Trail Of Memories Biking Across The Country Could Be The Ride Of Your Life

She hadn’t changed that much. Taller, for sure, but still frisky and lean, with the sculptured legs of an athlete. Her tireless smile and a thatch of brilliant red hair distracted my eye momentarily from the freckles - a galaxy of freckles - just as they were 20 years ago when we toured together through rural Virginia.

The former “little Lori” Sowatsky was on my doorstep as though Federal Express had delivered kindred spirits from the past.

In 1976, little Lori, 13, had signed on with her family to join the Bikecentennial bicycle tour I was leading. Although we were together for only two weeks that summer, I became like family with the Sowatskys. I know less about my nieces than about Lori. I have blood ties with my relatives. With Lori and a few dozen other cyclists, I share a bond forged with chain grease, broken spokes, one-pot meals, headwinds and miles on the open road.

Two decades after our tour, Lori had traveled halfway across the country to introduce her new husband.

We dragged out dusty photo albums. Even my wife and two daughters had not heard all of the stories revealed that night. Seeing Lori at my doorstep had unleashed a pack of memories and emotions that would haunt me long after everyone had retreated to sleep.

There’s a lesson here that every cyclist should consider before setting out on a cross-country tour. Riding the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail is an experience that will live with you for the rest of your life.

Of course, I didn’t know that in 1976. I was a Montana-grown 24-year-old who knew little about the real world, except that I wanted to see it.

Being naive was an advantage for being the leader of five different trips along the cross-country route of rural highways that year. I never pondered the absurdity of explaining to one of the trippers, a physician twice my age, that we were going to enjoy ourselves on a group budget of $5 per person per day.

A group sharing costs for campgrounds and cooking one-pot meals could tour lavishly on that amount. A splurge for a cheese omelette, toast, hash browns and coffee at Jeane’s Cafe in LaCross, Kan., cost $1.30. A 15-cent tip earned me a smile and a wink.

Times have changed since some 2,000 of bikers pioneered the 4,242-mile TransAm Trail. Yet some riders continue to follow the route in organized groups. Others tour independently following map booklets detailing this linkage of backroads.

Pedaling the route continues to be an advanced course in real life. For a young Montanan, it was to be a rite of passage. A wide-eyed introduction to fireflies in Kansas, heat lightning in Illinois, chiggers in Kentucky. I played my first game of basketball with blacks, took my first walk through tobacco fields and sampled for the first time the ripe and delicate lips of a pretty girl with a southern accent.

The day I rode into Ash Grove, Mo., a young woman TransAm rider was accidentally killed by a motorist. The flag in the city park was at half mast that night and a local minister had scheduled a prayer breakfast. It was apparent that the townsfolk were in shock. They needed us to know that. Some bikers rode on, but a few of us stayed.

That was the first time I’d ever had a reason to attended a memorial service for someone I didn’t know.

Of course, the TransAm education had begun long before that in the rain and relentless hills of the Oregon Coast where my first group virtually disintegrated in four days. Three young women, who had never bicycled more than a few miles at a time, signed up for the group camping trip through the rugged coastal mountains. They blamed me when the ride turned out to be somewhat more demanding than a Mediterranean cruise. Then they quit.

I learned over time that the fault didn’t lie in their abilities as riders, or my abilities as a leader. And it wasn’t that the trail was a monster to be tackled only by athletes with 30-inch thighs.

The problems were associated with pace. Had those poorly conditioned novices chosen a full-service option for their first bicycle tour, they wouldn’t have had to carry gear or be in camp early to buy food and cook meals. They would have survived with fond memories of their first bike tour.

Pace is a pleasure you must acquire as you would a taste for dark beer. I got help from Margaret Jones, 58, a silver-haired adventurer from Washington, D.C.

Our first day out of Missoula was on a detour route, mostly gravel, that left three strong men visibly shaken. Margaret, however, ended the long day slightly behind us, but fresh as a wildflower. Margaret had a contagious curiosity that soon had all of us parking our bikes numerous times each day to hike a trail, socialize with locals or explore the ruins of homestead cabins.

