The next day was short. The miles from Lynn’s house to the historic town of Placerville where we would spend the night put me on notice for some of what I was in for. For probably the last ten miles of the day, some of the up and down climbing required a fair amount of concentration on my part. The frequent short and steep ascents had to be attacked just right. Too hard of a charge and I was off the back end. Not enough and I was walking the hill.

For the two severe grades that did force me off the bike, I coasted back down to the bottom and climbed them again. Successfully!

In Placerville, we regrouped at a little park.

“Manny left a text message to say he is at the freeway entrance,” I announced. “That’s over there, a few blocks away. I say we head over now. That way we can lock our bikes and dump our gear so we can go back out and explore. This is such a cool little town and I always wanted to get a closer look whenever I’d drive by on 50 up there. I didn’t see much of it in 09,” I said as I pointed.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the quant little shops of this old Gold Rush town. A town of 10,600 people, in its day, Placerville was once an important supply center for the miners. We splurged for an early dinner at a small restaurant and walked the few short blocks back to the bus.

Upon our return, I excused myself to my little bunk. As the Sierra’s were now becoming a reality, the ascent that had been in many of my thoughts for the last three or four years, was now only a few hours away. Hoping I had done enough to prepare my mind for the many thousands of feet of climbing ahead, I dozed off.

The cool of morning came too fast. Nor did I waste any time getting out and into it. All by myself, by 5 AM I was off and did some easy climbing for the next 15 miles into Pollock Pines at just under 4,000 feet in elevation. At which point the road started going down.

Probably a thousand feet in all, I dropped to Jenkinson Lake where the biggest riding challenge I had faced to date began. A full day’s worth of non-stop climbing without water or other services stood before me.

Called Silver Lake Road and known by legend as the Mormon Emigrant Trail, it was a way to get over the Sierras without taking the car road, Hwy 50, that had long ago bypassed it. A stretch of high country that remains nearly as remote as when Kit Carson and John C. Fremont first traversed this part of the Sierras in 1844. By the time all of us were on it, less than a dozen cars would pass us throughout the day.

There was little except the raw might of nature to distract us from the next 30 miles of steady uphill grinding. Closed during the winter, and sometimes ‘till as late as June, the road, surprisingly smooth, rose, with a generous shoulder at a five to six per cent grade to 8000 feet.

Stopping to rest every twenty to thirty minutes, I could hear the wind whistling through the needles of the pine forests that thinned as we climbed higher and higher. Even though the labored breathing that accompanied each pedal stroke had drowned out the sound they made, I still felt comforted to know there was life up here. It was good that there were few humans up here because each time I stopped, in order to get back on the bike, I had to go downhill and then turn around so I could start climbing again.

In 2009, when I rode US 50 all the way in to Lake Tahoe, I had had to wait for roadside rest areas to be able to do this. Oftentimes spaced a lot more than 20 minutes worth of riding apart, On that ride,I would dismount where they left the road and walk to the top where they rejoined it.

Ten minutes later, after hydrating myself and inhaling a few energy bars, because I had not been able to take my hands off the bars to eat or drink, I would face the bike downhill and climb back on. Using the narrowing parking lot, I turned back uphill from where I had originally stopped pedaling.

Unlike 2009 where I had to keep my focus on the white line at the edge of the road because of all the speeding cars, on Emigrant, I could let my guard down a little. Where the road allowed it, we looked out on a mountainscape sprinkled with almost brush like trees, lightly dotted with grey granite rock formations. The snow that freckled the edge of the road contrasted with the heat that grew more and more intense as we ascended.

The fact that my water was being drained to dangerously low levels paled in comparison to the difficulties faced by the original travelers who built this road. It was the Mormons who had first made it passable for wheels, those of the vehicle of the day, the wagon train. Why it was Mormons who built this road is fascinating.

In the fall of 1846, a battalion of Mormons headed west to help the US Army fight Mexico for possession of California. But by January of 1847 when 363 of them arrived in San Diego from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, they arrived to a war that had ended. While most of them went back, nearly a hundred of them reenlisted. A year later, after their tour of duty was complete, most of the men who had stayed behind went to Northern California to hole up during the winter. There they took work building saw and flourmills, including the now famous Sutter’s Mill.

When the weather made it possible for them to return east that next spring, and a year before gold was discovered, they resolved to find another way over the Sierras. They wanted an alternative to the foreboding Donner Pass that was also fraught with an increasing number of attacks by Indians.

And as such, the road we were on was the result. In fact, in 1848, the Mormon Emigrant Trail became the first mountain passage into Northern California where the traveler did not have make use of complicated and risky tow chains to get a partially disassembled wagon over certain precipices. And for the next 20 years, before the railroad arrived, tens of thousands of Gold Rush pioneers all passed over this important road.

Once we reached Hwy 88, we were still ten miles from Carson Pass, the 8,650-foot summit that separated us from the next state, Nevada. And yet all of that would have to wait for tomorrow. This was so because for the next five miles we would be descending for 1,000 feet once again.

The reward that awaited made up for all the climbing we had lost. Called Silver Lake, soon its shimmering blue waters looked like they had been air brushed into the post card like setting that spread out before our eyes. It was in the parking lot there that we met the bus. With our hearts filled to the brim with the beauty of nature, we all went to bed tired and content to let our conquest of the Sierra Mountain Range wait until tomorrow.

The next day found us still a full day’s worth of riding from the road to Reno. As I climbed Carson, a respected 17-mile ascent on the world famous Markleeville Death Ride, I waited for the last six miles for the real climbing to begin. In fact, I had only been off the bike to rest my arms and my legs once until well beyond the halfway point. From a little over four per cent, the road grade neared seven per cent for almost the last third of the pass. Unlike a bike equipped with gears, on a HiWheel, the rider makes much greater use of his arms to get up an ascent. In fact, even though I was using them much less than if I were on a traditional Ordinary, my entire upper body still got pretty tired. This was so because I was able to climb steeper pitches and pedal uphill for a lot longer period of time on the Eagle.

Before I had to really bear down on the climbing, however, on the Eagle off in the distance I was able to catch some pretty worthy views of Lake Tahoe. Because the forest grew out of what mostly looked liked solid sheets of rock, I was able to see for miles in every direction. What I could not see, however, was what lay behind the top of the road ahead.

Carson Pass was filled with seemingly endless false summits. When we finally got some downhill, we got lots of it. As for me, being on the Eagle made the descent an enjoyable one. With my legs crossed in front of the steer tube, I was able to relax them as I sat high above the road and enjoyed the view. It felt like a magic carpet ride as I looked out on the El Dorado National Forest for well over half an hour.

Our gravity aided journey ended with headwinds as we approached Carson City. From the Nevada side, the Sierras we had just passed through looked foreboding indeed Instead of the trees that softened them as we looked east from California, the skyline that now flanked us was made up of hard and jagged rock formations. Instead of seeing green, everything began to look brown. We were however treated to a sunburst of color as we had come at time of year when tiny alpine flowers with their short growing season covered a lot of the lands through which we were now pedaling.

In Carson City itself, due largely to the efforts of one man, there is a lot of bicycle awareness. Through the activist organization, Muscle Powered Carson City and BikeCarson.com, the web site he uses to report about what is taking place, Jeff Moser is doing a lot to get people on bikes in what is the state’s capital city. And as he does and as others, especially at the level of state governance follow his lead, other cities in Nevada are beginning to take example from the work Jeff has served as the catalyst for.

We were happily surprised to see streets that had been signed for bike travel. We made use of them for well over five miles to safely get downtown where we saw bike racks located in front of popular places of business. In what appeared to be a bicycle friendly Carson City, at its State Capitol building, we met Jeff Moser and several other cyclists.

“”I told you I’d be back,” I called as we rolled to within talking distance. I was referring to the 2009 visit I had made to his city on the Eagle.

As I got off the bike, Jeff replied, “And I told you I’d make it worth your while. We’ve got the Governor and the Mayor!”

Jef f had more of a laid back, almost 1960’s look, than that of someone who was such a results getting powerhouse. Bespectacled, he wore his hair in a ponytail and his beard was not tightly cropped. Over his shoulder he wore a bike messenger bag.

Soon Mayor Bob Crowell and Governor Brian Sandoval appeared with several members of their respective staffs. They were all smiles and told us they were very happy that we had made them one of our stops. Everyone there seemed to know Jeff well enough to let him take the lead. After making sure everyone was introduced, Jeff explained to the small crowd that had gathered why we were there. In all of what must have been no more than fifteen minutes time, we were rewarded with NBG Day proclamations by both the city and the state of Nevada and everyone was on their way.

The Busycle did not make an appearance because it would be showing later in the day in Reno, which at nearly a quarter million people dwarfs the 52,000 residents that call Carson home.

Carson is the tiniest city any of our Mayors’ Rides visit. We had had to put a population requirement in place some time ago. This was so because we still do not have the resources to visit all those smaller towns and cities that want a stop from us when they hear we are coming through. We make an exception for Carson because it is the state capital and to honor the tireless efforts of Jeff Moser.

The route between Carson City and Reno was a most pleasant one once we got up and over the small mountains that separated us from Washoe Lake. Instead of biking along I-395 on its western side, we then much enjoyed the flat, lightly traveled two-lane road on the eastern side of what looked like a large marsh. About an hour later, we were in the small set of hills that gave way to Reno’s outer city limits.

From there the clump of buildings that signaled our destination, grew taller and higher from the desert floor as we rode. This, as during the last five miles, cars, intersections, driveways, stoplights and business storefronts began to compete for our attention.

The city of Reno originally came to life because of the 1859 discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in Virginia City 32 miles away. It was a discovery, which for several decades, produced one half of this nation’s silver. Since the strike was located up an isolated canyon, it had needed what would become Reno to get its precious metal out to the world.

