Because We Can

We’ve established this web site primarily for our family and friends to follow our escapades in 2004. Rick retired from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on January 3rd and Sharon retired from her job as school bus driver on January 23rd. So we’re retired…..now what you might ask? A number of years ago we became cyclists. Not long after we began riding we joined AdventureCycling. Reading Adventure Cycling’s magazine and on-line touring journals eventually led to us doing a one week, self-contained, bicycle tour. We both fell in love with loaded bike touring and it didn’t take long for us to decide that our ultimate goal would be to ride all the way across the United States. This web site is intended as a chronology of our preparation, training and the journals of our travels.

We began training in January of 2003. We plan on traveling to Palm Springs, California in February for a couple of weeks of warm weather riding; Monterey, California in March and on May 1st we'll be riding the Delta Century (100 mile organized ride) near Lodi. On about May 10, 2004 we will ship our bikes to Conte’s Bike Shop in Newport News, Virginia. We will fly to Newport News on May 23, 2004, pick up our bikes and the adventure begins! Of course, we always keep in mind that plans were made to be flexible. The journal will include an overview of the training, preparation, equipment and once we begin the ride, daily (or as often as possible) updates. There is a separate link on this website which will take you to a summary of our novice tour in Santa Barbara, California in 2002. Due to circumstances back home we were unable to complete our TransAm tour in 2004. We did, however, ride over 3200 miles from Virginia to Montana. The current plan is to return to West Yellowstone, Montana in the summer of 2005 and complete the ride to the Pacific Ocean and south to California. The links on the left margin of this page lead to our journals.