THE BACKSTORY – how did this come to be?

September 14, 2021

In August 2018, Heather & I cycled for a week through Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia through what’s known as the Cabot Trail. This was a spectacularly beautiful ride through a part of Canada that is culturally unique in its blended heritage. There were some crazy climbs that challenged every fiber of my being. Somewhere in those challenges and lost in the beauty something happened that week that changed my life! I decided then that I’d like to stop working full-time 2 years later in August 2020 when our youngest Matt would head off to college and we’d be empty nesters. I wanted to spend much more time outdoors hiking and biking. You could say I wanted to SHIFT GEARS! Oh to do that I needed to buy a bike as I hadn’t owned one in many years! I had rented one for that trip and had done all my training rides indoors on my trusted Lifecycle stationary bike. I went out and bought a bike and a new love affair was born. My ride is Trek FX S4, a hybrid as I prefer cycling more upright for long distances on multi-day trips.

Nova Scotia, August 2018

We returned to the Maritime provinces in August 2019 to cycle the Viking Trail in Newfoundland for more typically, majestic Canadian scenery and again a wonderful cultural experience including our side-trip to Gandor, the setting for Come from Away – and meeting a few of the characters from that heartwarming story (about 9/12 as they say). The big challenge of that ride was an epic day of riding 130 miles! A personal best for Heather & I. As an entertaining side note and one that reveals a challenge of this trip for Heather is I left our Bed & Breakfast that day about 6am as I worried about finishing before dark; Heather started about 7:30am as she wanted to wait for the hot breakfast! She caught up to and passed me about 2:30pm and we finished together about 5pm. That tells you right now Heather cycles faster than me and one of her challenges this adventure will be to see if she can slow her pace enough for us to actually ride together – otherwise it’s like 2 of us riding separately cross-country and not our goal. The biggest thing of that trip was we decided we would indeed shift gears and a week after coming home I started the conversation to transition in my professional role.

Newfoundland, August 2019

As Heather & I then looked for more bike trips, we fell upon the category known literally as Epic Rides. These are organized rides of 4 weeks to more than 3 months and are usually supported, meaning carrying your gear from location to location. (We knew people did Epic Rides on their own carrying all their gear, but did not see us doing that.) I was drooling at the idea of these Epics - to give you an example one is known as Cairo to Capetown as it spans the African continent North to South. We thought we’d start closer to home so we planned to ride across the USA last fall with a company that would support us but it was understandably cancelled due to Covid. We figured we would join them this year in the fall but then 2 things happened. Firstly, they did not offer it this fall (only next Spring) and secondly our good friend Stu introduced us to his friend Ken who cycled across the USA solo, self-supported about 8 years ago. (By the way, this intro came about because one of the lessons I have learned over the years about goal setting is by stating your goal aloud publicly to others, you are more apt to hold yourself accountable to achieve it. I had shared with Stu a while ago that we’d like to ride across the USA.) We read Ken’s blog and while I read every word and loved it, Heather said she was too intimidated by it and stopped reading after the first week. Now bear in mind, Heather has run about 10 marathons and many Triathlons including 2 Ironman distance! This seemed out of character.

On March 10th we spoke with Ken who was so generous with his time and after a 90-minute phone call, Heather looked at me and said “Okay we can do it ourselves. Let’s do it self-supported!” Heather wastes no time. The next day she researched the bike needed for a cross-country trip (very different from the lightweight Carbon frame she normally rode and used in triathlons) and this is in March 2021 when due to the pandemic driven cycling craze there are no new bikes to be found. Well 2 days later Heather comes home from New Jersey with a brand-new Trek 520 Grando – a classical long distance steel frame touring bike. The right bike! Now Heather coming home with her new bike was great news, but I privately told myself- shoot, there’s no backing out now – she actually bought another bike so now I have to do this! Thank you, Stu and Ken!!