Why did you go coast-to-coast? Research for a book.

[rwbikeusa]

Hi--
I'm writing a book about my Summer 2022 trek from San Diego, CA and Manasquan, NJ.  I'm converting the blog I created for the ride (www.rwbikeusa.com) into a chronicle of my journey and a sort of memoir.  One of the first topics I've covered is why I chose to cycle cross-country (a retirement "gift" to myself, looking for a slower way to see the country, looking for a better vantage point to see the country, establish new connections, deep introspection), but I'm also hoping to include a sampling of what motivated others to go coast to coast to round out my explanation on why people pursue such a monumental adventure.

I'd love to get your thoughts and incorporate them into this part of my book.  I'm only identifying people by their first names and can go completely anonymous if preferred.  Here's what would be so incredibly useful to know about your cycling trek:
-Start and Finish Points
-When you completed your trip
-Group or solo
-Most important:  What were your motivations for wanting to make this trip

Responses in this forum would be great, although I'm happy to communicate via email as well (rwussler@gmail.com)

Thanks for any input you might be willing to provide.

Randy

[BikeliciousBabe]

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.

[jamawani]

I spoke with Betty Ford after my umpteenth big tour and asked her if I needed help.
She said that she could help alcoholics and drug addicts, but touring addicts were hopeless.

1987 - Astoria, OR to Cape Hatteras, NC
!988 - Cape Lookout, NC to Cape Lookout, OR
!989 - Cape Lookout, NC to Cape Flattery, WA

A few semi-continentinals.

1990s - Multiple Western North America tours
California coast via Grand Canyon to N. New Mexico
Left turn up the American and Canadian Rockies
Sometimes a left turn out to Prince Rupert and the AMH Ferry
Other times the AlCan Highway
Once a detour all the way up to Wrigley, NWT on the Mackenzie River
Every paved mile in the Yukon and lots of unpaved miles.
Always ending up in Alaska.

Another X-USA in 2016 for my 60th
Westport, WA to Sandy Hook, NJ

And random others.

Question?
Is starting at Half Moon Bay on the Pacific
and ending at Yakutat on the Gulf of Alaska
considered "coast-to-coast"?

Pic - Stone Cabin Valley, Nevada on US 6
One of the reasons I tour ...

[Westinghouse]

I answer it saying this. The impulses set forth in my life that led me to that particular course of action came very early in life. The story is real. I think it is too deep a subject to discuss on a forum such as this one and others. It is a deep personal issue with me. The original impulse came from where, I have no way of knowing. I remember some events. The boy my age who taught me that sometimes limitations are only in your mind. He taught me how to ride a bicycle. His name was Johnny Mann. That was in Stuart Florida in the 1950s. That was the first one I could remember.

Pedaling a bicycle, to me, at times seemed almost like a surreal fantasy.  It was wonderful until I started getting punctured tires. Getting patch kids and pumps and a new tubes was a big problem. The cycling dropped off. When I was very young, maybe eight or nine possibly, our Father drove the family to Mexico for the summer. We were there a while and returned it to Florida over the road. You've been there. Motels, gas stations, restaurants. After returning to Florida, for some odd reason, I had this compelling drive to ride a bicycle back to the west. The east was bad news. Government were as crooked as a corkscrew. The judge or the sheriff might have done something about it if you could catch them sober, which some of them often were not. I sensed this place, Stuart Florida, at a very early age.

Right across the street from our house, just off the shore of the St Lucie River, they found a woman drowned and dead. She was the mother of four children. I'm not sure they found her in that particular location. I did see the body there in that location. I was maybe 5 or 6 or 7. The tide might possibly have carried her farther down the river. I can say only from what I saw. There was underhanded treachery no doubt whatsoever. I thought it would be really cool even at a very early age to ride a bicycle back toward the west and to Texas. I really I thought Texas was great. Of course you have to consider those days, 1956-57-58, I had the cognitive development of a child 8 years old. Any compulsion or action in your life is the culmination of what they call multiple causation. There is no one simple explanation for why people behave the way they do.

The first transcontinental was from Key West, FL to San Diego, CA. I wanted to do it but was not motivated to do it alone.
Then, a woman I had met while bicycling through the U.K. in the summer of 1984 agreed to come here and do the journey with me. She flew here from England. We did the trip in 66 days in the winter of 1985-85. It was about 3600 miles.

[DanE]

Jamawani - I am curious about your starting location of Cape Lookout, NC as it is on a barrier island with no road access. Did you take one of the passenger ferries over and actually start from there or did you start from some place rideable like Harker's Island. Just curious when I saw that location.

I have known several NC residents start their trips from either Cape Hatteras or Manteo because those locations are often referenced as being the eastern side of North Carolina. I have never heard of anyone starting from Cape Lookout.

[jamawani]

Cape Lookout is wonderful.
You can camp right under the lighthouse.
And if you start on a weeknight, you are likely to be alone.
Pretty amazing.

You have to take the concession ferry or hire a boat.
They do not look kindly upon hiring.

PS - The mosquitoes and biting flies are brutal.

Pics - Cape Lookout Lighthouse & Capt. Luke on the Hatiana; almost 40 years ago, but just yesterday

[zerodish]

I did Oregon to Indiana 2226 miles in 22 days to visit my sister and sign some legal documents. Then did Indiana to Ohio and down to Georgia. About 3000 miles. I think coast to coast is a stunt. I generally have a destination in mind when I tour. 

[jamawani]

Why would you think that going coast to coast is a stunt?
Why the need to diss someone else's route?

[John Nelson]

I think coast to coast is a stunt. I generally have a destination in mind when I tour.

I always have a destination in mind when I tour, a destination like an ocean or an international border. That's why I've gone coast to coast so many times. I guess I just like stunts.

[BikeliciousBabe]

think coast to coast is a stunt. I generally have a destination in mind when I tour.

The coast is a destination.  And writing "generally" suggests not always.  So are you saying that your tours with no destination in mind and "stunts"?

Please explain.

[BikeliciousBabe]

I went coast-to-coast in 2017, starting from Astoria, Oregon and finishing up in Yorktown, Virginia. It took me just under 11 weeks, riding mostly solo but meeting up with a handful of other riders along the TransAm.

My motivation was a mix of curiosity and closure, I guess. I’d spent years working long hours behind a desk, always promising myself “one day.” When my father passed away unexpectedly, it hit me that “one day” isn’t guaranteed. The ride became a way to process that loss, to reset my perspective, and to see the country at a human pace.

best geometry dash game

What surprised me most was how the journey ended up being less about distance and more about connection—small towns, strangers, kindness, and the quiet moments in between. The coast just gave the trip a natural bookend. The real story was everything between the oceans.

Nicely put.

I felt the same way about finishing my nearly 4-month journey at the beach in NJ, which I did as part of the second largest MS 150 ride in the country.  It was all that I had experienced along the way that was (and remains) the most memorable.

Finally, to anyone out there that is thinking "There's always next year", there easily might not be.  While I got my cross country trip in back in '99, I still tour and am regularly coming up with ideas fro trip.  Some of the trips I have sketched out will now never become realities due to deficits left behind after I was found on my kitchen floor hours from death after mysteriously developing sepsis. 

[jamawani]

Sorry to hear, BB. Wishing you the best.
Yes, some of the parts are rusty and others fell off at the RR crossing.
I've come back from Stage IV, but can't do what I used to.
(Also, not convinced I was completely Stage IV, but that's what they said.)