One thing about riding partners. Once you get rolling a while, you might come to value the sense of personal freedom you feel. It is no longer the regimented, narrowly controlled grip of the office or the class room. Will you really feel good stopping when and where somebody else says, and eating when they say, and will you compromise your personal preferences in deference to another? A partner could be the best thing. He could be a pain in the neck all the way. I had partners three times, and each time was a bust.
There was this fellow in my home town of Stuart. I will call him Jack, and he does have others he uses. We decided to cycle from Stuart to Key West and return, about 520 miles. He had never toured anywhere by bicycle, and there I was seasoned and knowledgeable. One problem was he would not accept the voice of experience. What I told him to leave behind, he took. What I advised him to bring, he left behind. The first night out there was heavy rain and a cold front. He did not bring cold weather gear. I had to let him use some of mine, but I had the absolute minimum. We were both miserable and cold. I don't know what he had in his panniers, but it was very hard to lift the back of the bike off the ground. I told him to stop jumping curbs. He ignored it. It broke the steel rack. Then we had to go get a new rack. We had to look for a free camp site in the woods. I was leading us to a site in a nature preserve. He said we should follow a narrow foot path into the woods. I was opposed to that idea. Foot paths lead to homeless camps, alcoholics, druggies and crazies, not always but in south Florida usually. However, I did not want to refute his judgement, and went along. Sure enough, this oversized, homeless, mentally ill man came charging through the bushes at us with a knife threatening to kill us. He simmered down after a while. After that I took us around to the place where I had originally intended. It was a restful night. Other times he cycled so slowly I could completely lose sight of him in ten minutes. It was a waiting game for me and the civilian slug crawl for him. He refused to eat in a restaurant because he might have to tip the waitress. What a chiseling skin flint. I mean, I have lived in some kind of poverty most of my life, and have the habit of frugality. But compared to him, I am the last of the big spenders. We were on the road and came up to a gas station convenience store in the keys. We went inside. They had egg salad sandwiches for $4.75. The cashier told him the same sandwiches were $3.50 three miles back down the road at a grocery store. He insisted on back tracking to save $1.25. I told him I would wait there while he went back for a sandwich. After he was gone I took off south to Key West. I rode around a while in the town. Then I cycled the 257 miles back to Stuart in heavy traffic in three days. He showed up 9 days later. He took the bus back from Key West. When he got off the bus in Fort Pierce, 18 miles from Stuart, he called his friend for a ride. His friend told him ride his bike. One day when we were camped, I took off to a Barnes and Noble book store. When I returned I got the bad news. He was involved in an altercation with a group of kids. They had seen him in the woods and fired some paint balls at him. He picked up something and chased after them. One of the boys dropped his cell phone. Jack picked it up and called 911 amidst a hail of paint balls. The police arrived. Jack complained. The cop told him he chased them with a shovel or something so he could be arrested for threatening with a weapon. It ended. All this happened while I was gone. About an hour after I got back a plain clothes detective walked into out camp site. He told Jack he had one hour to vacate the area or he would be arrested. He did not say anything to me. We left.
Those were some of the problems he caused. There were others. In all my world wide bicycling tours, 35,000 miles through 19 countries, I did not ever experience any problems like that, not even once.
Take the mapped ACA route and you will surely meet other cyclists doing what you are doing. If you commit to another you might get stuck. I never desired having a cycling companion unless it was a woman. And I have done quite extensive cycling with a female companion.
