About me

I got my first bike for my birthday when I was seven. My dad taught me to ride it (no training wheels). Growing up, I always had a bicycle that was at least useable to ride up and down our dead-end street. Some of the bikes were ones we rescued out of the old barn down the street. Later, I saved up enough babysitting money (earned at 50 cents an hour) to buy a 3-speed bike from Sears.

When I finished college in the 1970s, the ten-speed bike craze was in full swing. I bought a Raleigh Gran Prix at the Bicycle Exchange in Cambridge. I later bought a Jeunet “racing” bike from them, which was built with all French components – Simplex, Mavic, Mafac, TA, etc. I used that bike as my first “touring” bike, by adding a rear rack and strapping a backpack to it. I did overnight tours from my home in Tacoma Park, Maryland, to the hostel at Sandy Hook, Maryland, just across the Potomac from Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. It was a ride of about 50 miles through farmland and along the river  on the C&O Canal towpath.

I had friends in Maryland and Washington, D.C., who did some of these rides with me. I joined BikeCentennial in 1976, but I could not scrape up $750 to go on the cross-country ride (Virginia to Oregon) that summer.

When I moved to Seattle in 1979, the Jeunet came with me, and it went on tours in Canada, Oregon,Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona and of course Washington. Eventually, I bought a Cannondale touring bike, which went on a tour from Kalispell, Montana, to Jackson, Wyoming. It was replaced by a Terry road bike, which did not do loaded touring, but did do supported tours and rides in Oregon and Washington.

Oregon 2004

Arizona 1986

Canadian Rockies 1985

In 2013, I bought the Rodriguez Ultimate Touring Bike, made here in Seattle at R&E Cycles. I took it on the Columbia Gorge Explorer tour with the Portland and Vancouver (Wash.) bike clubs over Memorial Day weekend, and returned on that tour in 2014-16. It is a wonderful four-day ride, on the Washington side of the gorge for the first two days, crossing the river on the Hwy 97 bridge at Biggs, and then two days of riding on the Oregon side. There are usually about 40 riders, some sun, some rain, and always some serious headwinds on the Oregon side as we head west. The bike did really well carrying my camping gear and everything else I needed.

Last year I went on the Great Parks North tour (with Adventure Cycling) from Missoula to Jasper, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies. It was fun to travel with a group of like-minded bikers on a self-contained camping trip.

Banff National Park, Alberta

Since 1976, I have wanted to ride across the country. Now that I don’t have to go to work, and my daughter is self-supporting (and living half-way around the world), I can do it. I decided to ride solo because that gives me maximum flexibility to set my course and destination each day. I am using the maps from Adventure Cycling because that saves me the trouble of finding roads suitable for cycling and the services along the way – it’s all shown on the maps.

So — 2017 is the year! I’m excited about this adventure!