Given life by the Truckee River, the land that is now downtown Reno was already an important oasis for desert weary California bound gold seekers. Beginning in 1849, Reno was the last stop these travelers made before they undertook the challenge of the Sierra Mountain Range.

On May 13, 1868, when the Transcontinental Railroad crossed the Sierras from Sacramento, Reno incorporated. The new city that emerged was named in honor of General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union army officer who had been killed during the Civil War.

Almost overnight, buildings began to replace the temporary settlements that had begun to emerge. Quickly Reno became an important freight and passenger center. With the arrival of rail, it grew rapidly. Due to its mining fortunes, Reno enjoyed great prosperity for the next 10 or 15 years.

When its reserves of the precious metal began to wane, so did its population. It was not until the Lincoln Highway made Reno a part of its route in 1914 that people stopped leaving. It took another 12 years for the Lincoln to be paved over the Sierras but as it prepared for the influx of cars a new asphalt roadway would bring, Reno began planning an exposition.

Welcome arches were fashionable during the 1920’s, so the founding fathers commissioned an arch to be placed at the center of downtown, at Virginia and Commercial, a few blocks away from 4th Street where the actual highway ran. It read:

“Reno Nevada’s Transcontinental Highways Exposition, June 25-August 11, 1927”

Seven years later the lettering was changed to read,

“The Biggest Little City in the World”.

A world famous slogan, Reno still greets its downtown visitors with this catchphrase even today. Because of the Lincoln, Reno had an engine to drive its economy. When another coast-to-coast roadway, the Victory Highway (usurped by US 40) then shared 4th St with the Lincoln, in 1926, automobile tourism became an even larger money generating force in the region.

Later when the Depression struck, in 1931 the town fathers legalized gambling as a way to encourage car visitors. By the end of World War II, easy automobile access to Reno’s casinos thrust gambling into the forefront of the local and state economy. Still looking for even more ways to reinvent itself from the glory days of silver, in 1957 Reno became home to the first commercial wedding chapel.

Today at 264.000 people, tourism is still the major industry in Reno. The hotel and casino industry attract more than five million visitors annually and add over four billion dollars to the local economy each year.

Nor does its proximity to the mountains we had just ridden through hurt. During the winter, they house the highest concentration of ski resorts in America, and it is their visitors who help make for a vibrant year round Reno economy.

While many people know Reno as a weekend car get away for gambling and/or marriage, few know that it has deep bicycling roots. In fact, the man who re-energized bicycling in America, Greg Lemond, was groomed for bike racing by the same club whose outgoing president, Mike Damon, has long supported our National Bicycle Greenway efforts.

When, in 1976, at age 14 Lemond decided to take up cycling so that he could improve his downhill skiing, it was the Reno Wheelmen that encouraged him to test his ability as a racer. Soon, Lemond was placing near the top not only in their races, but in every race he could find. It wasn’t long before he was burning up the California and then the national racing circuits.

When, in 1986, Greg went on to become the first American to win cycling’s most prestigious annual event, the three-week, 2,000-mile, Tour de France, his success prompted many to take up the sport. When he came back against long odds three years later to win the Tour on its very last day, after first overcoming shotgun wounds just to get to the starting line, he became a much exalted American hero. His was a story of hope that touched the sick, the old, the downtrodden, the poor and the rich as it brought people from all walks of life to cycling.

Also here in Reno, besides Mike Damon‘s Wheelmen, there is another man who worked hard to keep biking in the forefront of the local consciousness. For 25 years beginning in 1991, Tim Healion produced an extremely popularly, several day bicycle race that, like his now defunct coffee house that initially inspired it, the Deux Gros Nez, was both eclectic and fun. By adding a bike swap, parties, a century ride, kid, hand cycle (racing wheelchairs), and bike messenger races to the seasoned pro racers who competed for prize money, Tim had come up with a formula that attracted a wide following and enlisted the support of businesses through out the area.

We looked forward to meeting the Reno Mayor. Always supportive of our NBG Day, he had even driven the Busycle when Matthew and Heather brought it out from Boston in 2006. We got to the City Hall plaza well ahead of the 9AM meeting we had scheduled to beat the heat. Next to the Truckee River, the 17-floor City Hall towered high above us. A true desert skyscraper, it was separated from the river by the conspicuous open space where we had begun to assemble. Covered in concrete, it was the staging area for the riverside trail that would soon take us 12 miles across the city and out into the desert. It also served as an outdoor ice skating rink during the winter. With no landscaping or any real sense of order, it felt out of place with the businesses that were all tightly packed around the waterway in this part of town.

When I stopped at City Hall in 2009, I had learned why. It was then that I had put the Eagle in the elevator and traveled up to the 15th floor where Mayor Bob and Councilor Dave Aizzi greeted me with open arms. After they rewarded me with the Reno NBG Day proclamation, they went on to explain some of what I was seeing in the dramatic view of Reno that spread out below us. They said there used to be a building in what is now the plaza filled with people where we stood today.

After that meeting, I resolved to learn more about the structure that was missing from this conspicuous open space. It was the Mapes Hotel and Casino. The first major high-rise (12 stories) hotel built in this country after the Second World War had ended. Listed now in the National Register of Historic Places, it had been demolished in 2000 because it had fallen into a serious state of disrepair. A Google search showed me it was once a world class hotel where movie stars, congressmen and even politicians including Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr., Walter Matthau, Senator Joseph McCarthy and U.S. President Harry Truman had all performed or stayed.

One by one, the Reno bike activists who I had talked to over the years started rolling in. True to form Mike Damon got there before anyone else.

“All right Mike, you’re early like we are,” I exclaimed to a man whose strong body oozed out from inside of his colorful and tight cycle wear.

“I don’t sleep much anyway,” Mike began, “I always have just too much going with school, work and the kids. And I ‘gotta roll the miles and keep the bike stuff in front of the city,” he said with a smile in his voice.

“Like I’ve always said guy, you are one Marathon Man”.

In addition to all the rods he had in the fire up here, Mike always made time to ride down to Sacramento for our river ride. A mostly downhill distance of 165 miles, he did it all in one day. And the next day he rode the uphill ride back, which included the Mormon Immigrant Trail we had just slogged over.

Soon Tim Healion, who I had spent many hours with on the phone over the years, joined him. By the time the clock struck nine, Reno biking activism was well represented.

Mike Galioto, the owner of GSR Bicycles, Cliff Young from the Nevada Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, Ernie McNeill, an officer for the Procrastinating Pedalers, and Mark Trujillo, the owner of Waldens Coffee Shop, the gathering spot for many local cyclists, were all there when Mayor Bob walked down the steps to greet us. Joining him was councilman Aiazzi who never missed an NBG Day opportunity to give face to Reno’s support of cycling. Marcia Morse was there too.

A cheery middle-aged woman, she had always made Mike Damon and I feel like our efforts to involve City Hall were important. And in those years when Mayor Bob couldn’t make it, she went out of her way to make sure there was someone present to give one of our rider/scouts the Mayor’s proclamation in his stead. In fact, her enthusiasm for what we were doing was so contagious that Councilor Dave never missed a chance to meet with us. With or without Bob, he had been there for us six years in a row now!

“Well, well, it looks like all the bike leaders are here.” Dave called as he walked toward us. While he was of average looks and height, his personality was filled with fire.

Energetic and dynamic, he continued, “The Mayor’s got a proclamation for all of you. What do you say we read it, then maybe we can all talk for a short bit!”

Mike, Tim, Dave, the Mayor and me and my crew all knew what that meant. Since most of the local cyclists that were there with us knew Bob and Dave fairly well, there was laughter and jokes as we got our bikes into position. We even got an onlooker into our act when an innocent grandma agreed to serve as our group photographer. By the time our choreography was complete, Mayor Bob then read us the 2011 proclamation. A gentle man, all of us could feel his power when he read the words. We also knew that he genuinely meant what he said.

While Bob and Dave both made us feel instantly comfortable, even as we spoke afterwards for another ten minutes or so, they kept alluding to the fact that they were here to serve the needs of their constituents. They wanted to know what they needed to do to make their city safe for their cyclists. We could tell that it was clear to them that by placing the needs of bike riders above those of motorists only interested in getting in and out of town in the fastest way possible, that they would be improving the quality of life for Reno citizens.

For the next hour, we celebrated the fact that we were leaving Reno cycling in good hands with a few Busycle passes under the original Reno arch that now stands near City Hall on Lake Street. Located adjacent to the Truckee River, it had come to this area in 1995 after it had spent time in a few other downtown locations. As the press and tourists pointed their cameras at us, our short rides were done with Mayor Bob in the driver’s seat again.

Later that evening, several blocks away, on Virginia Street, under the second arch that had come to Reno in 1987, we did public Busycle demonstration rides. In the outdoor mall that was a part of the massive 950 room Harrah’s Hotel & Casino, we were able to let the people of Reno take their turn at pedal powered teamwork in a setting free of cars.

The Reno people even entertained our efforts with a band that played live rock and roll music!

By the time another NBG Day was on the books, we knew we were headed for some long periods where there would be little to distract us from the effort at hand. Our days in the desert ahead would be filled with challenge on many levels as we worked our way through the most mountainous state in the Union. All this before our next Mayors’ Ride stop -

Salt Lake City!

I revised this book because there is a lot of good writing here that aligns quite well with NBG Blueprint. It was written in Europe, where my Irish wife thought it was garbage (I only realize now this was so because it is about my country not hers) . Half believing her, I did not promote it.

As I continue to break it down into bite size chunks, you will see how, with Indianapolis as its center, the NBG coast to coast bicycle highway. Is becoming genuinely realistic!

