Coast to Coast Ride
Larry is embarking on a group bike trip that will start in San Diego, California and end in St. Augustine, Florida. Their 3,000-mile route will take them through six states: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. The group plans to bike an average of 65 miles per day throughout their two-month adventure (but they do have rest days planned). Stay tuned for updates on his progress
2912
Miles ridden
Walking with bikes, friends, and family to the St. Augustine Beach to dip our tires in the Atlantic ocean. Getting the champagne ready! Congratulations and hugs all around!Celebrating with good friends made along the way.A quiet moment after all the fun. A perfect end to a wonderful experience! ...
Final day! We reach St. Augustine! Today is the day! We complete the ride and move on with the rest of our lives. After 52 days and about 2,900 miles, we are going to ride 35 miles today to St. Augustine beach and dip our front wheels into the Atlantic ocean. - the bookend to the leaving San Diego, ...
Last big ride!!! After over 2,900 miles, we finally see an alligator! One last big push today - 80 miles. That will make a total of 300 miles in the past 4 days. On a bright note, our destination today is a hotel, which is always a little easier than camping or an indoor facility like the YMCA gymnasium ...
May Day! Al … most … there ...! It is May Day and all the riders were greeted with a thoughtful flower in the morning. May 1, 2021 The campground setting was very nice and it was fun to see the row of bikes leaning against the fence - ready for the next day's ride. May 1, 2021 The wild ...
Another big mileage day. A great bakery in a historic town! We cross a river made famous by Stephan Foster. Today is another significant mileage day - just under 80 miles, most of which is on our beloved US 90. However, we do hit some interesting places along the way. The first place of interest is the historic town ...
Leaving a historical town - DeFuniak Springs. The town of DeFuniak Springs has some history. There are a couple of unique things that we saw. The first was a public library - continuously running from 1887 to today in the same building - the oldest in Florida. April 28, 2021 It is situated on a lake fed by one of ...
A New Food Truck. Putting in the miles on US 90. As I mentioned in previous posts, we get a new food truck to follow us and provide meals with each new state we enter. Florida - our 8th state - was no exception. Today is the first breakfast they served us and it was wonderful pancakes and sausage ...
A very short ride! Today, we had a very short ride - the shortest of the trip. It was only 31 miles. There were some options to go further - and many riders took that option to ride longer. I personally selected to take a "slight" rest day and do the short ride to get to our destination, Milton. Part ...
A Ferry Ride. Mullet Throwing contest. US Naval Air Museum in Pensacola. Today starts with a ferry ride. A first for me and more unique because it is on a bicycle. The schedule is strict - and so we were all up and at the ferry launch 30 minutes before launch. But … the first ferry of the day ...
Duct Tape is magic! One of my 4 allowed bags had a huge rip in it this morning. Fortunately, we had some duct tape available. This stuff is the traveler's best friend. April 23, 2021 All of my equipment and clothing is showing signs of wear and tear at this point in the trip. Hopefully, it will all make ...
A very brisk morning to start the day! Today we started riding with the temperature in the 40's. We have a limited amount of clothes because of baggage limitations and everything we have must follow us from place to place. So the riders have to get inventive to stay warm. Here, Beth is dealing with her cold toes in a ...
Leaving Louisiana and crossing into Mississippi. We had a very nice facility to stay in last night. The big event today is that we are going to cross into Mississippi from Louisiana. The boundary is designated by the "Pearl River." But we didn't get to do that until we first had to fix a flat. Flats on the ...
Putting in the miles! A special message for Aunt Toni: being careful with choices. Today was about putting in miles. The route is a straight east shot through Louisiana where there is not a lot going on; we just have to make it to the next stop. Although we started out with a few clouds and some rain trailing off, ...
Rest Day! Today was a rest day at a Girl Scout Camp in Franklinville. There was no Internet and little phone service, so I did what I should have given the events of the last week or so: I rested. I didn't take many pictures or interact a lot with people. I slept, maintained my bike, and rested some more ...
Crossing the Mississippi River, the "swamp" road, and a generally busy day. Currently, there are 21 riders. There is no specific protocol for riders to ride together, or alone, or at the same speed. But we do tend to clump together with groups of riders that ride similarly. So many of my pictures and videos show just a handful ...
Our first full day in Louisiana! Today we left Deridder, LA and are heading to Opalousas. The first thing I managed to do was to stop and try to take a picture on some cows in a pasture and somehow I spooked them so they all ran away from me! There is a tremendous amount of logging going on ...
Finally exiting Texas! After 19 days and about 1,076 miles of the much maligned (and rightfully so) chip and seal road surfaces, we are leaving Texas. A third of this trip is in this "ginormous" state. Once again, we started out after rain at night and cloudy weather, but we had been really fortunate by dodging the rain ...
Back on the bike … mostly. Last night, we stayed at the Shephard Sanctuary. This was an odd little place that had small (very small) little cabins just big enough to sleep one or two people with not much room left over. They did not have bathrooms. There was also some room for camping. The entire place was ...
Back on the bike - at least for part of the day! After waiting exactly three days (36 hours) as per the doctor's orders, I was ready to ride again. This put me on my bike at noon today, so I started a little beyond the middle of the ride from the second SAG/Check-in stop. One of our ...
