Early on, we planned to start from Los Angeles and head east to either Tianjin, China, or Vladivostok, Russia. Both were port towns where we could ship our bikes back home. Then Nick came up with the brilliant idea of flipping the script and going from east to west, hence the name "Racing the Sun."

This made sense on several levels. First and foremost, we would tackle the most challenging part of the trip, Mongolia, early while we were fresh and the bikes were in pristine condition. Both we and our bikes would take a beating, and in retrospect, we couldn't imagine tackling Mongolia after riding across the rest of the planet.

Secondly, shipping our bikes from Los Angeles to China would be much easier with a local shipper. Our struggles with Chinese customs and regulations emphasize the wisdom of this decision. We would have been exhausted (as we were at the end of the trip) dealing with the bureaucracy to get our bikes home. Not ideal.  

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Third and more subtly but no less important, we would always be heading home. This became crucial during the trip when we faced homesickness, injuries, or plain exhaustion. Knowing we were heading in the right direction made it harder to quit (though we never fully considered it). It gave us the motivation to push through, with the constant reminder that we were getting closer to home. Even when we got lost, heading west towards the sun always meant we were moving in the right direction.