Hear Their Adventures, Forget Their Ages

Three years ago, Judy Waring shed her clothes, jumped through a hole in Antarctica’s ice and swam just far enough to say she did it.

Then, she smoked a cigar with other women who’d taken the plunge. Judy was 58.

Since then, she’s hiked 47 of the routes in Rich Landers’ book, “100 Hikes in the Inland Northwest.” She plans to finish every one. She’ll carry champagne on the 50th.

“We only go around once,” she says.

Age means nothing to this adventure junkie, and she’s found a kindred spirit in Jeannette Hill.

“This woman, at 73, is brimming with confidence. I, on the other hand, am riddled with doubts,” Judy says.

Right now her anxiety hovers over the pair’s latest adventure plan - a 2,500-mile bicycle trip across the southern stretch of the nation.

Jeannette smiles at her excitable friend. Decades of teaching physical education to junior high girls inured her to erratic personalities. She consoles Judy with a worry of her own.

“I’m afraid we’ll run into a big headwind on a 90-mile day,” Jeannette says. “Or tornadoes.”

“That’d be fun. Seriously,” Judy says before Jeannette’s mouth stops moving. “They’d yank you off your bike. It’d be a short day.”

The two Coeur d’Alene women met a few years back at a Panhandle Nordic Club meeting. They bonded on cross-country ski treks, bike routes and hiking trails.

Fresh air and pounding hearts intoxicated them. Muscle strength suited them more than makeup. Sweat, not Chanel, satisfied their noses.

Both lived for challenges.

Judy jumped her biggest hurdle as a young mother. She became a pharmacist while she raised three sons.

A trip to Antarctica seemed a good follow-up 22 years later. The National Science Foundation hired her to work at the South Pole in the galley.

“I washed dishes, scrubbed floors,” she says. “It was a blast.”

Antarctica’s polar plunge was a daring rite of passage she couldn’t resist.

On any day weather permitted, hearty souls stripped to the skin - wet clothes would freeze on them - jumped through a hole in the ice, splashed in the frigid water and crawled out to cigars and congratulations.

A rope around the waist leashed plungers to people who could pull them out if they drifted under the ice.

Judy smiles while she tells the story. Listeners always react with awe.

Jeannette achieved in athletics. She played basketball in high school, but had to pursue a career in physical education to stay in sports 50 years ago.

She and her husband bought bikes in the 1950s. They pedaled a tandem up and down the California coast and over 1,500 miles of Washington and British Columbia.

At 70, she toured Holland on a bike for two weeks.

“I love the exercise,” she says. “I love being able to get out, away from traffic. The scenery is so fantastic, it never ceases to thrill me.”

Both women wanted an adventure to launch 2000. They’d cycled through Yellowstone and Zion, the Gulf Islands and the Grand Tetons.

Jeannette dreamed of cycling across the country.

“As I get older, time is running out,” she says.

Judy found Wandering Wheels on the Internet. The Indiana-based company guides cross-country bike trips at a variety of latitudes. For $3,200 per rider, Wheels provides lodging, most meals and support vans that carry equipment.

Judy and Jeannette chose a spring trip. With 18 other riders, they’ll pedal from Carlsbad, Calif., through Arizona desert, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean in six weeks - 30 to 94 miles a day.

They’ll Greyhound home.

Wandering Wheels advised cyclists to ride hundreds of miles each week to prepare. But Judy’s emerald green Trek 1200 and Jeannette’s turquoise Schwinn Tempo are clean and dry in their garages.

“Snow is getting in the way,” Jeannette says. “We may have to go to California to train.”

They tugged on Lycra shorts and climbed on exercise bikes in Leisure Park’s workout room two weeks ago.

Judy worries about exhaustion on the trip and waking other riders at night with her snoring. But doubts have never stopped her from trying anything.

“Our goal is just to make it,” she says. “And when we hit Georgia, I want to bike off the end of a dock right into the Atlantic.”