I am revising this book because there is a lot of good writing here that aligns quite well with a lot of the stuff you see me pushing over the transom here. It was written in Europe, where my Irish wife thought it was garbage. Half believing her, I did not promote it. It did not help me that she kept me off Facebook. Here then, is the lightlly overhauled foreword -

Foreword

“Awake Again, All the way back from head injury”, the true story of how I used the bicycle to rebuild my body and my mind after clinical death, a two-month coma and paralysis, closes with the words:

------------------------------------------

What would I do when this final leg of my journey was complete? How could I use the energy of a story that had been witnessed by close to forty million people through the various media? Was helping to build a head-injury hospital really consistent with what I was all about? Was that the right way to channel my efforts, for the best return?

Then it hit me. Bike riding had been so beneficial for me in my rehabilitation. Not only was it good for my physical therapy, but my long rides had helped me sort out and process so much information that had overwhelmed me at first. How about bikeway across the nation that head-injured people and bikers everywhere could use in their physical and mental therapy?

On a larger scale, I knew that such a pathway would also improve the well being of our nation in many ways.

The idea was so powerful that I had to stop my bike. I sat down and gazed over a small lake along the way. To reach such a goal, I knew I would have to acquire a lot of business skills and build an organization. And though I was sure that it was an idea whose time was coming, I knew it could take years before the need for such an important right of way would sink into the country’s consciousness.

But the power and beauty of the vision were overwhelming and extremely exciting. Having crossed the country twice on a bike, I knew better than anyone how badly a bikeway across the USA was needed. And finally, it would give me another challenge.

For now, however, I had to finish my ride. I spent the night in an inn at Provincetown.

<conversation snipped>

I resolved that, no matter how many years it took, building a coast-to-coast bicycle greenway would be my next goal. It would be a proper way to honor all of those people who had helped me along on my path.

And finally, I actually felt grateful for my car wreck. Without it, I would never have grown as much as I had, never have understood myself as well and come to terms with that understanding. I had finally come to love and accept myself, and I had come a long way from the skinny, insecure kid I’d been.

I felt like my recovery was complete. I was happy with who I was I knew if I could do what I’d done, beat my head injury with the help of others, I could rally people around something of importance to all of the planet, and its children and its children’s children.

The words of the sixth-century Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu went through my mind:

I knew I had already begun.

Preface

In getting from one coast to the other here in America, as you will see when we talk about Indianapolis’s significance to the opening of the West, as forms of travel evolved, so did the one main route they journeyed upon. By canoe and horseback man first pioneered his way west via the Lewis and Clark expedition. The covered wagons of those seeking free land or California gold altered it with the Oregon and California Trails that soon followed. It wasn’t long before the transcontinental railroad closely paralleled the known way West to then rewrite all the rules for coast-to-coast travel. By the time automobiles made the connection to California with the Lincoln Highway, the way to move across this Nation’s lands was then carved in stone. Of all these connections, none empowered the individual, shifted the collective consciousness or stimulated the nation’s imagination more than the Lincoln Highway.

No more than ruts in the grass or a “red line on a map connecting all the worst mudholes in the Country” as it was referred to by many when it began, it was formed by those who dared to think big. This as the courage of its early users was equally as large. And yet it would go on to impact how people lived on this continent in many ways similar to how the Tran Siberia Railroad across Russia as well as the Silk Road across Asia affected the lives of eastern Europeans. In the end, even though it was never one road but made use of many, the Lincoln Highway still changed our geography, enlarged the scope for what was possible and began to show that strangers are only friends one has yet to meet.

Long is this how I have foreseen the impact that the National Bicycle Greenway can

have for America. And we are getting closer to the shift in mass consciousness that will

take place when we as a Nation begin to demand the NBG. In the not too distant future, it will become plainly evident that this country must be outfitted with the labyrinth of safe bike roads and paths our organization has long envisioned.

Using the early Lincoln Highway as an example, then, in “Lessons Learned from America’s First Coast-to-Coast Highway in Building the NBG”, I show you how we can switch from the car consciousness it brought about to make it very American to put the bicycle in the center of one’s world.

And as more of us do, we will saturate all the roads all over this Nation with human power. As we go about creating the heaven on earth we call the National Bicycle Greenway, it will help us to better understand how it was the Lincoln Highway that brought about unbridled growth as it also made America one. You can learn about the Lincoln and what it has taught us in this book’s appendix.

“OK let me see if I understand all of this correctly,” the reporter said, as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, “the news release you guys sent out has a picture of you on that bike, and it says you are going to ride it all the way to Washington, DC.

What do you call that thing anyway?”

“Well, they’ve collected a lot of names over the years. You can call it a HiWheel or an

Ordinary or a Penny Farthing,” I answered.

“However this one is backwards facing.

Called an Eagle, it is the last evolution of the HiWheel, it’s the high performance version.”

“These things really are amazing,” the newsman said as he looked around to the other HiWheel bikes that had begun to assemble, each with their own little fan club of admirers.

Speaking as he wrote, he continued, “and I do want to talk about your bike, but what is this about using this year’s Mayors’ Ride to promote some kind of book you have written that talks about a coast to coast bike path?”

“Well first of all let me start by saying it is not a bike path but a coast to coast network of bikeable roads and paths that will in time give way to a dedicated arterial for bikes, but for now we will have to share with cars.”

As the newspaper reporter scribbled, a TV cameraman squeezed in next to Don Loomis, one of my fellow riders. A tall man, Don had already begun filming our ride across the US for the documentary that would result. However, to keep our ride in present time for our on line audience, I would regularly be sending audio clips to our staff back home. Armed with the recorder on my iPhone, I would regularly be uploading those exchanges I had had with city officials, bike activists and interesting locals along the way.

To keep our ride fresh, as soon as we took them, my crew and I would be sending the video and photos we took with our picture taking devices directly to the web page we had set up for this. Such immediate publication would complement the interviews we would also be doing on the bus in the small room we had built for this. Besides the podcast and slide show pages that would result, if all that weren’t enough to keep our ride at the cutting edge, excerpts from Don’s video would also track our progress.

And who could ignore the Busycle? Our demonstration ride here on the streets surrounding City Hall still had everyone buzzing. In and of itself, our 15-person “bicycle” was a story about which this whole book and not just a whole chapter could have been written. A reconverted Dodge cargo van, once my ride was complete in Washington, DC, we would be towing it back to Boston.

As you will see in this book’s appendix, the smile invoking vehicle that our eco-friendly, reconverted transit bus would be towing from Mayors’ Ride city to Mayors’ Ride city, began life in Beantown. While here in the 21st Century the Busycle was recycled from the discards of Bostonians, the first Bicycles were introduced to America in Boston. It was in then, in 1877, that Col Albert Pope brought two HiWheel Bicycles from Europe for Bostonians to wonder at. A year later, in nearby Hartford, Connecticut, he used them as a template to establish the first domestic bicycle manufacturing operation in America.

Here now as we celebrate the 141 year anniversary of Thomas Stevens’ being the first to ride a bike across America, a ride that ended in Boston on abike similar to what I was riding, our ride would pass though a lot of the same cities that Stevens did.

As for the Busycle itself, it started out as an art project. However, it became an exciting possibility for the future of transportation as many dozens of people from all walks of life combined their talents to make something of an assortment of once forsaken discards.

As they scoured landfills and recycling dumps so that they could spoof their community with something made of junk that performed a useful function, little did they know how much hope they would be producing. And as this book will show you about the Busycle, as it expands our consciousness, a national fleet of Busycles, can also help to heal the planet on lots of levels.

A lot had happened in the world since I had gotten so many headlines with my last bike ride across the US. So much so that we would have to come at the media in as many ways as possible to get their interest. Besides our handsome bus, the Busycle, and my HiWheel bike, there was also this book and this Author Tour. In fact there were so many things to keep track of, I had to keep reminding myself it was “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich” (HBGR), the anchor that held it all together, that was why we were even doing any of this to begin with. Despite the fact that my book signing the day before went well, I knew they would only get better. Even though maybe just fifteen people showed up and I only sold three books, I reminded myself that it still had an impact. After all, the news releases we had sent also got publicity for our ride and for the National Bicycle Greenway vision.

When the bookstore owner told me he was happy with the turnout and the exposure it got in the local papers for his place of business, I knew that what we had tried would work in all the bookstores in all the cities ahead of us.

Since he could not justify doing an event that would give access to my on-line books for the small $4.95 price we ask for them, we added my hard cover book, “Awake Again”. As such, for the $25 his customers paid for a signed copy, they also got the HBGR e-book purchase code. So the books I did sell showed both of us that we had concocted a formula that would work!

People on bikes continued to trickle in.

Taking the newsman’s silence as my cue to give him more to write about, I continued, “and yes this year will be about the book I have written that describes how we will overcome some of the same challenges that the builders of the Lincoln, America’s very first highway, overcame. And how, in so doing, we are going to saturate the mass consciousness with our vision, But every year for the last twelve, you have heard us talk about the National Bicycle Greenway with our Mayors’ Rides,” I said as I looked around to the small crowd of press people who had begun to move closer, “now it’s time to start talking about what will happen when this ride locates a funding source for the on line bike mapping system I took a solid Mayors’ Ride season to devise. And when this ride also draws out funding for the outside the box business plan I have been working on for the National Bicycle Greenway all these years; all this will combine to start growing what we call the NBG economy.”

Nodding, the reporter continued, “That’s something I’ve never really quite understood. Maybe you can tell my readers what a Mayors’ Ride has to do with biking across America.”

Disappointed that none of the reporters wanted to hear how a bike centric world would change the way we exchange and do business with one another, before I answered his question, I looked to my side to make sure Don had his camera on me for my answer. I tapped the recorder icon on my iPhone.

“So are you ready for my standard answer?” I asked. “I’m warning you, it’s ‘‘gonna sound like a training video.”

“Sure, we’ll just take what we need”.

“Well, OK, but you ‘‘gotta promise me you will listen to the whole thing,” I teased. “So here goes,” I said, as I watched for a reaction.

