I guess biking across America is becoming the new Appalachian Trail. Everyone seems to be doing it. Two recent articles bring me back to the subject.
The first article is about Thomas Heidenberger, a local man whose wife was the senior flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
On Sunday, Chevy Chase resident Heidenberger will embark on a 3,600-mile cross-country bike ride to honor the memory of the 33 flight crew members killed on Sept. 11 and to raise money in their names for memorials.
Best of luck to him.
The other article from the Times does a pretty good job of explaining what you have to do to bike across the country.
Many who bicycle recreationally dream of going the distance. Few do it, largely because of the time commitment. You need close to three months -- more if you want to smell the roses. That's why cross-country cyclists usually fall into two categories -- those taking time off before college and those whose youngsters have just gone off to college. Getting that much time in prime working and family-raising years is tough for others.
I would like to find myself in a third category, those who have won the lottery and now have oodles of free time, but maybe I'm weird. I met a guy once who "Biked across Europe," except that he didn't really. He would bike from here to there, then hop on the train over night, and go on another ride the next day. He said it was great because each day the ride was totally different. It's hard to do that in the states because of the limited rail service. In addition, Amtrak doesn't have roll on service on every route. I tried to find a list of trains you can take bikes on here, but they just give you a phone number to call (really did I wake up in 1994?). I found this list, but it's from 1999.
The photo, btw, is from western Australia
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