She also had a wash cloth, which she used in a nightly ritual to freshen her body and her attitude, even when the only available water came from a campground spigot. destination.

Margaret taught us to look at each day as a journey, not a destination.

The TransAmerica Trail is a tour through a state of mind that includes Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia. It’s a trail of transition.

After pedaling five straight days in rain along the Oregon Coast, I recall pedaling up through the drizzle and into the snow storm at Santiam Pass. My body felt like an overloaded electrical socket powering a bike and 40 pounds of gear, producing heat under my water-soaked woollies and generating a smile when the rain tried to bully me into a frown.

Even a Montana boy soon learned the rules of maritime weather. “Fog in the morning, biker’s warning. Clear at night, ride outa sight!”

After mugging for photos in 3-inches of snow at Santiam Summit, I soared off the pass and abruptly broke out of the clouds. Steam rose from the warming wet pavement and a surreal mist glistened among the pines in the rain shadow that sprawls east of the Cascades toward Idaho.

Mountain passes are the most obvious transitions in the West. The ride through the forest over Montana’s Chief Joseph Pass is a one-day passage from the hangouts of elk to the clean scent of sage and rustle of yellow-headed blackbirds in the Big Hole Valley.

Togwotee Pass separates the spectacle of the Tetons from the red-rock badlands of Wyoming. Among the bad things in the badlands is the wind. After crossing Beaver Divide, I recall looking down and being shocked that I was still in second gear - and I was riding downhill!. Campgrounds at Jeffery City, Wyo., were refuges for wind-battered bikers.

A day out of Saratoga, Wyo., and a soothing soak in the famous hot springs, I climbed a rock cliff for a break and marveled at the quick change in scenery, from the windy plains to rolling mountain foothills complete with creeks and timber. The people seemed to be different, too. So many drivers waved as I entered Colorado, I had difficulty keeping my left hand on the handlebars.

One day I would ride through land turned upside down a century ago by mining dredges. A few days later, I’d pedal through pristine alpine meadows near Breckenridge, where the high lakes were still frozen in the first week of July.

From the top of 11,541-foot Hoosier Pass, I assured one TransAm rider, “It’s hard to believe its downhill all the way to Virginia.”

By the time I reached Pueblo, Colo., I had made the transition from the Rockies to the Plains. I quickly learned to wake before sunrise, eat lightly and put away as many miles as possible before resuming the daily struggle with suffocating heat and headwinds. I craved more fruits and vegetables and drank as much as two gallons of water a day.

You evolve as a rider while crossing the country. After nearly two months on the TransAm Trail, I was surprised to realize heading into Kansas that I suddenly had a sore butt. Cauliflower rear. It was a symptom of riding through heat over straight roads and flat terrain. One might shift only two or three times in a long morning.

Instead of hiking mountain trails, I spent the afternoons lounging around the green grass oasis of small-town parks and pools. My attention began to focus less on the scenery and more on the people. My journal shows that I sometimes stopped and had long chats with three or four farmers a day. Curiosity pays huge dividends to a cyclist. I was treated to picnics, welcomed to dinner, offered lodging. One farm wife even asked if I might be interested in dating her daughter.

Near McCracken, Kan., site for the filming of “Paper Moon,” the agricultural lands begin to roll, creating ravines, scattered water holes and a few sweet-smelling alfalfa fields. Humidity begins to team up with the heat near Larned, about the time you notice there’s more wildlife and even a few “Deer crossing” signs.

Bird song fills the air, turtles cross the pavement and wildflowers color the roadside.

The hills become more serious as one progresses into Missouri. So does the humidity. Riding to Houston, Mo, I noticed more people sitting out the heat on their porches. The dogs wouldn’t come out of the shade to chase me; most wouldn’t even lift their heads.

Religion seems to be more front and center here than it does in the West, were people tend to think they don’t need it because they have real mountains. By the time they had reached the Heartland, TransAm riders had their own sort of religion. No matter what they needed, “The Road” would provide.