Seeing that there was interest, I knew the long version was appropriate, “with the biking report cards cities file with us to show us what they have been doing to improve the conditions for their cyclists and that we then celebrate in proclamation form when we visit, we are giving civic leaders all across America a forum they can use to showcase their bicycle infrastructure. In order to improve their standing in relation to other Mayors’ Ride cities, this scorecard helps them see the importance of teaming up with their local bike activists; it encourages city staff to work with those with daily bike rubber on the streets.

“We are also helping public officials show America and their own citizens how much value they place on the bicycle as a part of their transportation mix. And as we do so, we are giving these officials a way to make their city look healthy, vibrant and alive for prospective tourists, employers and other revenue generating concerns thinking about setting up shop in their city.”

Happy to see that he and a few other reporters we taking notes, I added more detail, “Besides helping cities to see that good bike infrastructure means good quality of life, by placing them in friendly competition with one another, as they make it safe for bike riders to get to their own businesses and attractions, our Mayors’ Ride cities, by default, will also become attractive travel destinations for out of the area bike riders. And as cyclists regularly enjoy the roads and paths that connect these cities to one another, when these population centers see how much business long haul cyclists are bringing their way in the form of hotel stays, restaurant meals and visits to their sights-to-see, etc, city leaders will lobby their regional legislators to make it safer and more enjoyable for pedal visitors to reach them. And as this happens, the momentum for a Greenway network that connects our growing network of Mayors’ Ride cities to one another will explode bc into a momentum that cannot be stopped!!!”

“Hmmm, I thought long distance bike riders like the back roads. Why don’t we just figure out some way to shuttle bikes out there if guys like you want to go bike riding?”

I smiled as I could tell that others from our organization wanted to answer the question for me. “That’s exactly the point, we’re working to change consciousness. I mean, no offense, but look at what you just did, I said ‘bicycle’ and you only heard that we want cities to make it safe to get to the back roads and not that we are trying to turn cities into worthy biking destinations. Yes there is a large population of cyclists who for fitness or recreation only ride the back roads. And yet making such riding turf more accessible is not part of our mission. The NBG Day at each of our Mayors’ Ride cities has the express purpose of showcasing what is being done to make cycling safe and enjoyable INSIDE,” I paused to give special emphasis to the word ‘inside’, “each of the cities we visit!”

Nodding he kept writing.

“Think of it this way, where are all these people for whom you’d like to make the back roads more accessible? They are right here in the city. What sense does it make to put a car trip between them and their desire to recreate on a bicycle? That’s just one more car. Traffic. And then you got to build a staging area for them to park their cars, and since road cyclists could be gone for hours, you’d need to get security out there.

Otherwise, talk about a breeding ground for theft and vandalism. And you’d also have to get water out there for the bathrooms and landscaping. Wouldn’t that money be better spent retrofitting the roads and paths that already exist here in the city so cyclists and not just cars can also use them? And, as bike trips replace car trips, everybody wins!”

“You make some good points,” the newsman said as kept taking notes.

“I mean how silly is it for someone to have to hop in a car to go a few blocks to go get an ice cream or a gallon of milk? You know, something like 80% of all car trips are less than five miles. Perfectly doable on a bike. Might take half an hour to get there on a bicycle, even if you take your time. If you take your car you lose ‘cuz you don’t get exercise and those kind of trips are the hardest on your car and the dirtiest for the planet. And usually by the time you fight traffic and find a parking spot and walk to and from your car you come in tied with a bike rider doing the same trip who parks right at the entrance and whizzed by all the vehicles sitting in traffic. And you know why more people don’t walk, uh bike, the talk of this logic?”

I paused to see if I still had their interest before I continued, “because it’s just not safe out there for most. And yet if people could just develop their bike skills on at least one Greenway bike-safe arterial in town, we’d start to see bikes everywhere.”

“What about old people? They are the ones who vote and if you are going to get any government help you’ve got to convince them that it is good to see all these healthy people zipping in and out of traffic and running red lights,” a reporter called out to me from the back of the group. Seeing that he had my attention, he continued, “I hear it from my 71 year old mom all the time that she’s worried about hitting someone on a bike.” As he finished, I could see microphones pointed at my mouth waiting to record my response. Don was also waiting for my reply with his video camera.

“If you look at old people, they are terrified of losing their license because to them, that is a death sentence. They lose their freedom. All they have left are buses and cost prohibitive Uber trips. Bikes are out of the question because there is nowhere safe for them to ride even a three-wheel bike when they start to lose their balance skills. And I used to talk to them all the time when I rode a trike. They were usually the most curious about that mode of conveyance. It was obvious to me that they see three wheels as a way for them to get around but then I can see in their eyes that they realize it is not the ticket to freedom they seek because there is no room on the roads for them, And yet if we had running through town a Downtown Greenway fed by wide bike laned spurs that connect to shopping and business districts and the like, do you not think your mom would love to be out there riding with all those bike riders she does not want to hit? And she can even go as slow as she wants. And most three and even four wheeled bikes have plenty of cargo space...”

“Excuse me.” another reporter asked, “but did you say you also ride an adult trike?”

“Well OK, I ‘gotta admit that for the last ten years I’ve only been riding HiWheels. For transportation no less. So that I’d be ready for what I have ahead of me and to be honest I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing when I had to sell my last trike so I could pay for at least some of this bike,” I paused as I let them run their eyes over the 1891 Eagle that I held before them. “But before I got hooked on riding Ordinaries, another name for these kind of bikes, I had several trikes. I even had one that I could run as a tandem by hooking another one to its rear haunches. In fact when I lived in Santa Cruz, that was pretty much the only way that I got around. Super comfortable and the way they are building them now mine was also pretty fast.”

“That’s how I got my wife, Jenifer, hooked on cycling. When I first met her, she had all these fancy cars she was so proud of and I’d take her for rides on the back of my tandem trike. And look at her now,” I said as I pointed to a fit looking, blonde standing next to a recumbent bike. Like me, she did not like being down so low or all the people who treated her like she was handicapped.

When I explained to her that trikes make your brain lazy, that you can ride a three wheel bike a lot father with your eyes closed than you can on two wheels, she agreed that she needed to be on two wheels for as long as she was able.

She was surrounded by her own group of admirers. “Here ten years later, she’s going to ride across the US. She’s ‘gonna be our den mother.” I joked “She’s ‘gonna make sure we all eat right and make sure we all behave.”

A well known actress and film director, she juggled a million balls, at once. For her, making sure our needs were met would be a vacation for her. Despite the fact that the rest of my group was made up of TransAM veteran cyclists, Don, Skot, Bill and myself had all been across before, we all knew Jenifer would have the benefit of our experience. Even the bike she was riding had been across before. It was the same recumbent that Skot had used in his 1998 crossing.

“So I’m a little confused here, you’ve got this great team and all these fancy new bikes, why are you going backwards in time if modern day bikes are what are going to be using on the Greenway?”

“I asked someone in your group why they weren’t riding a bike like yours and they said they’re not crazy,” another reporter interjected.

“Who said that?” I said chuckling as I tossed a playful glance at my group. “Yeah, they are dangerous and 10 miles riding one can sometimes feel like 30, but there in San Francisco,” I said, as I looked south, “They have a hospital that my leg from being amputated. I ended up at UCSF after three other hospitals had given up on me and when Moffet (locals there also used this name to refer to the hospital) figured out what was wrong with my leg, it wasn’t but a few weeks later that the swelling stopped and I came out of the coma I had been in.

“That’s all in my book, “Awake Again” and I am telling you this because I almost didn’t have two legs with which to ride any kind of bike to rebuild my punctured lung and all the other things that were wrong with me. And then even though I used a regular bike toEagle do so and rode one across the US the first time, it was not until a few years ago, that people stopped thinking that I rode a recumbent because I had not fully recovered.

“Even on my 1986 ride, they never stopped to think how much harder it was for me to pull a hundred pounds worth of trailer on what had become a 13 foot long rig. When they’d see me on my three-wheeler, it always seemed like they felt sorry for me.

“And now instead of people feeling sorry for me, they want to know what I have to say!

And not just about how I got better, all of a sudden I hear ‘cool bike’ a lot from people of all ages and ethnicities and if I stop and talk to them about the bike, they always then listen how a return to the simplicity of cycling can’t help but heal our broken Nation!”

Wanting to talk also about bike taxis for easing congestion by carrying tourists and even old people around and hoping they would also give me an opening to talk about bike trailers for carrying stuff, the attention started to shift from me to the front door of city hall. People in suits began to appear.

And one of them, a familiar face started walking toward our group, “Hi Martin,” he called.

“Hey Hans, looks like we got a good crowd this year,” I observed as I looked around the massive city hall complex. It took up a full city block. City Hall itself stood 18 stories tall as a gleaming structure that was at the center of a downtown that had undergone a

complete facelift. As with all our previous Mayors’ Ride visits, on our way in, we were reminded how thoroughly San Jose had reinvented itself in the last decade.

For block after block, there were new street lamps, benches and other new street furniture. Power poles and power lines were absent. The streets had been narrowed to make way for the wider and far more walkable sidewalks. All the storefronts along the way had been modernized. The infrastructure needed to support the city’s extensive light rail network, could be seen everywhere.

New parks and wide promenades seemed to tell of a municipality fueled by a bold vision.

Just outside the doors to one of City Hall’s several entrance ways, folding tables had been set up with NBG literature, copies of our books, bagels and several tubs of bottled water and juice.

Despite all the attention my group and I were getting, I knew the real focus would soon be on the inhabitants of the building that anchored this complex. We were all waiting for the Mayor to greet us with the first of this year’s 20 other NBG Day proclamations.

Hans represented the San Jose Department of Transportation. He was its director and he and I had talked a lot over the last few years about the logistics of our annual celebration. We shook hands.

“Come on Martin, the Mayor’s almost ready for you guys,” he said as he signaled to the media that we had to relocate while we waited for the Mayor.

