Revisiting the Past, Finding the Present, Looking Towards the Future
A Bicycling Journey: Updated May 2025
The Past
When our 25 year-old selves rolled out of North Carolina in August 1982, our panniers were chock full of state-specific bike maps that had been painstakingly obtained by mail from nascent bicycle and pedestrian coordinators within state Department’s of Transportation. The maps would often come back with a personalized letter from a dedicated cartographer, hoping that the maps could be put to good use. Although Pam had already done a cross-country bike trip with a group of anti-nuke cyclists (the Solar Rollers), and therefore had some experience, venturing out as a couple who had met just three years before at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was unknown territory.
Despite familiarity with Bikecentennial, and the relatively new TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, our route would be mostly self-created. As one state went by, we would, with ceremony, use the previous state’s map as kindling for our campfire. We traversed through North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.
Crossing the Continental Divide in New Mexico, we rode on to Tuscon where, finding ourselves without money, we obtained a job as weekend houseparents at a group home for developmentally disabled kids.
Since a requirement of employment was that the “parents” were to be married, we fast-tracked our vague plans and tied the knot at the historic Tuscon City Hall dressed in our bike gear before a kindly judge and a witness we grabbed from a nearby bench.
We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Tuscon, renting a one bedroom apartment in a small apartment complex - with a pool, which we considered quite luxurious.
Once our bank account was replenished, we finished our trip by biking through the desert and mountains of Southern California, arriving in San Diego with the satisfaction of having accomplished what we had set out to do. But we also had a vague understanding that “life” was now before us, and that our bike trip would become a touchstone event not soon to be repeated.
Forty Years Later…
Over the next 40 years, jobs, two amazing kids, and a few fairly short bike trips whizzed by. We managed a three week tour in Idaho in 2016, a four week tour of Andalusia, Southern Spain in 2017, and a four week tour of Sicily in 2018. All of a sudden though, so it seemed, we were in our mid-sixties, recently retired and thinking to ourselves: we can do it again, or more precisely, we better do it while still physically capable.
Our first post-retirement long trip (starting exactly one day post-retirement, September 1, 2019), was the Adventure Cycling Association’s Pacific Coast Route, biking from Vancouver to Tijuana along California’s famous Routes 1 and 101. Looking to go further afield, we crossed the Pacific and biked both islands of New Zealand, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. Alas, COVID hit in March 2020 and we had to leave Malaysia in a hurry. The plan had been to finish in Singapore. Posts from that trip are available in the section titled “Biking New Zealand, Thailand/Malaysia - 2019/2020.”
COVID-time provided us with the opportunity to consider where to bike next. It was never a question of “if”; rather, it was when and where. Since 1982, we had been pining to each other about doing another cross-country trip, trying to revisit some of the same areas through which we had previously biked. We wanted to check-out the Tuscon City Hall (now on the National Historic Registry!), and add new areas of exploration to our growing list, in particular Baja California. While in Tuscon in 1982, we travelled for about two months by bus and train in Mexico as far south as Oaxaca and wanted to return, by bike, some day.
We considered the “age question” and how such a trip might be shaped differently due to the passage of 40 years. Would this be a trip defined by our age, as something to be overcome? (Answer: to a certain extent, yes) Would health issues intervene? (Answer: not appreciably at year five of traveling, but in the background). Would we be looked upon, by young and old alike, as two misguided boomers with no business being on the road exploring the world? (Answer: rarely).
We even toyed with the idea of posting “Senior Survival” bike touring guides on You Tube. As it turned out, except for taking a few more rest stops along the way, major adjustments have so far proved unnecessary. We have been very fortunate to have our health, good bikes, a nice tent, and good navigation apps.
We decided to rent our house out for 10 months, and use that time (August 2021. - June 2022) to tour across the US from east to west. Although our route would vary somewhat from our 1982 wedding year, parts would overlap.
Our original plan was to use the ACA’s Southern Tier Route, leaving from Florida and heading to San Diego, via Arizona. From San Diego, we would bike to the southern tip of Baja, fly back to Florida, and then bike up the Atlantic Coast Route back to our home in Maine. Due to high COVID at the time and more than a few hurricanes, we decided to ditch the Southern Tier (maybe someday) and leave instead from Washington, D.C., but left the rest of the plan in place. Posts from that trip can be found in the section titled “One Pedal at a Time.”
More trips have followed, as we try to get in as many as possible (and as varied as possible) as we age. Those trips, catalogued in the index, above, have included several to Mexico, one up the US east coast (East Coast Greenway), an exploration of the US northwest, and most recently (early-2025 as of this writing), a European tour from Amsterdam to Athens to Cyprus.
Pam is now 70; I am 68. The window has not yet closed. Check out Pam’s excellent recent post about aging and cycling, “Seventy Trips Around the Sun.” It has garnered the most views of any post on this Substack - over 600.
We are still planning for the future. On the horizon: a couple of short tours in Maine and Vermont; a longer tour along the Trans-Canada route; the UK; and, hopefully, Patagonia. Cycling the Carretera Austral in Patagonia is a dream of ours; we hope to pull it off within the next two years.
Athens, 2025
So exciting! Come back!