321: Bicycle Adventuring on the East Coast Greenway

Despite living on the east coast, we spend a whole heck of a lot of attention on bicycle adventures on the west coast, right? Well, it's time we changed that! On this episode, we chat with Regina Yan about the East Coast Greenway, her epic trip and how she and the East Coast Greenway Alliance is making this route a contender for all of our future cycling adventures! Bicycle Adventuring on the East Coast Greenway Regina Yan is a UX designer and artist based in Washington DC. She grew up in Kansas and was a very “indoorsy” child, but fell in love with the outdoors after going to school in New Hampshire. When the pandemic hit, she got into cycling and immediately fell loved the way biking expanded her world. So much so, in the fall of 2021, kind of on a whim decided to try biking the East Coast Greenway from ME to Key West, FL  completing the 3,000 miles trip in an intensely compact 29 days, experiencing all the ups and downs of a bike touring lifestyle. What made you to choose the ECG for your trip over another route? You described it as response to a "quarter life crisis" - did the ride help that or prompt more introspection on where you’re at in life? Your film did a great job of sharing the lows as much as the highs… sometimes when I look back on lows of my tours, I look back on them more as the "type 2 fun" we all talk about in the bike travel community. How do you assess your lows now - any one stand out? With such an aggressive schedule, the mechanicals you had were extra disruptive but you still persevered! Did you have any takeaways from them for future tours? One small part of your film that stuck with me was learning how to eat on tour, watching you pull what looked like frosted shredded wheat from a baggy… was that one of the solutions for you? What did you learn as you rode about all of this? What bike did you ride and outside of the mechanicals did you like how it performed? Considering any changes to gearing or anything like that? Do you have another long distance trip in mind? You’re now a board trustee for the ECG Alliance, which lets me put on my nonprofit lawyer hat for once on this pod… what’s your experience been like serving in that role and what’s the organization aiming at in the short and long term to support the Greenway?