How I Got Here

When people hear that I am getting ready to ride my bicycle across the country from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, they often ask - what got you interested in doing that?  This page will attempt to answer that question.

I have never been a great athlete, but I haven't been the worst either.  In my youth, basketball was my favorite sport & when I got to college I became a respectable ping pong player (you can get a pretty good workout playing ping pong if you play against good competition).  My career often included a fair amount of physical activity, but not really aerobic workouts.  When I turned about 60 yr old, I started thinking about what I needed to do to be able to function at a high level as I was aging.  It became clear that more attention to exercise and healthy diet should be at the top of the list.

I am fortunate to have a daughter-in-law, Ruth Payne, who worked as a personal trainer & one Christmas she gave me a gift certificate for training sessions.  It took me a couple of years to redeem the certificate, but it was on my mind & when she said to me one day while visiting "What time should we go for a run tomorrow?", I said "How about 10 AM?"  She was surprised, but agreed.  Lucky for me that she knew what she was doing & didn't let me overdo it, but that is what started my journey.  I redeemed the gift certificate & hired her after that as my trainer.  She taught me 2 important things: Have a consistent training plan & it is important to have a goal or event to work towards.

Ruth is a triathlete who has done multiple Ironman competitions including qualifying for the 70.3 World Championships, and the full 140.6 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii.  So she naturally thought I should do triathlons.  I had some problems with that:

1.  Swimming is inconvenient because you always have to find a pool & it's too cold getting in the water.

2.  I don't really like running.

3.  Bicycles are really uncomfortable.

Then I discovered recumbent bikes!  

This is a picture of my 1st recumbent bike - It is called Bike E & made by a company no longer in business.  I bought it from A.D. Carson of Recycled Recumbents in 2015.  When I went to see the variety of bikes he had for sale, he rolled one particular bike out of his garage and commented, "this is the bike I rode across the country".  

"You rode it across the country?" I said.  "How long did that take?"

"52 days", he replied.

And the seed was planted.

I didn't buy one of those bikes that day.  Instead I needed to try something more simple to see if this recumbent bike thing would really work for me.  That is how I ended up with the Bike E.  It served me well.  I spent the whole summer building up my endurance to ride 50 miles on Labor Day. The next year I completed a couple of Duathlon's (Ruth convinced me that some running was good for me even if I didn't love it), and by then I was ready to upgrade.  So I went back to A.D. & bought one of his signature bikes, just like the one he rode across the country.

A.D. starts with a regular bicycle & remanufactures it into a recumbent.  It requires some welding and other work, but uses all of the same components from the donor bike.  That is how he recycles the bike.  I rode this bike in some Duathlon's, did a 2 day 150 mile ride & started thinking about whether I could ever do a cross country ride.

By now I was really convinced that recumbents were the right bike for me.  It gives a great workout & is so much more comfortable on the butt, the back, the wrists & the neck.  Why be in pain?  

One night as I was looking on the internet at different recumbents I saw a bike that looked confusing.  It was front wheel drive!  How does that work, I thought?  Every time you push on the pedal, you are pushing the wheel that steers.  How can you go down the road without wobbling?  I went to their website: www.cruzbike.com.  And they convinced me that it not only works (with proper practice & following the steps to learning), but it is also more efficient & more enjoyable.

I bought their new model Q45 the 1st day it was offered in March of 2018.

I have over 1,600 miles on it including a 600 mile week long ride called Biking Across Kansas.  I chose that ride because I wanted to check out the tour operator who supplied tents & support - Bubba's Pampered Pedalers.  The pampering was good, and now I am getting ready to ride Coast to Coast with him. 

And that is how I got here.