One Fantastic Week

This first week riding across America with Cycle America has been challenging and rewarding. There are 47 of us crossing the country and we range in age from 18 to 81. This week we traveled 610 miles in 7 straight days of riding (68-75-95-105-94-69-101) and while my legs do definitely feel those miles, it is the rear end that feels the bike saddle a whole lot more. This day off is needed badly for I do not think I could possibly have ridden an 8th day without serious issues.

In 2001 when I did this adventure for the National MS Society, there was one rider who after the first week could no longer sit on the bike seat due to sores! I am close to that but the time off will enable me to hit this week of 450 miles in 6 days easily.

I have enclosed this picture of Mike (Indiana) presenting Casey (Conn.) with her high school diploma. She started on the travels before her high school graduation so she missed it this week in Conn. The group responded with cheers and an appropriate song to commemorate her graduation on the road across America.

Monday, June 28th we do 80 miles as we leave Missoula, MN and head for Lincoln through the Mission Mountains.

Old Perma Store & Harold Shaw

On our last day of riding for the week we passed this very small store on Route 200 as we headed for our base camp of Missoula. I saw a man at a mailbox and jokingly said, "Am I an Boston yet?" He replied, "You are in the suburbs of Boston!" At that moment I knew the next few minutes would be very interesting.

Owner Harold Shaw was a gracious host for those of us who stopped to converse with him. I asked Mr. Shaw to have a picture with him (right) and he said he would be honored. Mr. Shaw has lived in various places in the USA since his dad was in the military, but he settled in Montana and opened this small store in 2000. He is half Indian and have Scottish. It was a real pleasure speaking to him and he wished us well.

Climbing Thompson's Pass 4800 Feet

On Friday we not only biked 69 miles total but in the middle of that but we climbed the 4,800 foot hill to Thompson's Pass before dropping 2,800 feet over 11 miles to Thompson Falls, Montana where we stayeds for the evening in the Thompson Falls High School yard.
Here are Sandy and me with a view of 700 feet below us where the road we just climbed for 3 miles makes a 90 degree turn to finish the almost one mile climb in altitude. Our speed going up ranged from 3 to 7 miles per hour. Our speeds down the other side from 25 to 45 miles per hour!

Our friend from Louisiana, Mike (right) points to the road below, that he just climbed to a height of almost one mile! He is smiling now because the climb is over. Riders climbed for 1 to 2 hours but took only minutes to drop 2,800 feet on the other side! Air temps were in the 60's so most people put on jackets before the fast descent!

Moose Along the Way

On Thursday we traveled 95 miles with about 50 along a beautiful wilderness bike trail in Idaho. After lunch we came upon a large moose feeding on water lillies about 75 feet off the trail in a shallow pond. The moose continued to eat and eat as we watched!

Mileage & Coulee Dam

This is the famous Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State. Local people told us we were very lucky to see water going over the spillway since it last happened 7 years ago! It has rained here so much that they had to allow water over the dam. We camped just 1/2 mile from the Dam at a school and we could hear the roar all night!
Mileage for this week has been very high: we started on Sunday with a 70 mileage ride over Stevens Pass then we did an 80 miler on Monday, then Tuesday it was 96, Wednesday 105, Thursday 94 and today, 69 but we had to climb over Thompson's Pass at 4,850 feet. Tomorrow we leave Thompson, Montana, go back to Idaho, and then drop into Montana once again for another 96 mile day.
We finished today in just about 5.5 hours (69 miles) but tomorrow's ride will take us from 7 a.m. until about 5 p.m.! Our legs are doing very well and except for our rear ends, our bodies are holding up well. We do sleep well night even though we are in tents.

Deception Falls

The west coast of Washington normally has a lot of rain and this year as been extreme! Here we are in front of Deception Falls on our climb to Stevens Pass. As you can see we are well dressed for the cool termperatures even wearing full riding gloves.

Beautiful Scenery

The flowers and other plants we see our absolutely beautiful. These flowers were growing right out of a rocky area at about 3,500 feet above Coulee Dam in Washington.

First Major Climb ...Rain & Cold

Here I am at the top of Stevens Pass in Washington. This was a climb of about 3,000 feet and it was with light rain and mist. Temp at the top of the pass (snow on the mountain around us) was 45 degrees. When I made this ride in 2001 there was snow on the ground but not on the road! The descent was cold!

Visiting Small Towns

Here we are in Snohomish, WA, taking a little break from the rain to get some refreshments at the local coffee shop.

We really have had very little time in any town until today. Most of the time we get in around 5 to 6 p.m., put up our tents, shower, eat, attend a travel meeting to learn about the next day, and then go to bed!

