Cost to do teh TDR

To give you an idea, in 29 days, I went through 3 tires, 3 chains, 4 brake pads, broke a pedal and had my shifter cables changed out once (and don't forget cost of work itself). Before I can ride the bike again, I have to get a wheel replaced, get new pedals and replace the drivetrain. Probably another new tire. Cost of the bike was around 3g's once everything is said and done. Little things add up. Preemptive bike selection could help out with these costs. If you have hella fancy components known less for their durability than their lightness, they're simply going to need to be replaced more often. If the fancy components are also lighter and you like that, just have knowledge that they may wear out and that's the penalty you've given yourself. I can't think of anyone who had problems with frames breaking except Aidan's and there were a ton of very fancy full carbon rigs in Banff, so those may have proved their worth. Aidan's bike was repairable on the route, lucky he was near a titanium frame shop!

The bike suffers, especially if you go through bad weather, where you'd otherwise just stay home and hang out. Constant dust, rain, mud and not as many opportunities as you'd like to give you bike a nice wash/lube just multiplies these problems. You can clean all the mud you want off the thing, lube it up all nice and then in 10 minutes have it covered up again in mud and grit. There's nothing you can do, unless you never ride in wet conditions.

Costs can be lowered by not eating out as much and instead just buying food at grocery stores and not moteling it. Sometimes there's limited choices on those, as well. Many places, the only resupply is a lodge. Going to a lodge, like the Skyline lodge was, to be honest, a total treat - the food is super good, the proprietors are totally into the race, it's a nice rest before another long section - might as well enjoy those times when you can!

On some stretches, I made $80 of food go for 3 days from the grocery story - sometimes much, much less if all I had was basically peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (by necessity - I could feel myself go into starvation mode), but dropping $30 for a super meal of 2 burger meals and a big plate of ice cream was totally not out of the question. Some of the towns you go through live on Tourism, so prices can be ridiculous unless you're eating out of the gas station (cough Banff...). Motels are going to be the biggest money sucker, unless you start sharing the room with multiples of people. Some find (I do!) bivvying it most of the time keeps you in the mode of just going forever. Getting dirty only needs to be done once and then you're dirty - it's hard to get dirtier.

The flight into Banff was ~$200 from Denver (bike flew for free via Frontier Airlines!), the Shuttle to Banff from Calgary was around... $60? The shuttle out of Silver City was ~$55 to Las Cruces and the ghetto bus back to Denver was another $55.