I joined a few riders in trading our bicycles for canoes to float a portion of the Ozark Scenic Riverways near Alley Springs, Mo. The cliffs we climbed for dives into the cool water were the harbingers of thigh-busting hills near Powder Mill, Mo., that are among the steepest on the TransAm Trail.

A ferry ride across the Mississippi brought me to Carbondale, Ill., a college town and a shocking contrast from the refuge of rural America. I was thankful for the bike shops and the selection of restaurants. But I was soon ready again for the backroads to which I had become accustomed.

By the time I reached Falls of the Rough, Ky., I had developed a taste for corn muffins, grits and chess pie. I had become familiar with contrasts, such as visiting a Trappist monastery one day and a bourbon distillery the next. I was convinced that people are more friendly here than they are in the West. Maybe it’s because people in Kentucky spend so much sitting on their porches learning how friendliness is acquired.

Around Berea, Ky., the trail makes a quick transition from the rolling hills and immaculate green horse pastures to the Appalachian Mountains, where coal trucks rule the road. The ravages of poverty are apparent. After eating a snack, a young many watched me tuck the wrappers in my handlebar bag and said, “Why don’t you just pitch it in the river? Everyone else does.”

Near Damascus, I began sensing a change in the TransAm riders. The “journey” part of the tour was wearing thin on many of them. They were stopping less, missing more and zeroing in on the “destination:” Yorktown.

I might have fallen into that rut, too. But I recall breaking away from the cyclists on the bike route and riding to a point on the Appalachian Trail where I could see into North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. The haze was thick, giving the ridges a softness that made them look less intimidating than they were from a bicycle seat.

I watched a glorious orange sun dip into the horizon and realized how much of the real world I still had not seen. A family offered to share their campsite, and I serenaded their young children to sleep with my harmonica that night, soothing any urges I’d had to rush on.

I spent three days at the 41st Old Time Fiddler’s Convention in Galax, Va., gigging with the Swamp Opera String Band, Coffee Gap Corn Lickers, Sorghum Syrup Soppers and Cousin Curtis and the Cash Rebates. Then I rode to Radford, where I met my last group, including mother Sienna and her children: Doug, Cindy and little Lori Sowatsky.

The Republican National Convention was voting that night. The choices were Ford and Reagan. But none of us seemed to care. We had a group that clicked, and we were headed to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Monticello and real life encounters with the salt of the earth.

We relearned some lessons from Bert Smit, a 68-year-old German who had a feeling for pace. I got him into a draft line once to help him through a tough day. But he soon dropped out.

“It’s not the people leading the line who are crazy,” he said. “It’s the ones who follow.”

The tour through Virginia brought one of my life’s great adventures to a close. It was a story in itself, summarized by the look on Sienna’s face as I escorted the Sowatsky’s to the bus depot with their boxed bikes. The driver shut the door and I waved my bandanna while Sienna and her kids slumped in their seat as though I might not see the streams of tears.

After 20 years, I don’t think much about the rain, snow, hills, heat and headwinds that tried to consume so much of my attention on the TransAm Trail. I remember the Sowatskys and the other people who might show up at my door one day.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 6 photos (4 color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THE TRANSAMERICA BICYCLE TRAIL Thomas Stevens became the father of transcontinental bicycling after pedaling his highwheeler 103 days from California to Boston in 1884. Not until the early 1970s, with the Arab oil embargo still fresh in their minds, did a small group of young idealists seek to bring coast-to-coast bike tours to the mainstream. To coincide with the nation’s Bicentennial celebration, they founded Bikecentennial, a bike-route mapping and touring organization based in Missoula, Mont. Now called Adventure Cycling, the group’s first major project was the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, a meandering backroads tour de rural America that purposely avoided every big city in the country. In 1976, more 4,000 riders from all 50 states and 15 foreign countries rode portions of the TransAm Trail. About 3,000 cyclists ride this and two other cross-country bike routes each year. Rich Landers, then a recent graduate from the University of Montana, rode the TransAm Trail in 1976, guiding five tours along the way, more than any other leader that year.