A lot of people ask me how I got started biking. Like most people, I started when I was old enough to want to go somewhere, but too young to have a driver’s license. A bicycle meant freedom. You didn’t need a driver’s license, gasoline, or (usually) permission. Back then, you didn’t need a helmet or bicycling shorts. Just climb on, hammer out a few miles, and you’re at your best friend’s house. 

I didn’t really consider taking a transcontinental trip until the very end of my junior year of college. I was with Greg, a classmate, when he casually mentioned, “Hey... when we graduate, we should take a bike trip across the country.” 

There’s a great German word, “schnapsidee,” which means “an impractical idea which seems brilliant when one is drunk.” 

Greg, who wasn’t drunk at the time, was an avid cyclist. He came from a tony area in Dallas and owned an expensive bicycle, the brand name of which he casually dropped like a person who once met Mick Jagger at a party while standing at a urinal in the bathroom at the same time and wanted you to know they were now on intimate terms. He was quite a fast biker, or so I heard, from him, and he even shaved his legs. This, because of drag. Not in preparation to dress in drag, but to get rid of all the drag created from the wind turbulence of hairy legs. This is a thing fast bicyclists do. But that just wasn’t enough. He wanted to go even faster, so he removed the caps from his inner tube stems to decrease wind resistance. And sanded the front of his head tube so it wouldn’t be so slick. Somehow, that decreases drag as well. 

I planned on going to grad school, and hadn’t yet figured out how to pay for it, but who could resist the lure of a bicycle ride across the country. Freedom! This seemed like an opportune time for the Bad Idea Bears to toss their bad idea hat into the ring. So I said, “Yeah! That sounds like a great idea!”   

The first thing I needed was a bicycle. My old ten speed was on its last legs, and certainly wouldn’t make it that far. Unfortunately, I was pretty broke by my senior year. I planned on going to grad school but, like I said, I’d figure something out when it rolled around. Priorities, you know.

So, I worked the summer before my senior year digging ditches for a pool company.  Literally.  With a shovel. Well, not the entire hole for the pool, but I’d go in afterwards with a sharpshooter (that’s a type of shovel for those of you who aren’t Shovel Experts like me) and dig the surrounding trenches for pipes. 

You should know that I was living in the Houston area at the time where it’s 100 degrees all summer, with 99.9% humidity. By the end of the day I was so tired that I was unable to stop the drool from sliding out the corner of my mouth, or would have been unable if not for the fact that I was so dehydrated that I was unable to drool. Same for the blisters. Even with gloves, I went straight from skin to no skin, skipping the water-filled blister part of it. But my dream sustained me, and I saved those pennies for my bicycle trip.

In the Fall of my senior year, I decided on a frame and components, and Greg was kind enough to purchase it for me, mentioning it was the best he could buy “for the amount of money I gave him.” It seemed an intimation that if only I had a million dollars he could’ve purchased a bicycle equivalent to his own. However, he more than made up for the comment by building it for me, which really was a very kind thing to do.

Studying got in the way of my preparation, especially riding, but I managed to cobble together some of the basics… pannier bags, a borrowed handlebar bag, a sleeping bag, a cheap foam sleeping pad, my old 3-person pup tent, and some tools. 

I also put up a map of the United States on my living room wall in my tiny apartment and stared at it several times a day, fantasizing about traveling, and marveling at the names of such exotic towns as Sleepy Eye, Endeavor, Sparta, Bath, Lost Cabin, Truth or Consequences, Bucksnort, Due West, Sleepy Hollow, Social Circle, and dozens more. As I looked at the towns I understood that each one was a unique collection of people with their own intertwining relationships and their own problems, each of which was the same and different as every other town’s.  And I could barely wait to go exploring.

At the beginning of my final semester, Greg sheepishly let me know he wasn’t going. I’d had my suspicions for a long time since he tended to be one of those people we refer to in the South as “all hat and no cattle.” Still, my mind was made up. 

I WAS going. 

Jerry Nelson, a tall, blonde business major, learned I was going and decided he’d like to go with me. Scott Haney, a tanned, dark-eyed guy from California who regularly made women swoon with his boyish good looks and charm, decided about two weeks prior to my departure date that he’d also like to make the trip. Scott had been riding a bicycle all of his life, so when he took his front derailleur off to clean it and put it back on the down tube instead of the seat tube I felt quite smug about what an impressive cyclist I was...  at least until we started riding together. I was never able to keep up with him. He literally, not figuratively, rode circles around Jerry and me. I lamely tossed out the excuse that I was carrying the tent for all three of us (plus I had all that hair on my legs and still had the caps on my tire stems) but to be honest, he could ride like the wind.