As the US shivers through the polar vortex, let's talk about prep for next week's cross Florida bike tour! Details on the route, the gear, the flying, the meetup in Orlando and much more. Warm up to the first Pedalshift tour of 2019! Housekeeping XFL Tour: I'll be rolling my own route across central Florida from Tampa on the gulf coast to Cocoa Beach on the east. Preview episode drops in two weeks! Podcast sponsor slots are available starting in the new year... check out pedalshift.net/sponsor for more info. Meetups & Live Shows XFL Orlando meetup Saturday 2/9, time TBA - pedalshift.net/orlando. Pedalshift LIVE Friday February 22 at 9pm ET! It will be the wrap up show for the XFL tour... takeways and a whole lot more. We'll do another AMA session too, so send me your bike touring or non-bike touring questions to [email protected] or come and ask in the chat box the night of.   Five Stars followup Andy from Orange still listens!   Hi Tim, thanks for the shoutout in the latest episode, I am indeed still listening. Here are som pics from a recent tour of the New South Wales mid coast in Australia. Keep up the good work. Andrew Andyfromorange   Great American Rail-Trail 4000 miles car free? The Great American Rail Trail is a project that would link up existing trails into a network that stretches from DC to Seattle. Super behind this... imagine riding across country on a traffic-free route??   https://www.railstotrails.org/great-american-rail-trail/   This is such a big deal, we're skipping a best-of this month and I'm scheduled to have an interview with Kevin Mills, the Senior VP of Policy at RTC. That will drop next week while I'm on tour!   The Journal: Preparing the Cross-Florida Bike Tour Florida has the “bones” to be a superior bike touring state and I’m taking advantage of as many of them as I can.   Drivers on secondary roads are reportedly used to bikes. The state has a good site remarking traffic volumes and my route adjustments track either roads with bike infrastructure or low traffic roads that are long and straight where there aren’t shoulders to speak of.   Shout to Greg from MI (yes one of the “Michigan guys” I met on the Katy in 18) for his thoughts on things and the DOT map!   https://tdaappsprod.dot.state.fl.us/fto/ gives you daily traffic usage for Florida roads to help with planning.   Robert in Titusville asks... Why did I not choose the Coast to Coast trail?  Simple answer is once I decided not to make this a camping trip, the best route kept me closer to larger towns in order to get better lodging options. The C2C route is excellent, but it swings well north of Tampa and routes through a lot of rural Florida before winding its way to Orlando. My best guess is if I do another winter tour in FL, this will be my route, but with camping.  Sidebar... I'm unreasonably weirded out by FL wildlife, even though I've camped in South FL before and there was no issue.     Tampa to Lakeland: Day 1 Lyft from airport Cypress Point Park to Lakeland, FL 40 miles   Storyline: Tampa is a bit of a maze of bike lanes and sidewalks, but getting out is ok.    Lakeland to Kissimmee: Day 2 52 miles   Storyline: excellent infrastructure of lanes and trail, then a very rural road (no shoulder) that works well until toward the very end. Transit FF is there to bypass a truly shitty stretch, but a grass walk of less than a mile gets to a sidewalk if the train timing is off.   Highlight: riding a portion of the Van Fleet trail (paved 29 miles - I'm riding about 6)   Google maps is ok but also have a more refined RWGPS for the last 6 or so miles. For GMaps use 1st option through Polk City - lanes and bike trails! Water and food up in Polk City... not much else for 20+ miles and really til Kissimmee In Poinciana, option to take Sunrail to Kissimmee if timing is...