A Recap

As time passes for all of us, it will be easy to forget what the trip really was. It may become just “a coast-to-coast bike ride,” rather than the reality of pedaling ourselves on our bicycles across every foot of this expansive continent. So here’s a recap, state by state.

California
Across San Francisco in a rare May rain, from breakers to bay

Up, up, and up the very step Oakland hills and through East Bay hills and valleys – an early test of legs

Across the Central Valley and up into the Sierra foothills

Up, up, and up the Sierra Nevada, cresting over 8,000 feet three times, then plunging for miles down into

Nevada
Through ranch and farm country, Carson City and Fallon, then into the desert and over more than a dozen mountain ranges, all with long and broad valleys between, often lush with grasses and wildflowers, others with sagebrush

Utah
A 97-mile day of desert, then ag and pasture and a mountain range

Across metropolitan Salt Lake City

Wind and hail

More mountain ranges, desperately cold and wet in the rain and snow

Beautiful ag land along a large lake, and across a corner of

Idaho
More rich farm and ranch land, up and over a mountain range and into

Wyoming
Ag land, then the gorgeous Snake River canyon (where we rendezvoused with Ralph Hughes and his arents) and into Jackson Hole

Past the awe-inspiring Grand Tetons

Yellowstone, with rain, hail, snow, ice, elk, bison, climbs, the Continental Divide, spectacular mountains and valleys. The ride over Dunraven pass and through the Lamar Valley was one of my favorite days of the trip.

Montana
The Beartooth Highway up to almost 11,000 feet, then plunging down to Red Lodge – another tough and spectacular day

A near miss (2 miles) by a tornado while we holed up in our campground in Billings

Several days of the Great Plains, never flat, and at first interspersed with ranges of foothills

North Dakota
Six more days of the Great Plains, with winds every day up to 30 mph – never at our back – some of our toughest prolonged riding of the trip

Far more lakes and ponds than I would have dreamed, tucked into every large and small valley in the very green rolling plains

Minnesota
One day of the Great Plains, then into the North Woods for three days, with numerous lakes, evoking lots of childhood memories of Michigan and Wisconsin

Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi

Wisconsin
More days of woods and lakes, including a layover day with my brother at Teal Lake, a favorite childhood haunt

Michigan
More days of woods, some farm land, with Lake Michigan making increasingly frequent and prolonged appearances

A layover day in St. Ignace, my boyhood home, including a newspaper interview

Crossing the high International Bridge

Ontario
Have I mentioned woods and lakes, with some ag land? Eight more rolling days of it, including Algonquin Provincial Park

Highway 17 was hands down the least safe road for bicycling we encountered in over 4,000 miles of riding – terribly narrow shoulders and lots of big trucks

Two days in the rich Ottawa and St. Lawrence Valleys – prosperous farms and many pretty small towns

Quebec
Suburban Montreal, then farmland and rolling woods and lakes for two more days

Working on my French

Vermont
A whole ten minutes of it, through Canaan and across the Connecticut River and into

New Hampshire
The Appalachians got serious, with several steep and fairly prolonged climbs for a couple of days, including over Dixville Notch

Joined by my other brother and his family for our last two days

Maine
Rolling woods, farms, and small towns, leading to Portland and the beautiful Atlantic

A wonderful reception at the finish, followed by lobster on the wharf

There is far more that I could say about each state, but these are the main images that will stay with me. Along the way we learned that 70-mile days are pretty routine, 80+ mile days can be strung together, riding in the rain can be OK as long as it’s warm, and that friendships can be cemented and community formed and celebrated while we’re living for a purpose.

What’s next? Hard to say. Kathy and I will be staying in Michigan for a week , then returning to California for perhaps a month before moving to Michigan. Rich and Cindy and Ginger stopped here in Paw Paw last night and now are driving their new truck back to California, via some family visiting in Nebraska. For now, however, this should be the final chapter of this blog. Thanks for reading!

Reflections, Part 2

Here are some more things I’m thinking about, two days after finishing.

I didn’t have a specific cause that I was raising funds for, which left me feeling a bit self-indulgent – like I was doing the ride just for me. So I sort of adopted the Ride Against Hunger that Rich was doing, and that helped. So please, if you haven’t already, donate to the food banks that Rich is supporting, or to a food bank in your local area, and let Rich know at richowlman@gmail.com.

I do know that even if it was self-indulgent, it was definitely a journey of self-discovery, and that’s good.

Whether it was self-indulgence, self-discovery, or raising money for a cause, I am very aware that we were able to do this ride because we live a life of privilege. How else could we have afforded to take ten weeks to do this? It’s one more way that our lives are so different from the lives of the people who desperately need the food banks that Rich is supporting.

I do know that our ride was very inspiring to a lot of people, and that’s good. Wherever we went, people would learn that two guys in their mid-60s were doing this, and they would get a light in their eyes and see possibilities.

Tomorrow (or within the next day or so, depending on connectivity), some final thoughts.

Reflections, Part 1

Yesterday in Portland, Maine, Rich Fowler and I completed our coast-to-coast bike trip. It was the moment that had been our goal since we started in San Francisco on May 27. The finish was a wonderful moment of joy and triumph, and a great celebration of friendship and family, but it did not come without mixed feelings. At one point in the immediate aftermath Rich said to me, “Hey buddy, we don’t have to ride tomorrow.” I said, “That’s true, but it’s also true that we don’t get to ride tomorrow.”

I am a counter. Like “The Count” on Sesame Street, I love to count things. It is just something I do, pretty much automatically. So every day I would find myself counting down the miles – “22 miles down, 48 to go,” etc. I often had to distract myself to keep from doing it every mile. I did the same thing with the days – “40 days down, 18 to go.” In this way I always had some focus on the end of the ride, each day and the whole thing. Each day was tiring, of course, but seldom exhausting. The discomfort on my rear end did progress throughout each day, but was certainly within manageable limits, especially with the breaks we took every ten miles. So to a certain extent the daily countdowns prevented me from being “in the moment,” really appreciating what I was doing right then.

So what was I doing “right then?” I was doing several things, all of which added up to a wonderful whole. I was pedaling my marvelous machine, so efficient and so well-fitted to my body, propelling it up and down hills and easily over the flat areas. I was immersed in nature, ranging from dense forests to craggy mountains to lakes and rivers to pasture to cropland, always with birdsong and occasionally with deer, elk, and other animals. I was riding with Rich, almost always trading the lead every mile, often wordlessly. Sometimes not a word was said for miles; at other times we engaged in serious conversation or banter, always getting to know each other better and deepening our friendship. We were constant companions, relying on each other’s help and encouragement, depending on the other’s presence. Finally, we were in the midst of an epic journey, moving daily under our own power across this great continent.

All of those things are now finished, and I will miss them. As much as we have been successful in reaching our goal, it’s very true that we don’t get to do those things anymore.

More reflections to come in future days.