The bike was still in Wahoo's office.
I had exited the company that morning. A few hours later I was asking if my badge could stay active through the weekend so I could come back to Atlanta and retrieve it.
That was the immediate problem. The larger plan was to ride the bike across the United States.
I had spent the previous day working through a budget, a memo, and one last direct conversation. The exit was hard, but I did not want to turn it into a scorched-earth story. I thanked the people involved. I told them I remained a Wahooligan at heart. I meant it.
Then the logistics took over.
My messages that day moved quickly from "I am done at Wahoo" to finding a driver, moving out of the Atlanta apartment, getting the MINI to California, and figuring out who might ride with me. By early afternoon, a driver had agreed to help move me out of Atlanta. A few hours later, the rough plan was to fly down, collect the car, and drive west.
I also told a recruiter that I had exited Wahoo and was about to ride roughly 3,000 miles in 30 days. The role was with a fitness company that probably did not need that much cardio. I said maybe they would at least appreciate the commitment.
The next morning I sent what I called a "super weird one" to North Brooklyn Runners.
The pitch was simple. A friend and I were cycling across the country in 30 days. We needed somebody who could drive the support car for some or all of it. Food and hotels would be covered, there was some cash, and the route included Joshua Tree, the Ozarks, Nashville, the Smoky Mountains, and several thousand miles of whatever happened in between.
I said the car was fun. It was a MINI Cooper JCW. I also said we were nice people and probably knew a few runners who would vouch for us.
The mileage was the less funny part. We had a hard stop and needed to cover about 100 miles a day. I wrote that I was not sure I was fit enough at that moment, but I would be by the end. That was not confidence based on a training plan. It was the plan.
At the same time, I was moving back to New York and starting to bring things into the place in Rockaway. Work, home, car, bike, route, driver. None of it had a clean boundary that week.
Wahoo left the building access on through Monday. I had a route spreadsheet, a riding partner, the beginnings of a support crew, and no job to report to the following week.
First I had to get the bike out of the office.