Rest Day! This was a full rest day for the entire team. I was still at the hotel trying to get off the injured reserve list during this day. Overall, a boring day. More to come tomorrow. April 13, 2021 ...
Forced day of rest. Since I'm on a forced day of rest today, I asked John Schafer to share his pictures today with me. So he is going to be our "guest blogger" today. Today's ride is about 68 miles, but I had to sit it out. All the riders and staff at the Halfway Party.Directional sign at an intersection.Country ...
Injury! Another beautiful day for riding. We exited the Lockhart campsite largely as a group, which makes for a neat video. April 11, 2021 When I see these pictures in retrospect, they really capture the feeling of the roads going on forever. 44 miles into the ride - which was scheduled for 62 miles - I started to ...
Long-horn cattle. Third day of Texas Hill Country. For the first time, we saw some true "Long-horn" cattle. Quite the magnificent animal. (Spoiler alert - a couple days further into the blog are some really fun videos of these long horns.) April 10, 2021 We passed through a really thriving town called Kyle. It was our lunch stop for the ...
More Texas Hills, but more challenge, too. Today we are continuing in Texas Hill country starting from the Kerrville campground. Similar terrain as yesterday, but with perhaps more spread-out hills. The morning was a little chilly, but wonderful riding weather in general. April 9, 2021 We generally avoid big urban areas so that we don't have to deal with ...
Fun hills, hills, and more hills - AND - crossing the halfway point! No, really - it was fun. Most of the riders agreed. Today we entered the Hill Country of Texas. The change from the monotonous desert landscape was stark and welcome. We saw green, we say ground fog (read "humidity"), and we saw live animals rather ...
Rest day! The rides day-to-day are much more encompassing and consuming than I had imagined they would be. My picture of life on the road was that I would ride 4 or 5 hours a day and be bored with the remaining time. So I planned special projects, books, deep thoughts - you get the idea. In reality, here is ...
After six-and-a-half days on Texas 90, we are finally parting ways with this road. Major lessons learned: Texas is not, in general, bike friendly Chip and Seal road surface generally sucks Today, after the first 40 miles, we turned north and after about 9 miles, hit the edge of Texas Hill Country, where we will be for the next ...
A much brighter day. Some fun sights along the way. Today's ride was so much better than yesterday. We did still have the wind in our faces and the Texas "chip and seal" road surface. But today, we had some fun sights and, most importantly, some sunshine! There is a large man-made lake in Amistad and a narrow bridge ...
Mechanical Mishap, Rain, Wind Easter! We started out the morning with a 6:45am reading of John 20 1:18 and prayer requests and blessings on this important day. There are some wonderful, dedicated Christians on this trip. It is hard not to whine about today's ride. It was an 87 mile ride, but I missed about 15 miles of ...
A beautiful start and shifting winds. The day started out cool, but not cold, and no wind for the first time in days. Of course, before each day all the riders check their phones and get weather reports and speculate about the weather for the next day. This serves three purposes - first, it gives us something to talk about ...
Rest Day! We stayed in Marathon, Texas an extra day for a rest day. There was an excursion to Big Bend National Park, but I chose to stay back and just have a quiet day, as did several of the other riders. From my understanding, the owner of the RV park where we stayed is a bit eccentric. This ...
WIND! Day 2! We thought yesterday was tough. Today was tougher. While we had some respite from the wind along the route yesterday, there was none of that today. And - we started out with a jolt. The owner of Timberline Adventures running the tour is Barb. This morning, she came out of her tent in a complete fluster with ...
WIND! A test of our collective riding commitment. For about 45 of the 73 miles we rode, we were facing 23-25mph head winds and cross winds. It was a pleasant start to the ride exiting Van Horn. We actually had a gentle tail wind and morning was chilly but beautiful. We even ran into a Mariachi band in ...
The road to nowhere. Today we are riding from Ft. Hancock to Van Horn, TX. This is a little longer ride - about 75 miles - with a fair amount of climbing. For some reason, when a ride is more than 70 miles, if feels long to me, even though we have done numerous rides in the 60+ mile ...
Urban riding. Today we rode from El Paso to Fort Hancock, TX. This was rather fun because we had a complete change of scenery doing some urban riding instead of the past endless miles of desert. It was an average day in terms of mileage, 62 miles, but the first 22 miles were riding through the city of El Paso ...
Gratitude. Today, riding on the long Texas roads, I found myself contemplating all that had to happen to allow me this experience/adventure of a Coast to Coast bike ride. I feel great gratitude for this opportunity. First, my wife of 37 years, Cathy. After 37 years, we have developed a routine. Working together, play, maintaining the house, the ...
A good day, but a hard day. A long ride of 73 miles from Columbus, NM to El Paso, TX. It was very brisk when we started out at 7:30 in the morning. Somewhere in the mid- 30-degree range. I personally had on two pairs of biking shorts, two layers of cold gear shirts, a jersey, a sweater jersey, ...
