Todie's Wild Ride: Vic-Biker's Story

The mission is to travel the northern tier from Washington to Maine and to promote bike awareness.

Vic-bikers story: My original reason for going on the bike trip was to celebrate three years of not smoking, bicycling was one of the ways I was able to give up smoking after 30 years. So I thought what better way to celebrate getting my life back then by doing something like riding a bicycle across the country. My friend Blaine, who also lives here in Abbot, and I flew to Washington on Memorial day weekend and after spending three days there visiting friends we headed east. Neither of us was in very good shape that spring due to rainy conditions here causing us not to have much riding time before the trip. Climbing the Cascades soon whipped us into shape though. Our ride took us through all of the northern states that border Canada. Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minn., then south through Iowa, Nebraska before turning east again through Illinois', Indiana, Ohio, New York, VT., N.H., and finally after 57 days, 4106 miles back home to Maine. The one thing that I found to be true on that ride was that small town America is the same everywhere you go. The people we met on that ride were the same as the people you meet in down town Dover or Abbot. Six years later the names of the little towns have faded but the faces and the memories of the people along the way remain with me as vivid today as the day I met them. Ron the postmaster in a small town in Iowa, who wanted so much to take his bike out of storage and come along with us, even though he was in his seventies. He also wanted us to go up into the Mts. and pick huckleberries with him for a pie, we didn't get to go, but we did stop at a restaurant and have a piece of hot huckleberry pie with some vanilla ice cream. The wolf lady who had a gift shop where she sold all kinds of gifts with pictures of wolfs. The money went to funding her research on wolfs to prove to the local farmers that wolves weren't as bad as they thought. She kept two wolfs in a cage out back of the shop and let us go and pat them. Also had the school kids come and interact with the wolves. My all time favorite was a woman I met in Fort Peck, Mont., she asked if we knew about the fort peck dam, said it was the biggest earth filled dam in the world and that it backed up the waters of the Missouri River. When I told her we knew nothing of it she told me we needed to go see it. I asked how far was it and she told me it was 9 miles down the road. I had to explain to her that 9 miles in the wrong direction on a bike is a long ways to go, seeing as how we would also have to come 9 miles back. I told her sorry but we just don't have the time. What this seventy year old woman told me will forever stay with me, "9 miles out of a life time is a very short distance". She was right of course, but we didn't go, to focused on heading east. Cheryl and I retraced my trip in the car the following year, and we did go see the dam, but couldn't find her. How about early one morning after riding 100 plus miles the day before I find my legs hurting so bad that I am seriously thinking of not riding anymore that day. Just then a Viet Vet comes along in a wheel chair pushing his way down the road with his arms and I start to cry because I had been complaining about my legs hurting a little. How much I thought would he give to have those hurting legs seeing as how he had none.