The Grand Adventure

In late November 2009, I read about a man who had walked in all 50 states. The article wasn’t clear how much he had walked, but he WAS a great deal younger than I. The article gave me an idea and I immediately decided I would like to ride at least 100 miles in each state. Initially, in my exuberance, I thought I would just start out driving and riding until it dawned on me that even if I rode 100 miles a day, it would take me 50 days just to ride not counting the driving from state to state or the flying to Hawaii and Alaska. I guess I will have to take this in chunks, but I intend to do some large chunks…

With this new idea in mind, on Dec. 13, 2009, I started my initial efforts. I am heading to Cincinnati by car for an early Christmas dinner with my family. It seemed only ap-propriate that I start this effort in Texas, the biggest state…oops, poor Texas, there is the really big state to the far north! Of course, I have already ridden several thousand miles in Texas since this is where I live and where I started riding seriously at age 70.

Actually I started riding about 7 or 8 miles a day, 5 days a week, in May, 2007, when I was still only 69 years old. I did this for about a year until I realized how much I was enjoying the ride. In May, 2008, I decided to increase my mileage and by July I rode 50 miles. I remember well how tired I was by the time I reached home, but I felt ex-tremely good – psychologically…the endorphins were riding high! My longest ride that year was about 65 miles, which I did three times.

In almost all of 2009, my wife, Linda, was extremely ill and she ultimately passed away on October 23rd. (I miss her so.) Therefore, I didn’t ride as often as I did in the previous year. Nevertheless, throughout the year, Linda kept encouraging me to keep riding. She told me she hoped that some day, I would ride across the U.S.

This is how I started out...motel to motel!