This has been referred to as bicycle boot camp due to the regimentation it takes to get ready for the next day!

News Reporter & Sandy

My riding partner Sandy assisted another rider with a broken chain just a couple miles into our first day ride. A reporter from the Everett Herald Newspaper spoke to several of us about our adventure and was doing an article on our trip. Here is Sandy and the young reporter.

The article is well written and speaks about the Boys & Girls Club efforts in Everett. We are not mentioned in the article BUT you can see our backsides under our photo when we we dipping our back tires into the Pacific! Our names are undere the photo!!!

People from Around the Globe

Coast to Coast riders come from all over the world. This is a picture of Philippe from Paris, France. He is an attorney who works between the USA and his home country. Philippe is a very strrong rider and has an excellent command of the English language. He is writing a book about some of the history between the USA and France.

Philippe is an extremely strong supporter of the United States and is amazed at how little Americans know about their own history. He is a great conversationalist on long day rides which helps to make the time go faster.

To the right is Tony from the Netherlands. He is an amazing rider and has a special touring bicycle. I have ridden many miles with him and enjoy talking to him. He told me that there thousands of bicylces stolen in the Netherlands every year and his bike has a very special built in lock that imobilizes his bike until he unlocks it.

This is Tony on the high plains of Washington State after a very difficult 2,500 foot climb.

Welcome Board & Baggage

We are traveling with 87 people, 48 of whom are going coast to coast. When we arrive in camp each day we look for the info board which tells us about tent areas, showers, dinner time, meeting time, and breakfast the next day.

Times change each day for activities depending on the length of the ride. For example on "lighter" mileage days of 75-85 we have breakfast around 6:30 a.m. but on heavier days of 85 to 105 miles we have a 6 a.m. breakfast.

Before we can come to breakfast we must have our tents down and packed into the two duffle bags that we are permitted for all of our needs for 9 weeks! My bags are 36 x 24 x 18 inches. In one I have clothes and the other all tent items including the mattress, sleeping bag, pillow, and shoes.

Day 1 - Dipping Tires in Pacific - Rider Injured

Here we are at the water's edge in Everett. Dipping the rear tires of the bikes in the Pacific Ocean is a traditional start for the Coast to Coast Adventure. This day started with light rain and about 60 degrees but by the time we had climbed to the 4,010 foot Stevens Pass in the Cascades the temperature had dropped to 45! The descent required us to wear winter riding clothes.

One rider never made it to the end of the second mile. A female rider was crossing an expansion joint in on a large over pass in the rain and her tire went crooked causing her to fall and severly break her arm. She was taken to a hospital where she has surgery. Several other riders have fallen with the slippery road conditions. We all work to remind each other of the dangers in our 4,250 mile adventure.

Finally a Library

We have now traveled 6 days by bicycle from Everett, WA to Thompson Falls, Idaho. Internet access as been limited to say the least but here at TF High we have total access so I'll add a few blogs for you!

Here are Sandy and me just outside the Boys and Girls Club of Everett, Washington. This was our home for the first night and the folks of that Club for the urban kids have done a fantastic job for the children. The Athletic Director is having the summer program students follow us across ther USA and we are sending them postcards along thr way for them to chart our progress!

Dr. Mike Joins Us

We are very pleased to report that Mike Thiboudeaux, a friend I met a year ago on a bike ride from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., joined Sandy and me for this cross country tour of the USA. Mike is a physician from Louisiana and is just really getting into this serious bicycling. His age and his strength will make him successful. We met up with him on Saturday, June 19 as we boarded the van to Everett from Seattle in Washington State. We ride with Mike some of the time each day.

Where We Are Traveling

We are taking a northern route across the continent which includes a week in Ontario, Canada. That does mean we go through Michigan and not our home state of Ohio! Having made this trip back in 2001, I can say that the route above Lake Erie is certainly much less congested with people and more importantly, has much less traffic!

Starting on the coast of Washington in Everett, we will travel across Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnestoa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, slide through a corner of Maine, and drop into Massachusetts! All 4,250 miles of this expansive continent.

If you'd like to see the week by week and day by day mileage for the 64 days just go to http://www.cycleamerica.com/ and you'll see why we will need to avergae 80 miles a day!

Check Two Newspapers

My hometown of Reading, Ohio has an independent newspaper owned and operated by Mike & Linda Koewler whom I have known for many years. Prior to Mike buying the Valley Courier, I had even worked for the paper when it was the Mill Creek Valley News, at the time the largest weekly newspaper in the state.

