tends to be something you generate yourself.

Greg

I’m going to add to what Greg said:
It seems like a list of POI’s would be a good thing, but generating it yourself is a really good reason for doing a map recce. And doing that is invaluable. I spent quite a bit of time last year working out my routes through each town. Options: restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, gas stations etc, marked the quickest way to get off route and back on, (going back to the exact place you leave the course and sending a message on your spot from there). I didn’t mark any of that on the gps but put a map of each town, with route and poi’s, on a pdf which was stored on my phone. POI’s for stuff outside of the towns makes sense to put on the gps, but there aren’t that many of them any way.  Cheers, Dave

Alice Drobna – 40 – Bend, OR – 19:22:04 – SS overall winner New Women’s SS Record!

From Faces of the Tour Divide 2015.

Quite a bit faster than 2014

well, things like fruit, vegetables, yogurt, mostly, and basically non-processed foods. How much of that is available on the route?

Stuff like that is available out there, maybe not every meal and perhaps not even every day. You will need to find supermarkets and better restaurants though, so you are going to have to do a lot more research. Do a map recce of every town. And be prepared to eat junk more frequently than you might want.
Surprisingly, both Love’s truck stops that I went into were a good source of fresh fruit.

My writings about the adventure are now complete!
Links to all the chapters at the bottom of this summary page:
http://newretrotom.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/tour-divide-2016-summary.html

Nice!
I don't know how you managed to stay so clean though! That last picture of you and Jose and Pavel makes it look like you are starting out on a northbound ITT.
Cheers, Dave

Holy blog updates Batman!

Branch Mountain Lodge ....
"A pint of water, and two others are required before I get a beer." Yes and I remember that third, empty, pint being held over your head as you said " beer please".
(Actually I forget what it was that you said, but the sight of you flourishing an empty (empty of water) pint glass over your head will remain with me for a long time.)
See you in 2018.
Cheers, Dave , as in Stowe

I had a spinal fusion surgery in February.

.......

 See you soon!!!

THAT doesn't sound like much fun, Kirsten. Hope you are still able to sit around and chat with us as we dribble through your place. BML was by far one of my most enjoyable memories from 2014.
Cheers, Dave Stowe

.  I tried calling and emailing Jeffrey Sharp, but he seems to be MIA.  Does anyone know of his warabouts or does anyone know of an outfit that can swoop in and pick me up and drive me to El Paso?

Mr. Sharp is still around. I had an email back from him last week. Maybe try emailing him again.

The Flathead descent trail seems also to be shared with the creek, so some racers seem to take some trainers for this section.

Any opinions as to the pros/cons of taking a set of trainers for this early wet section to ditch at Eureka? With my luck I'd take the spares but drop my cycling shoes in the water.

That section of the trail was in and out of water the whole way down back in 2014. A lot of it was completely rideable, some of it wasn't. I can't imagine stopping and putting on different shoes. It,s a section that most people are going to get to early in the day on day two. Plenty of time for shoes to dry out ( or dry shoes to get wet ). And you don't really want to ditch anything, do ya?

I was wondering if anyone has seen logs from riders for the number of hours in the saddle each day?  Many people provide daily mileage, but I was wondering if there is much information available on how much pedaling time they spent each day.

day   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23
hours   14   14.5   11   16   15.5   13.5   18.5   13   15.5   15   14.5   9.5   16   16   8   18   15.5   16.5   16   12   14.5   6   10.5

It's not pretty. These were my hours in 2014. That's from start to sleep with no deductions for food stops. It felt like I was on the bike a whole lot more. Numbers were guessed at post race but I think they're more or less accurate. 6 hours on day 22! Doesn't that just burn yer cookies.
Cheers, Dave

I wore contacts for TD 2014. Ordinary shortsightedness. It was less of an issue then I thought it was going to be. My contacts are single day disposables. The only piece of advice I can really offer is put your contacts in before you get out of your sleeping bag in the morning. Cold hands and contacts are awkward.
It's still a bit of a pain having to carry contacts, glasses, sunglasses, and reading glasses (for when I'm wearing contacts) more in terms of space taken up then anything else.

I would be very interested in hearing people's opinion on the tent vs tarp and/or bivy question. How bad do the bugs get?  

I'm still debating the tent vs bivy thing with a friend of mine. Both of us ended up staying in hotels a lot at the start of the 2014 TD. ( as in four nights in a row ) Over the course of TD I was in hotels almost exactly half of the time. I'll do the hotel thing again, hopefully less often, for this upcoming TD. It can be a challenge to roll in, sleep and roll out of one quickly unless you are disciplined.
You still have to carry some sort of sleep system. I'm going with a tent, a Tarptent Moment DW this time. Fast to set up and light weight even compared to bivies. I think the main advantage of a bivy over a tent would be that it's that much quicker to roll out on the ground and get to sleep in, and potentially easier to find somewhere to use it (smaller footprint). But I'm still going with a tent.
I only remember bugs once, just before Cuba, and that was during the day. Other than that I didn't have an issue with them.

Once bitten, always bit. I'm going back next year(2016). Picked up a new fork for my divide bike today. Lots of little changes for 2016. Who would have thought that such a thing as a bike race could consume so much time, energy, and cash.

Flights out of NM?

My plan is to get a shuttle back to Silver City from one of the guys on the ACA list or off this forum, box my bike at Gila Hike & Bike ... but there's no public transport (bus or train) from Silver City to either Tucson or El Paso it seems. I'd prefer to fly out from Tucson, so to get there do people organise a ride share with a shuttle or just get a shuttle to Lordsburg and take the Greyhound from there?

Jeff Sharp, who was shuttling from the border in 2014, gave a friend of mine and some others a ride into Silver City (to Gila Hike and Bike) and then took them all on to Tucson. I believe there were 4 of them in Jeff's car which made for a relatively inexpensive trip (bikes in a trailer). You might want to check with him to see if he's still able to do that.

Shuttle to/from Antelope Wells, NM
Southwest Trailhead Hand
Jeffery Sharp
575-436-7200
email: sharpjeffery1@gmail.com