Rest Day! Our rest day is in Columbus, NM today. It is a small state park with a lot of history. Specifically, it is the location of the first aero squadron in the United States as well as a location where Pancho Villa invaded the United States and killed some civilians and military personnel. A member of the First Aero Squadron ...
The longest ride so far! Today's ride was 91 miles and change. Any way you cut it, this is a long ride. Even so, the favorable winds from yesterday continued and for the majority of the ride, we had significant help from the wind. These are long, long roads with very little along them in terms of communities ...
A fast, great ride! We spent the night in Douglas, AZ at the Gadsden Hotel. It is a beautifully restored historic hotel with a rich history including a visit from the infamous Pancho Villa. But, that was just the start of a good day cycling. This ride was fast and (relatively) easy featuring a tail-wind that was 10 ...
Lunch, Rain, and Hail in Brisbee. As fun as the end of the day was yesterday, today was the opposite. We started out in cold, rainy weather to head for a tough climb. It was not quite the amount of climbing from yesterday, but it was a steeper grade. When we left in the morning, it was quite ...
Serious climbing from Tucson to Tombstone! For the first 28 miles, we climbed over 2000 feet coming out of Tucson. After that, we had downhill for long stretches with a serious tail-wind. It was fun! We could cruise at 20mph with very little effort for long periods. But then a nice little 1/2 mile 6-7% grade climb into Tombstone ...
Today was about 40 miles on exemplary multi-use trails running through Tucson. It was an easy ride on paper, but I was completely beat after completing it. Nonetheless, it was a change in scenery from the past days of desert riding and I've never been on a trail like this. It truly was fantastic. It is my understanding that there ...
Rest Day! First rest day of the ride and much needed. Beautiful surroundings along with exceptional shower and bathroom facilities topped it off for us. Rest Day! March 21, 2021 And, of course, there is a lot of camaraderie. Rest Day! March 21, 2021 What is it Like to Ride in the Desert Day after Day? As I walked down ...
Rest day coming! Beautiful overnight. We are riding from Casa Grande to Catalina State Park near Tucson. March 20, 2021 The two-peak mountain in the center of the picture was above the point of the first SAG stop. Here is the same peak from the SAG: March 20, 2021 After following along I-8 for the last 400 miles, we have ...
Head winds and lots more desert. Today's trek was the longest since we started and the 7th day in a row of riding. 78 miles through the desert with little variance in the scenery. We had head winds pretty much the entire ride. Finding routes in this part of the country is difficult, and they are scouted in advance, but ...
"Grunt" riding. Not much to see on this segment of the ride. It was essentially on one road with a solid 10 MPH headwind most of the way. Fortunately there was no significant climbing. The biggest challenge was some pretty rough roads along the way. Essentially, we followed I-8 all the way from Dateland to Gila Bend either riding on ...
Long ride, lots of agriculture. Headed to Dateland today - some 70 miles. I had never heard of Dateland before, but it is in South Arizona and known for ... wait for it ... dates. For the first 20 miles or so, we followed a tributary in the Colorado River. This is the very end of the line for the ...
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A lot of desert ... A picture is worth 1,000 words in this case. This is a typical stretch of road along today's ride from Calexico, CA to Yuma, AZ. Just a lot of flat miles in the desert. March 16, 2021 Target - Yuma, AZ! We still had to ride another 7 miles to get to the location where ...
Unbelievable wind today - a curse and a blessing. Before we started out, I knew we were going to spend some time on Interstate 8. These are the places going through the mountains where there were no alternate routes - and so bicycles are allowed on I-8 in these places. Before the trip, I definitely had some anxiety about these ...
Flat tires and climbing. Two flats, 4,973 feet of climbing. 52 miles. I'm tired. The last week of training in AZ and I got a flat in my front tire from a Cholla Cactus. I had to fix the flat while on the road and I wasn't sure I got the entire spine pulled from the tire. However, the ride ...
Today, we started the ride with a dipping of our rear wheels in the Pacific Ocean to be paired with a dipping of the front wheel in the Atlantic after some 3,000 miles. The riders are a group of 21 of all shapes, sizes, ages, and temperaments. It will take a little time to get to know everyone. March 12, ...
I suspect this is going to be an adventure of the unexpected, and today did not disappoint. One size does NOT fit all! In the pre-ride process today, all riders were issued a safety vest that must be worn 100% of the time when riding. Understandable. But, the vests provided were "one-size-fits-all" and of course, out of 21 riders that ...
Two months ago, Cathy put a big "61" on the fridge in the kitchen to start a count-down to the start of my coast-to-coast bike trip. Next to it, she put a list of "must do's before trip." I cannot believe it, but today we leave to drive to San Diego for the start of the trip - which ...
Larry is counting down the days as he prepares for his bike trip! As one might imagine, there are many logistics to coordinate before he is able to depart with the group of fellow bike enthusiasts. Larry and his bike group have already (literally) mapped out their entire 3,000 route down to where they will stay for each of their ...
Larry is embarking on a group bike trip that will start in San Diego, California and end in St. Augustine, Florida. Their 3,000-mile route will take them through six states: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. They plan to bike an average of 65 miles per day throughout their two-month adventure (but they do have rest days ...