As we started to walk the short way to where our event would take place, he continued, “So you’re ‘‘gonna do the whole thing this year on that thing, huh. That’s impressive. I’m always amazed when I see you demonstrate for the press. I ‘‘gotta admit you do make it look easy but how you get so high up there and then float around just looks so cool”.

Hans looked the part of the cyclist he was. Fit and sandy haired, he was a bit taller than myself. He and I were headed to an area in the wide-open plaza that filled almost half of the massive City Hall complex where a podium with the official seal for the city of San Jose and a microphone had been set up. Behind it, a small stage was covered with wires, amplifiers, and a handful of musicians and their instruments. The small band was playing a blues tune that became more and more audible as we approached.

“I say we get this show on the road,” Hans said as we strolled over to where all the attention would soon be focused. Just as we got to the speaking area, Mayor Chuck Reed, appeared. A man with strong features and a receding hairline, Chuck was widely respected and I felt honored that he always made time for our annual event. But how could he not? He shared the enthusiasm of his fellow city and staff leaders to turn San Jose into the world leader in sustainable transportation.

Armed with a general plan within which the bicycle filled a big part of the equation, he is blessed with some of the best weather on the planet and a healthy smorgasbord of mostly flat roads that make up the valley floor his population center occupies.

Nor could it hurt that some of the world’s best back road cycling could be found in the two mountain ranges that border both sides of his city. On one side is the beautiful Coast Range that separates his constituents from Santa Cruz and the Pacific Ocean. While on the other are the gentle, bike friendly switchbacks of 4,300 foot-tall Mt Hamilton.

It is this hill work that modern day cyclists on their geared two wheelers enjoy today, while long ago, at the turn of the last century, its many many miles of level terrain established San Jose as a Mecca for San Francisco Bay Area cyclists. And it is this preponderance of even turf today that has helped to make its monthly San Jose Bike Party, a ride that attracts thousands, the original bike party, begun in 2007 it, continues to groom whole new generations of far less car dependent bike riders.

Led by the bicycle in its plan to get people out of their cars, the new San Jose that has emerged in the last two decades has felt the pull of its rich two-wheel heritage. In the late 1800’s, even when there were only 4,000 people living there, there were still 27 bike clubs, an equal number of bike shops and its bike racing was the most popular spectator sport in the entire state. In fact, its velodrome, Hellyer Park, after it was built in 1963, to honor its original 1892 two wheel raceway, stood for two decades as the only bike racing track west of the Mississippi until one was built near Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympic games.

As testimony to the honor the city holds for its bicycle roots, on one of our recent Mayors’ Ride visits to City Hall, John Brazil, their Bike Coordinator, took several of us on a tour of the many exhibits they have of bikes at work and play in turn of the 20th century San Jose. From olden day mail carriers to the bikes that moved fruit around in the many orchards that used to fill these lands, each display was made up of a bike that had been fully restored along with its history tastefully displayed on a handsome plaque. At the ground level floor of the cavernous city business building, it seemed like every time we turned a corner, a new two-wheeled presentation appeared.

“Well hello Martin, good to see you again this year,” called the Mayor. He reached out his hand as he approached.

“Hello Mayor Reed!” I said confidently as we shook hands.

“Great to see you again this year, Martin, looks like you brought a lot of your friends,” he smiled as he looked off to the crowd of maybe a few hundred media people and well wishers.

“My staff tells me this year is different, that you are riding all the way to pWashington, DC. And with a book you’ve written no less!”

“That’s right, I even have a signed copy for you,” I said when Don Burrus, the Mayor’s scheduler interrupted.

“Martin, we’re going to have to cut it a little closer than what we talked about on the phone, the Mayor has to get over to the New Almaden Quicksilver mines for a museum rededication”.

In the 19h Century, it was quicksilver that had helped shape early San Jose. In fact, in the same way farm roads once connected to ma ny of the world’s town cores like the spokes on a wheel, Almaden Road, much of it now an expressway, travels from the long abandoned mines the Mayor would be visiting to the city’s downtown. It was the once dhighly prized metal these mines used to produce that San Jose once shipped out to an anxiously waiting world.

Back then, quicksilver’s uses were many. During the 1849 Gold Rush, when hydraulic smining became popular, for example, it was quicksilver that helped to extract gold from the ore filled rocks. While during the First World War, it was the produce of San Jose’s mines that gave our military an advantage. This was so because the triggering mechanisms of the day needed quicksilver, or mercury, as it is also called, to make gunpowder explode.

A cheery, upbeat man, Don had always worked to make sure we stood out on the Mayor’s business calendar. And today, it was obvious that he was taking the lead.

“Celia,” he called, “can you get the proclamation over here and let’s all get going”. To a woman named Liz who had earlier reminded me that she wanted to ride the Busycle again, she rode it around the plaza with us last year, he asked, “Can you let the band know they’re ‘‘gonna have to wrap it up for a bit. Tell them now is when we need them to take their break.”

As our new field general choreographed the scene, I told the Mayor that one of the cameras that was trained on us was for the documentary that would result from this year’s ride. I was talking about the one being held by Don Loomis. Don had biked across the US for us in 2004. Having taken copious notes on that ride, it has been Don’s route that we have been working to fine tune ever since.

Then almost as if taking his cue from a script. Don Burrus walked up to the microphone and started talking, “On behalf of the City of San Jose and Mayor Reed’s office, we’d like to welcome all of you who have come here today for San Jose NBG Day. Today the Mayor will be presenting a proclamation to the National Bicycle Greenway organization to honor them for their mission to connect all the cities across America with safe bikeable roads and paths. So without further delay I give you a respected friend of San Jose cyclists, Mayor Chuck Reed!”

We began to clap.

“Thank you,” the Mayor began as he nodded first to Don, Hans and the rest of his staff before he looked out to the crowd and the small pool of reporters before him. I stood behind him off to his right with my fellow riders. Once on the road, because I moved so slow, they would ride ahead of me and in the towns and cities along the way, since mine would be the first crossing of America on a backwards facing HiWheel, they would use my coming arrival to drum up interest in our ride.

In between population centers, we would all be doing our own rides. While at the end of the day we would join one another again at a predetermined sleeping spot. The plan was for our driver to already have a spot all set up for the bus, my Sunfood shake ready to drink and a meal made so I could eat and do a few yoga stretches before I collapsed into my small bed.

“Before I read the proclamation, I want to first acknowledge the group of cyclists here at my right,” the Mayor began, “On behalf of the National Bicycle Greenway these brave men and women will be taking the message we send them off with here today to the towns and cities between here and Washington DC. Can I get the four of you to take a step forward so the crowd can see who you are?”

As Jenifer, Skot, Don and Bill moved next to the Mayor, a drum roll could be heard as many of the people who had come began to clap. Someone from the crowd began to chant, “NBG, NBG” as a few others joined in before Mayor Reed smiled and reading from a small piece of paper said on the loudspeaker that drowned everyone else out,

“Thank you Jennifer Aniston, Skot Paschal, Bill Campbell, Don Loomis, and Martin Krieg.”

He waited a few moments for calm to return.

“So we have come here today to honor the possibilities that the National Bicycle Greenway can mean for Americans and for our great city,” the Mayor began. Holding

the San Jose proclamation before himself, he read,

WHEREAS, San Jose’s bicycle heritage dating back to the 19th Century has been rich and multi-faceted; and

WHEREAS, the city of San Jose foresees a safe bicycle Bconnection that connects our city with Washington, DC; and

WHEREAS, in its general plan, the city of San Jose recognizes the bicycle as an important part of its goal to become this nation’s leader in sustainable transportation; and

WHEREAS, San Jose’s weather and plethora of bike paths and flat traffic calmed streets, as well as its abundant smorgasbord of back road biking, long have combined to make it a place where cyclists place their wheels.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF SAN JOSE, do hereby proclaim May 2, 2025, as “NATIONAL BICYCLE GREENWAY DAY” in San Jose, CA.

After he read the last sentence, he turned to me as he said, “And this year we have NBG Founding Director, Martin Krieg, present to tell us what other cities they will be visiting here in the Bay Area and in the rest of the State. But before I do that I want to give him and his fellow riders a gift they can deliver to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser from the citizens of San Jose.”

Handing me a plaque set on a hard plastic base, obviously to make it light, hecontinued, “Martin, can you read this to our guests today?”

Smiling, I replied, “Wow, this is really awesome, and yes, I’ll be happy to.”

I set it on the lectern and read the words

“To the elected officials of Washington, DC and the public they serve: As your city and ours join hands with other great bike cities to make it safe for cyclists to move about, we acknowledge Washington, DC for the example it has set to make the bicycle an important part of its transportation infrastructure. This as we look forward to joining you on the National Bicycle Greenway ”

Holding it up for the crowd to see, I continued, “and then it has Mayor Reed’s signature, and then it has the colorful seal for the city of San Jose on it and today’s date.

This is so beautiful, thank you Mayor Reed and we will all be so proud to deliver it.”

The Mayor smiled as he motioned for me to continue, “In the interest of time, I will be brief but I do want to say that we will be riding to Palo Alto today, from there to San Francisco tomorrow and on Wednesday afternoon we’ll be in Oakland before we head off to Berkeley, Napa and then do Sacramento to Folsom along the amazing America River Parkway.

Once we leave California, we will visit 13 other cities on our ride to Washington, DC. And by default, the 2025 Mayors’ Ride will be the rough equivalent of what America’s first coast to coast cyclist, Thomas Stevens did all the way back in 1884, when he rode one of these things from Oakland to Boston”.

The news people pressed closer as they looked at the Eagle HiWheel I held before me.

“And I want to thank the gracious leaders of the city of San Jose for always welcoming us and this year in particular as by my pedaling history on this the machine that called for America’s first roads we ask for a return to some of that same simplicity our forefathers enjoyed as we bike and grow richer in body, mind and spirit. And it is for this reason, that I want you, Mayor Chuck Reed, to have one of the first print copies of my book, “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich.” I turned away from the crowd as I walked a few feet to where the Mayor was standing with three or four members of his staff. They all wore suits. I handed him my book along with an NBG baseball cap.