Mike has agreed to print the articles and publish the photos I send him each week. Mike did this back in 2001 when we had no e-mail communication and I had to mail him hand written articles that he then typed into news copy!

The Tri County Press and Editor Richard Maloney will also run the articles. I worked many years in the Evendale-Springdale-Sharonville-Glendale area and some of my friends asked that I write articles for their local paper. Thanks Richard for allowing me to share this adventure with my friends in the Valley.

While it seems like everything is going electronic, I still believe there is a place for the hard copy news! Thanks Linda, Mike and Richard.

Preparation, Guidance & Support

Preparation for this 9 week adventure from Seattle to Boston has taken about 18 months of planning and has definitely helped to have successfully ridden the coast to coast adventure in 2001, but a special thanks goes out to my bicycling partner, Sandy Sanders, who did an excellent job creating numerous spread sheets listing all of the essentials we needed to take and for setting a tough training pace since March of this year.

While we have only biked one century (100 miles on the Great Miami Recreational Trail from Franklin to Yellow Spings, Ohio and back) we have done many 40 to 70 mile trips on Saturdays and Sundays when we could. We have about 1,000 miles logged on our bikes so far and we will ride again June 12-13.

Special thanks also to JB, owner of West Chester Cyclery for his support and guidance now and over the years. He has some fine people, like Jim and Mike, working with him and I know I trust them very much. They have completely overhauled my Softride bicycle that just turned 20,000 miles in it's 10th year! We also had JB's guys tear down and package our bikes for shipping out to Seattle.

Thank you to to the folks at the West Chester United Parcel Service office off Route 747. Manager LeAnn was very helpful and even allowed me to pose with her and one of the guys in Brown so a passerby could take our first bike adventure photograph!

Bikes Are Shipped - The Adventure Begins!!

In just 8 days my bicycling partner and I will fly to Seattle to begin a 64 day adventure riding our touring bicycles from Everett, Washington to Glouchester, Massachusetts!

While we have joined up with a fantastic touring company called Cycle America (http://www.cycleamerica.com/) owned by Greg Walsh, the plain truth is that we will have to bicycle an average of 80 miles a day! Yes, our camping gear is transported from site to site by CA each day and our meals are provided by local school groups, clubs, senior citizen centers, and the tour support group. Our job is to successfuly ride a large number of miles every day.

The Cycle America Tour is made up of nine weeks of tours and while many participants will ride one week a year until they have cycled all 4,250 miles from coast to coast, we have chosen to do it week after week after week! I did this tour back in 2001 and the term we used often was bicycle boot-camp!

This year we start June 19 and will end August 21. The first week is 610 miles in 7 days of riding and includes 4 days of just about 100 miles each. We will ride from Everett, WA all the way to Missoula, Montana through the northern section of the Rocky Mountains!

The Question Is "Why?"

An adventure like this requires a HUGE "why." For me there really is no other response than doing it for an organization like the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Like in 2001, I am once again riding for those with MS.

This is my 21st year to ride and raise funds for this crippling disease. Honestly I thought back in 1990 when I first rode for MS in their Bike 150 weekends that we'd have this central nervous system disease wiped off the face of the Earth. However, while tremendous success has been made to assist those with MS, a cure still eludes us.

Our family has no one who has suffered from MS, but I have many great friends who have been impacted by it in one way or anotrher. A fantastic school aide and friend of mine had to take early retirement because she had lost her ability to use her legs; a young teacher went through leg surgery thinking she had injured herself running for exercise only to learn it was the start of MS; the grandfather of the young lady where I have my hair cut is confined to a wheelchair and depends on others and he is my age; a wife of my brother's baseball coach suffered a horrible crippling death at the hands of MS; and the mother of an associate and friend of mine died due to complications as a result of her MS. All great people who suffer, and some who died, at too young of age, from Multiple Sclerosis.

If you are reading this and really want to make a difference in the lives of young people, then please donate to MS. You can go to the National Multiple Sclerosis web site, look for Ohio Valley Chapter, and find me as a pareticipant in the Bike MS 150 which is an event that the local chapter holds every year. While I will not be riding in that event, I have registered for it and am substituting the 4,250 mile coast to coast ride for the MS 150 bike ride to be held Augusy 28-29.

You can also send a check to Tom Moffitt (Make it out to National MS Society) and mail it to 7417 Chateauguat Drive, Hamilton, Ohio 45011. Please put in the note section: Moffitt MS150.

Help me to make a difference in this world...dontate to MS Society. The feeling is great to know that together we can make a difference for others.

Thank you,

Tom