The Very Beginning of the Story.

I remember as a kid, while I lay in bed at night waiting for the sweet slumber that would carry through until morning, I used to fantasize.  I would call it daydreaming, except that it occurred at night.  One of the most frequently recurring fantasies that I would have was to take long trips on my bicycle.  This appealed to me because it was an adventure that I was able to imagine could actually happen, even at the age of 10 or 12.  I could load up a bicycle and just go.  I wouldn't need a car or drivers license, just a bike.  I already had a sleeping bag because when I was a kid my family went on a lot of camping trips.  I mean a lot.  So I also already had a lot of the know-how that would be required.  What I did not have was the drive and resources to make it happen.  Maybe what I really didn't have was the courage to ask my parents if I could actually go and do it.  Whatever the case, I never did take that long trip, at least not as a 12 year old kid, but the idea was planted.

When I was about 18, I did do several short weekend trips around San Diego County, sometimes alone, and sometimes with a friend or two.  Then came the eventful summer of 1979.  I was in college and 21 years old.  Sometime in late April or early May, I realized that I needed to get a summer job, and I also decided that I didn't want to spend the summer in Escondido, my hometown.  There is a story behind that as well, but you will have to ask me to tell you the details in person.  The previous summer of 1978, I had been on an adventure with my friend Donald, and one of our stops was Jackson Wyoming.  I noticed that there was a help-wanted sign in the window of what seemed like every business in town, so when I decided to seek summer employment out of town, Jackson was a logical choice.  I talked with my younger brother Greg and my good friend Jam Eddy about going to Jackson with me and they were both game, so the cast of characters was set.  The next decision to be made was how to get there, and that's when the fantasy of an extended bike tour finally became a reality for the first time.

To hit on the major points of that summer tour/adventure, I will say that we needed complete outfitting with cycling specific gear.  Jam Eddy and I were avid backpackers at the time, so we already had virtually all of the camping equipment, but my brother and I both needed bikes, and we all needed panniers, shoes and the like.  After scrambling to earn a little money here and there, which included one very long day of labor where we all went to an egg ranch with about 8 or 10 other kids (all younger than us, as I recall) loading 10,000 chickens onto a diesel truck, we were finally ready to depart in late June.  We got some very good advice from the owner of the shop where I bought my bike and panniers, but he left out one key piece of information - don't ride north up the coast!  Maybe he didn't really know, or maybe he never thought to tell us, or maybe we never told him our intended route, whatever the case, we set out riding north up the Pacific Coast Highway from Escondido to the Bay Area.  You may be wondering why you shouldn't ride north up the coast?  The answer is the prevailing wind.  We rode into headwinds all day, every day from Santa Barbara to San Francisco.  By the time we got there we were beat, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well.  So we hopped aboard Amtrak, next stop Ogden Utah; we had planned to go to Eureka before turning east.  With the ride back to Salt Lake City 2 months later, where we caught a plane to fly home, I think that trip amounted to about 1200 miles, not including whatever commuting we did in the interim.  We camped out all summer by the Snake River.  That was a grand adventure!

I have taken 2 other noteworthy tours since then.  On one solo tour in 1988, I rode from Boston to Bar Harbor Maine, took a ferry to Yarmouth Nova Scotia, then rode back to Boston.  That was another 1200+ mile trip.  Once I landed in Nova Scotia and got a decent map, I realized that I had to average 100 mile a day to catch my fight home from Boston.  My third noteworthy tour was with my good friend Tom Reitmann in 1989.  We rode from Boston to New York City, via Martha's Vineyard.  That tour covered about 400 miles.

I never have been able to tell the story of the trip to Wyoming without feeling just a little apologetic about taking the train.  I think that ever since then, I have really wanted to ride coast to coast, both for the adventure and to redeem myself.  A few years later, when I was in college at San Diego State, my friend Bob Kern took a semester off and rode coast to coast.  I had already wanted to do that for some time, Bob did it on a lark.  If Bob could do it, then so could I.  I just needed the opportunity.  I don't know if the opportunity has truly presented itself, but I do believe that the time is now.

So that, in a nutshell, is the genesis of this trip.  Our departure day is looming; about 3 weeks from now.  If anything, it's approaching too quickly, or at least that's how I feel today.

Dale