“Thank you very much Martin. I know some people on my staff have read your story in “Awake Again” and told me how it was inspiring, so this ought to be good.”

As he then put on the hat and posed with my book and me for a few photos, a voice boomed out over the loudspeakers.

Hans had taken over at the microphone, “On behalf of the Mayor, I want to thank all of you for coming out today. We’d love to stick around and listen to some of the great music you have here today, eat some of this great food and listen to some of the great speakers we have heard will be here but we have to be on the other side of town for another event that we are already late for. And I hate to say it but we are going in a car.”

As Hans started walking toward us, someone from the crowd shouted, “Bet you’d get there faster on a bike!”

Chuckling Hans said, “You know that guy’s probably right. I just don’t know how well the rest of our group would hold up...”

Hearing that I thought about how on a bike, and even sometimes on my slow HiWheeler from back in the 19th century, if the traffic was bad enough, I still could beat the average car driver two or three miles across town. And then that didn’t include my then having to. deal with parking. Often I rolled right up to the entrance. But I knew what Hans meant.

The group he was moving about with were average Americans, unlike the people in some of the cities of Europe.

In Copenhagen or Amsterdam, for example, the young and the old, in all kinds of dress ride their bikes not just for recreation but for transportation.They use them to shop, to go to restaurants or pick up dry cleaning. Their bikes get them to work and back, to movies, to visit a friend. Taking that thought to its extreme I mused about pre-2000 China, where before the automobile arrived, in its cities, bicycles merrily scurried about filling almost every piece of open space.

But like most Americans, the Mayor’s group lacked bicycle conditioning because in most of the USA, it was just not safe for an inexperienced cyclist to try to get to most destinations. And there were few safe places for them to even rebuild those skills that had likely grown rusty with disuse. I knew, like I was telling the reporter earlier, that was why we don’t see more old people on bikes. I also knew that was why people in the US grow larger, less healthy and more angry at one another as they wait in traffic trying to keep themselves safe.

Is that any way to live? Walk a few steps and sit in a car. Walk a few steps and sit in an office. Walk a few steps and sit in a car again. Walk a few steps and sit in front of food.

A few more steps to a seat in front of the TV. A few more steps to the bathroom and then bed. And wake up the next day and REPEAT. Over and over again

Throw in the nightmare of traffic in and it’s no wonder Americans are stressed to the max. It’sno mystery why complicated diseases are common and being overweight is the norm.

“So Martin, we’re outta here. THX for a great program and Good Luck on your ride,” Hans said as he reached out to shake my hand.

“Yes good luck on your ride,” the Mayor said. Raising my book to eye level he said, “I’ll be hoping for the best for you as I’m reading this!”

As I watched them walk away, Don Loomis walked up to me,“Well are you ready to go?” he asked. “We’re all over there,” he said as he pointed to the twenty or so cyclists waiting for me. Standing with their recumbents, HIWheels, three speeds and mountain bikes, they were all near the traffic calmed street with the three bicycle police who would take us to the quiet Baylands pathways that ringed much of the San Francisco Bay.

As wetlands preservation areas, the lands we soon would be reveling in had escaped development because solid foundations could not be erected in their marshy soils. While large sections of them had been lost to dredging or in-fill, even salt farms, in what remained, as the rest of the Bay Area developed around them, many of the same native plant species that greeted the first 18th Century Spanish explorers, still grow there today.

As the tides ebb and flow to cover and expose them, the tall salt grasses also serve as habitat for the wide variety of migrating fowl that make them their home. Because it sits at the southern end of the Bay, San Jose serves as caretaker for a large swath of these open space lands. In its stewardship role, it has made them accessible with an impressive network of paved pathways that run like dikes above the watery nature below. As we made our way north, it was out there that we would hardly know highly active cities with all their busy roads stood not far away from us.

It was this kind of riding we would enjoy almost half of the way to Palo Alto, another one of the best biking cities in the nation, and the next Mayors’ Ride city we would visit.

After probably fifteen miles of quiet Car-Free pedaling, we reentered the civilized world at Moffat Field. Its three enormous Quonset hut shaped hangers, built to house massive lighter than air dirigibles, had grown larger and larger in size as we got closer and closer. Hundreds of feet tall and several football fields in length, the biggest occupies an eight acre footprint, which, when it was built in 1932, made it the biggest building in the world. Once anchoring a Navy base, they signal the sprawling NASA Ames Research center, which is now the biggest and almost lone occupier of these wetland areas. Google, the Internet giant, is also a not far away neighbor. Though nowhere near as close to the waters of the San Francisco Bay as the Hangers, some of Google’s huge campus of buildings were also built on reclaimed bay lands soils in nearby Mountain View, CA.

“So John, isn’t this where you cut out?’ Bill called.

“I’ll ride ‘ya all the way in this year,” John Brazil, the San Jose bike coordinator replied.

For the last several years, John had helped us get through the more southerly bay lands pathways, but he always turned around when we reached busy Hwy 101.

“I’m ‘‘gonna take Cal Train back this year. I’ve got a ton of work, but this year is a special one for you guys,” he answered.

The train line to which John was referring, which ran from San Francisco to San Jose, dates back to when Abraham Lincoln was president. In today’s times, it carries more bicycle-laden passengers than any locomotive system in the world.

Back on the roads after we crossed under 101, the buzz that our bikes from yesteryear made returned. Horns tooted their support and cars slowed down to get a better look as we moved through the neighborhood streets of Sunnyvale, and Mountain View.

Both of these cities have done a lot for their cyclists over the last decade. John even got us through a huge city park on a bike path that, from a distance, looked like it ended at a cinder block wall. Once we reached it, however, a small path that had been cut through the tall barrier became visible. It yielded to a road that crossed over two freeways leading us into Mountain View.

The miles of bike lanes on lightly traveled neighborhood streets continued all the way to the border of our next Mayors’ Ride city. There the Wilkie Way Bridge carried us alongside a creek into Palo Alto. Fully enshrouded by massive oaks and other trees, it is a piece of engineering mastery. In order to construct a bikeway at this location, concrete pillars had to be sunk deep into the ground at the edge of one side of the creek. In doing so, a ledge could be hung off the backyards the stream passes through. It is on the five-foot wide path that resulted that an important bicycle transportation corridor has evolved. Through here great numbers of cyclists pass every day on their way up and down the San Francisco peninsula.

It was also nearby, on my way to it, that my hopes to become the first to cross America on the Eagle were put on hold.

Having just set out on a training ride on my way to this bridge, I wasn’t but a few blocks away from it when a car made a left turn in front of me. All I could do was turn with him when he clobbered my wheel so hard, I flew off the back of the bike.

Two things were working in my favor when all of this happened. First of all, I was on an Eagle, so instead of getting my head launched into the asphalt for certain catastrophe, I landed on my butpak.

Second, if I had been at regular bicycle height, his bumper would have crushed my legs and probably even done severe damage to my internal organs.At any rate, I survived well enough to walk my destroyed bike back to the bus.

The wheel had been almost folded in half. Nor would we be able to assess how much damage had been done to the bike’s heart and soul, the hub, in enough time to keep our ride on schedule even if we did get the wheel rebuilt. This was so because the only expert, Jim Spillane, the man who had painstakingly re-manufactured this machine, lived in Connecticut, on the other side of the United States. All of which pushed the ride back to this year.

A few turns after the bike bridge, we were on the world’s first Bike Boulevard. It cuts across almost an entire city. Called Bryant Street, it is also referred to as the Ellen Fletcher Bike Blvd to honor the woman who moved innumerable mountains to make Palo Alto one of America’s leading bike cities. It is the example this important piece of bicycle infrastructure sets that stands out as how we see the National Bicycle Greenway moving through the more populous parts of America. As our NBG moves across urban America, it will be neighborhood greenways like this one that will help us get across many of this nation’s population centers.

The Ellen Fletcher Bike Boulevard runs on a street where there are no bike lanes because its cyclists are given priority. This is achieved by making it hard for motorists to use it as a cut through arterial. Mostly residential, it is traffic calmed by several bollard shielded intersections, several creek bridges only wide enough for bikes to use and signs telling the few motorists who find their way on to it, that it is a bike boulevard.

Where it crosses light controlled intersections, sensors embedded in the roadway, detect bike traffic in enough time to not require a two wheeler to stop if the path is clear. In this way, it travels almost four miles through the heart of the city as it connects several schools with its city hall, libraries, post offices and two downtown areas. Its second business district, centered around California Avenue, is reached by a spur from Bryant St.

In making this connection, one travels through the Cal Ave Bike Tunnel, arguably the most active bike undercrossing in the world. At maybe 100 yards long, it crosses under a busy expressway and the very active Cal Train railway that runs the length of a peninsula that separates the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. In it, bottlenecks are not uncommon at the bollards meant to slow its users down as thousands of people on foot and on bikes use it every day. Once they reach the Coastal Range side of by the tracks, they are able to access Stanford University, the train station at the foot of California Avenue, the vibrant and alive California Avenue business district and all the many businesses that line El Camino Real. Now a busy, six-lane boulevard, El Camino originated in 1776 as a dirt road between the 21 Missions that dotted the coast from San Diego to Santa Clara, San Francisco, and as far north as San Rafael.

We reached Palo Alto City Hall. There were so many trees covering our path that we could not see it was an impressive mini skyscraper ten stories tall until we got right up to it. And even then, the plaza that fed it took up so much of the city block it occupied, the tall white building blended in quite nicely with the nearby neighborhoods and singlestory storefronts. All this as a full-blown parking garage ran three stories deep into the ground below.

