Adventure Cycling still pedaling dream trips | Then & Now

Pedaling across the United States stands out from my numerous lifetime adventures because of the time invested.

I was on the road four months that year. Calling it a vacation is an understatement. Bicycle touring became a lifestyle.

I was living the dream.

After becoming The Spokesman-Review’s outdoors writer in 1977, I wrote regularly about bicycling from the advent of mountain biking and e-bikes to the bike-to-work promotions and the 1984 and 1988 U.S. Olympic Cycling Trials.

I kept in touch with touring in occasional flings to destinations including Canada and Finland.

Closer-to-home tours included a week of rough-stuff riding to follow Lewis & Clark’s Lolo Trail route, a four-island camping trip through Washington’s San Juan’s, and a weeklong penny-pincher’s tour across Washington that started by taking Amtrak with a group of friends from Spokane to Seattle, assembling our bikes and pedaling home via the North Cascades Highway.

My enthusiasm for cycling rubbed off on my family.

Meredith, my wife for 43 years, ranks our 1984 go-cheap bike tour through Greece as our most romantic adventure.

Our youngest daughter, Hillary, pedaled coast-to-coast with a girlfriend and oldest daughter, Brook, and her Spokane pal Elsbeth Otto, toured the 1,000-mile Great Parks Route from Jasper, Alberta, to Durango, Colorado.

Meanwhile, the original Bikecentennial mission continues.

Renamed Adventure Cycling (adventurecycing.org) in 1993, the group is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail this year with group rides on a variety of routes, old and new, including the Golden Gravel Trail from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast.

This 3,805-mile route through eight states is 70% unpaved and geared to bike designs that weren’t on the road in 1976.