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« on: November 02, 2025, 10:20:32 am »
Seattle, WA to Bar Harbor, ME in 1999. Started the fourth week of May. Finished 93 days later. It was ACA's group, unsupported Northern Tier tour. Started with 12 people and the leader. Two people dropped out along the way. After resting a few days on Bar Harbor, I rode home solo to Philadelphia and then on to Ocean City, NJ as part of the MS 150 City-to-Shore, which was event I had done more than 15 years in a row. Even though that event was supported and I had housing in Ocean City, I still carried my own gear.
Why? I was in my mid-30s. I knew for well over a year that I was going to be downsized in the wake of a corporate acquisition. I had done a couple of supported tours across PA. I had also ridden from home to the NJ coast several times. I thought it would now be great to ride across the country. I looked at supported trips, but they were more high-mileage (90-ish/day) than I was interested in. I didn't want to just ride, eat, sleep, and repeat. I wanted to have time to really experience the places I was going to ride through, especially since, other than a one-week visit with a friend in Seattle years before, I had never spent any time west of the Mississippi. I also imagined that repeated long days might result in me getting a SAG ride at least once, and I was determined to ride every mile. Ended up finding about ACA and decided on the Northern Tier because it went west to east, which meant I would ride to my doorstep.
I finally got my wish was was downsized at the end of April, 1999. Because of some hiccups, I didn't get my racks and panniers from Robert Beckman until May 1st. The first day of the tour marked the only the second time I had ridden a fully-loaded bike. (I was a devout roadie up until then, and thought carrying a bunch of stuff on a bike was an excuse to go slow.) The first night of the tour marked the first night I had ever really camped. As a teenager, I was a camp counselor for a couple of summers. We would occasionally have the kids drag their mattresses down to the model campsite and have a sleep out, but I didn't consider that camping.
In the end, the journey was about 6,000 miles, including miles spent exploring cities and towns and miles logged during side trips. I carried a lot of film camera equipment, including two cameras, and shot nearly 100 rolls of film, which I periodically mailed home then developed myself after the trip. (Not as much as it might sound because the film for the medium camera produced only 15 shots/roll.)
I had this fantasy that, during the trip, I would be resting at the top of a mountain climb when a gust of wind would hit me and I would realize what I REALLY wanted to do with the rest of my life. That never happened, but I did fall in love with touring. I had only planned to take the summer of '99 off. But in mid-March of 2000, I flew to Andalucia, Spain and spent nearly two months touring the territory solo. Returned home and the end of April, rested for a few weeks, then went back out to Seattle and rode to Cortez, CO (using ACA routes) to visit some friends who would be interning at Mesa Verde N.P.
When that summer ended, I decided I had better look for a steady job. After doing some temp work for a while, I just happened to get my old job back in May of 2001. I walked back in the door after having taken exactly two years off, and I stayed there until April 1, 2024, when I retired.
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