Palo Alto NBG Day was like the many that would follow it. We were greeted by the Mayor of the city. Several of his councilors were present. The proclamation was read into the record. Also from the lectern that was set up, a few dignitaries said a few words, someone from the Mayor’s staff thanked everyone for coming, words of praise were exchanged, then we adjourned all to our own ways.

What made this NBG Day different, however, was where we would stay the night. As our first night on what we liked to call the Rock Star bus, it would take place on Palo Alto’s other bike boulevard, Park Blvd, in the parking lot of Park Automotive. It was there that our dream for this tour really began to take wings.

After John E Cabrera bought the bus for us, it had stayed next to a freeway near Sunnyvale in Mountain View. There it served as the home for the Humility Training that my Deprivation Training turned into as I worked to dig out from the mess my 2009 aborted Eagle ride to Salt Lake City had caused. It wasn’t until Don Armstrong agreed to let me keep the bus on his property four months later, that the vision we held for it started to take form.

No longer living next to a curb with a freeway sound wall right next to me, when we finally got it moved to Palo Alto, I felt alive again. Don let me run a cord from his garage to the bus so I could power computers and a reading light. He let me use his water and a hose so I could wash the long moving billboard it would become. Soon, I was able to interest Steve at MrLetter.com in our project and was able to cover the bus with the vinyl advertising signs he made for those businesses that supported what we were doing.

Finally I had more than Jenifer, who had kept me inspired, to call upon for emotional support . I was close once again to all the people who had kept my Eagle and the Busycle on the road and kept this effort moving forward in many other ways.

Shawn Raymond, Manny Garcia, Cathy & Wayne Douglas, Frank & Kirsten Flynn, Jeff Kistler, Matt Podoli, Robbie Benson, Matt Cristie, Mark Lind, Tom Schoeniger, of 4130inc, David Bajot, Gerry Gras an ’84 TransAm cycling vet, Dana St. George, a Busycle babysitter, Chantal & Luic Vandereyken, Jill & Shelly, Eric, David & Pegg Martin, Jay Thorwaldson, the editor-in-chief of the Palo Alto Weekly, Steve & Emily Branz, Christy Wolf, Amacker, David & Dihuyen Adams, Unwheeldy Dave Herschberg, Judy Kleinberg and Yoriko Kishimoto, former Mayors of Palo Alto, Rich Willits, John Dohner, Bill Leikam, Michael Abrams, Dwight Harbaugh, Robert Neff, Ashok Srini, Larry & Linda Chickness, Larry Chinn, Christopher Warnock, Victoria Hayden, Robert and Dierdre at Palo Alto Eyeworks, Tian Harter, Al Corona, Ronna Devincenzi, John Eaton, Roland Hsu, David Erskine, Dan Seligson, Bob Schneveis, Carol Brouillet, George Pierce, Lanthony, Medha & Nandan, Mike Saari, Catherine Debs, Dan Kottke, Joe Kern, Jon Hoag of Black Diamond Sport, Daniel Bartsch, as well as Will Chaffey, Joe Monzel and Sundown from the Apple Store, Brett Garrett and Tom Kabat, etc, were no longer separated from me by a cold ten mile bike ride across two cities. All the familiar faces in all the stores that enjoyed seeing me roll by on my Eagle also returned.

Cycle zealots also stopped in. Jim Thompson, a man whose herculean rides, were much talked about locally, Jobst Brandt, the legendary author of the timeless book, “The Bicycle Wheel”, even Ellen Fletcher the now deceased godmother of American bicycle activism, all paid visits on their bikes. Those who came by when I wasn’t there. often took pictures of the bus for their blogs and Facebook pages.

We awakened early after our first night on the bus. It wasn’t long before Don’s parking lot was filled with bikes. By the time we left for this year’s annual ride to San Francisco, there was easily 30 or more of us. There even was a fleet of antique bikes ready to join us. They were led by Barry Burr on the same 1946 Schwinn Phantom his grandfather had bought brand new for his dad for $25.

Barry’s crew of one speeds always looked forward to doing this journey, because, until we reached San Francisco, there were no hills. This was due to the fact that we pretty much paralleled rail tracks where any climbing can never exceed three per cent. In addition, our HiWheels also moved at an easy casual pace.

Our ride was a great way to see the quaint downtowns and peaceful neighborhoods one does not know to exist when on the freeway or looking out a train window. From Palo Alto, the route we had devised took us through Menlo Park, Redwood City, San Carlos, Belmont, San Mateo, Burlingame, Millbrae, San Bruno and South San Francisco. Each of these cities has its own unique appeal, a charm that cannot be found when roaring through them at 50 to 80 miles an hour.

Once we reached the unavoidable hills of San Francisco, each of us felt a sense of achievement in knowing we had used our own two legs to make it this far. Having taken a long slow look at where some of the people of the peninsula live, had shown us the special character of each urban area as it also made us feel richer for the experience.

By the time San Francisco approached, the attention required by its hills, traffic, car doors, rail tracks and stoplights made it difficult to enjoy the Golden Gate city. We did take comfort in all the cyclists we began to see, as we got closer to Market Street.

Under Market, ran one of the city’s electric rail lines as well as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). BART then ran under the Bay to connect The City with Oakland and the rest of the East Bay and Contra Costa municipalities on the other side.

For probably two miles, from the Ferry Building at the foot of the Bay, all the way to City Hall, the street level Market St. that cyclists enjoy today, for 12 blocks, has become mostlyCar-Free. Thanks to the San Francisco Bike Coalition (SFBC), it is closed to all but buses, delivery vehicles, ride hailing cars and bicycles. As a result, human powered propulsion has become the new theme of this road. And since Market St. is San Francisco‘s most important thoroughfare, seen now as a bikeway, it communicates to the city at large, as well as to the region, which means of The conveyance San Francisco prefers.

Having gotten used to the cool of San Francisco‘s fog, we bore down on its City Hall once on Market. About 120 feet in width, the road was shaded by multi-floored store and office buildings, some of which one had to strain to see to the top level. Its sidewalks were wide and filled with people.

After a while of being entertained by all the excitement of being on a bike and pedestrian busy Market Street, I caught a glimpse of what I knew to be City Hall. Similar in appearance to the Capitol buildings that define most of the official places of business for this Nation’s states, the dome that sat atop it spoke of wealth. The shiny metal that gleamed from it was the same precious metal that San Francisco sent out to the world after its 1849 discovery about a hundred miles north of here. It was pure gold.

“Hey Mike”, I called as we slowed down on the street in front of City Hall.

“You guys made it!” Mike replied as he looked out on us.

Because San Francisco is its own city and county, the offices for both, line two sides of a park that is equal to a large city block in size. Gnarled London plane trees, carefully trimmed and groomed, lined one edge of a walkway that led to the curb opposite City Hall. A lawn with benches lined the other promenade, where on occasion, free entertainment could be viewed from a stage if one had been set up.

Mike represented the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services and he and I had talked a lot over the last few years about what it would take to get his Mayor to come out for our annual visit. We shook hands.

“Come on Martin, the Mayor’s almost ready for you guys”, he said as he signaled to the media that we had to relocate while we waited for the Mayor.

Mike was a big guy with strong handsome Latin features. He obviously enjoyed his job working for the Mayor because he was always so enthusiastic. He pointed to the top of the steps, where in front of the City Hall doors, a podium with the official seal for the city of San Francisco and a microphone had been set up.

“Do you want to bring your bike?” Mike asked as we got to where the hundred or so people who had come would soon be.

Making eye contact with a lot of familiar faces and people who had helped me move the NBG dream forward, I tried to keep focused. I wanted to bring Frank and Leah from the SFBC up there with me. They had helped me so much over the years.

As that thought crossed my mind I saw Joe Breeze, one of the original founders of the mountain bike. He and his company Breezer Bikes had also built a lot of support for the NBG.

I kept seeing people who had helped when I determined that if I acknowledged all of them, if even with just a nod or a wink, I would lose my way.

Oh yes, I remembered, I ‘gotta get my bike up these stairs. There were not many of them but I still had to think about what I was doing. I had to hold my big bike in certain places on the frame and grab the hub a certain way or I could easily trip and make for a real spectacle. Just as I got to the speaking area, Mayor Ed Lee appeared. A stout looking man, with graying hair, Ed joins Mayor Jean Quan, in Oakland, our next Mayors’ Ride stop on the other side of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, as a one, two punch for Asian, big city leadership. As Jean was becoming the first female Asian Mayor in America in 2011, Ed Lee became San Francisco’s first Asian Mayor. As the Golden Gate city’s 43rd Mayor, he did so in a city with its own Chinatown and where one in five people are of Chinese persuasion.

Back in 2012, when we were trying to get Ed to present his proclamation instead of a member of his staff, Mike had told me that making his city safe for biking had become very important to him. He had said this was so because their Mayor could no longer get around the fact that cyclists were growing by leaps and bounds in numbers and influence in his city.

I followed what I sensed was protocol and waited for him to get to where I was standing with my bike. He reached out his hand as he approached.

“Hello Mayor Lee!” I said as we shook hands. “We finally meet!”

“Been a busy last few years,” he smiled.

“And now that I am finally able to get you in on my calendar, my staff tells me I can’t take long with you guys, though I’d love to.”

As he said that, one of his aides walked up to us and handed him the San Francisco NBG Day proclamation.

“Well, I’ve signed a few of these, but now I get to read one into the record,” the Mayor began. “So here we go.”

He began to read. After he pronounced the last, “whereas’ and ended with the words, “National Bicycle Greenway Day in San Francisco”, we all began to clap.

“Thank you,” the Mayor said as he stepped away from the lectern. Waving to us, he signaled that he was leaving. Short, and to the point, some of our NBG Day visits would be like this one.

Most, however, were notable celebrations that communicated the esteem many of the cities ahead conferred upon their bicycle-riding constituents.

And yet there again, in San Francisco there was not a lot the Mayor needed to do. At over 6,000 members, the San Francisco Bike Coalition was a very strong and active force in his city.

As the Mayor and his staff returned to their building, a reporter and his photographer walked up to me and introduced himself, “Hi Martin, my name is Skip Evans and I am with the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m filling in for Seth Pullman who you met the last time around and he may have asked you this question last year or for that matter the year before, but so I can better flesh this story out for my readers, and I have to admit I haven’t read any of the materials you guys send out, but can you tell me in your own words how all these Mayors’ Rides you are doing are going to get a National Bicycle Greenway built?”

Skip pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he prepared to write.Because I had answered this question before, I tried to do more with my answer.

“That’s an excellent question and I thank you for asking it,” I replied, ”By celebrating the advances your city has made for cyclists with bike lanes, bike boulevards, bicycle overpasses and underpasses, bikes on buses, bike racks and etc, besides inspiring city officials to do more by publicly thanking them, we are placing cities in friendly competition with one another.”

As I said that the sun broke through the overcast skies that had covered us. The crowd. began to come to life as a unicyclist started to spin about and several people began tossing a Frisbee. Suddenly the mood seemed to match the brightly colored balloons that floated from the railings on the city hall steps. Almost as if in an instant, everything became happy and gay.

“What we foresee kind of reminds me of my last two bike rides across America where I made a point of talking about all the great hospitality I was receiving. It was on those rides that the new free hat a pig farmer gave me was superseded by a new t-shirt from a family of schoolteachers or maybe a bag of plums from a car that passed me out in the prairie. I ended up with many free dinners and lunches and fresh corn-on-the-cob just because when I told people how well their neighbors were treating me, they wanted to show me they could do better.

“My stories seemed to restore their faith in their brothers and sisters and they wanted to get on that train with me. Heck I even had people stop me out in the middle of desert and give me ice cold drinks and twenty dollar bills because they said they’d seen me on TV and liked the message of hope that I was spreading.”

I looked at Don as he nodded his approval. He had kept his video camera trained on me and I knew Skip was helping us create good material for the documentary that would result.

On a roll, I continued, “So when cities try to out do what they hear other cities are doing for their cyclists, because good bicycle infrastructure means good quality of life, we are helping your city leaders sell your city to prospective tourists, employers and other business concerns who would be proud to have one of your zip codes.”

Knowing he was going to quote me on ‘the good bicycle infrastructure means good quality of life’ phrase, I could see that he wanted me to continue.

“And as your merchants discover that it is more cost effective to do business with cyclists because they do not require parking facilities, your city becomes attractive to not only your own local cyclists but those from other parts of the country. And as our Mayors’ Ride riders show how much fun it is to visit your city, the businesses who will have started pushing their elected officials to make it safe for bike riders to get to their doorsteps from within your city will also push to make it easier for out of area cyclists to get to them too!”

“Hmmm, I think I am starting to see how your Mayors’ Rides might be able to benefit each of the individual cities they pass through,” Skip said as he looked down at the notes he was scribbling, “but that still doesn’t tell me how you are going to get everyone connected.”

As Skip said that a beach ball wafted trough the air and landed at our feet. I picked it up and gave it healthy swat sending it back into the crowd.

Committed to making sure I understood what he was asking, Skip continued, “Business might be able to influence how roads are built with bike riders in mind in their own cities but we’re talking all the miles in between cities. Sometimes hundreds.”

“Wow Skip, you’ve obviously put a lot of thought into your questions,” I smiled as I addressed his last thought, “As our riders daily chronicle the conditions of the roads they travel to reach each of our NBG Day celebrations, the abandoned US Highways and back roads that we already use will continue to get fleshed out. Each year we here at the NBG will know a little bit more about where to ride, eat, sleep, shop and play along the route. And to bring this network of roads and paths up to the spec we envision for what will become our Greenway, with proper shoulder width and signage and etc, to pay for it, we have lots of ideas.

“On the off-street corridors, for example, we can do like the Indianapolis people are doing with the their major successful Greenway program and generate revenue from subterranean leases. This would be for underground rights of way for utility services such as cable, gas and fiber optics.

“We could even make a reality out of the equity tax for those homes whose value has increased because of their proximity to the trails. The Indy Greenways people have talked about this for years but I’m told it’s never happened there because they already have so many established revenue streams from foundation grants and the like.

“And at the NBG, we’ve even discussed a pennies on the dollar parking surcharge.”

“Pay for your Greenway with higher parking fees?” Skip sounded alarmed.

“A nickel a meter, a nickel an hour, I mean come on, when you raise the fare on your bridges it’s never less than a quarter. Every time the Golden Gate Bridge raises its toll, it’s a buck and there is grumbling but hey people get over it. I mean car drivers have got to start paying for all the land they take up...”

“So in effect you are discouraging parking, I mean the garages are already here. They may be inadequate and they may be pricey but they are already here.” Skip said as he looked up from his writing. I could see that he thought he had me with that one.

“Yes all the car parking lots are already here, and most everyone views them as holy Sshrines not to be desecrated, but they do come at a cost. And who do you think pays for them besides the taxpayers?” I asked not waiting for an answer, “the businesses. And when vehicles stop needing them, businesses will be a lot happier paying for bike racks right at their front door instead of garages for cars a few blocks away.

In time, many of your garages will become monuments to an era gone by when they are then converted into those new businesses that replace dormant automobiles with a new way of generating revenue, the result of out of the box thinking. A small surcharge on the rents from the revenue producers these structures will someday house can even be used for social programs such as getting your homeless off the streets and for the infrastructure that will make it easier to get around using your own two legs, i.e. the neighborhood greenways that will fill your city!”

“Hmmm, that will never happen in my lifetime,” Skip said.

“Hey, all I can say is we ‘‘gotta start somewhere. And wow you ask awesome questions Thanks so much!” I offered.

“No sweat.” Skip’s voice sounded happy.

“It doesn’t happen enough that people know what kind of information I need for my readers. You’re going to do well this summer guy.”

“Thanks Skip, you rock!” I said as we shook hands.

As I watched him disappear into the crowd, for a brief moment I thought about what he said. I had had a lot of practice with the press. First there was my 1986 bike ride across the US for the National Head Injury Foundation that was in hundreds of newspapers and on millions of TV sets and then in 1994 when my book “Awake Again” came out.

Soon, as if being ordered to do so, a few people started walking their bikes out to the street. More followed.

“Guess it’s show time,” I joked as I joined in.

“Most everyone’s working today,” Bill observed. “I overhead a few people saying they had to get back to work from their lunch break.”

“I was wondering where all the movement was coming from. Usually you guys hear me saying ‘let’s go’.” I joked.

Doing a quick inventory of the kinds of bikes that would be in our impromptu parade, I could see Barry’s small crew of vintage bikes, four or five fixed gears, three recumbents, a three wheeled bike, a handful of mountain bikes, a tandem and five other HiWheels,

One of the Hiwheel cyclists, Randy Mitchell, was dressed in the period wear from when our bikes reigned supreme. He wore black knickers, long socks, shiny leather, black moccasins and a flowery, long sleeved white shirt. On his head sat a canvas colored pith helmet.

One of the fixed gear cyclists was holding a trackstand, a maneuver where the rider sits on his bike seat and keeps it upright and balanced without going anywhere. Since our tall bikes were also fixed, the original version where the pedals connect directly to the wheel without a chain or sprockets in between, the trackstand on a HiWheel was once an important skill to learn. Though few present day HiWheelers take the time to master being able to do so, I found this ability important to my being able to enjoy a Car-Free lifestyle on my Ordinary.

Learning to trackstand gave me a better mastery over my high bike in crowded areas. Some examples of where this skill was helpful included gridlocked streets, busy shopping districts, even the Critical Mass or San Jose Bike Party rides that I liked to attend. With what looks like a trick to most, I did not have to get off and on the bike at traffic lights or for whatever other stops the congestion in my path could otherwise force me to make. I could even stop and hold a stand to have a brief conversation with people along my way.

I had spent many hours learning to trackstand. In doing so, I had had to endure a lot of bumps, bruises and cuts, even many embarrassing falls. But just as I was getting more and more confident and better, the Eagle appeared. While rumor has it that a trackstand is possible on one, I suspect that I will always be so consumed with looking for ways to get places faster or more efficiently on the Eagle, that I may not even try to see if a controlled stall is even possible on one.

The few dozen tmes I did try, I always went off the back end once I got the bike to stop. This is because in order to keep from getting launched into the sometimes fatal header that made conventional HiWheel bikes so dangerous, the Eagle’s center of gravity was placed behind the rider. As a result, the Eagle cyclist is always in a gentle struggle to keep the front wheel from popping off the ground. If that were to happen, if his mind were to wander from the task at hand, for instance, he could easily slide off the rear of the machine and probably crash.

I also can’t seem to ride very far with no hands on the Eagle. Nor is such a skill all about show when one is actually trying to get places on the conventional HiWheel. Since two hands are often needed to put on or take off a jacket, adjust a helmet or sunglasses or peel the wrapper off an energy bar, for example, one can keep pedaling while performing all these tasks on an Ordinary if he can ride one with no hands.

The exciting on the road performance of the Eagle, however, makes up for my not being able to trackstand or ride it hands free.

One worthy trade-off is that I can climb hills with fervor on the Eagle. Unlike the traditional HiWheel cyclist, long known to have walked both sides of a mountain, the Eagle rider can climb out of the saddle to get up inclines. In being able to jockey the bike back and forth while ascending, besides being able to add leverage, he also won’t find himself sitting on a wheel that “burns rubber” as it goes nowhere. When riding the typical tall seat of the 19th Century, I always found the steeper the pitch, if I was even moving at all, the more the wheel used to slip out on me. Once the summit is reached, the Eagle can also be used to descend in style as well as comfort. Since the pedals never stop on a Penny Farthing, being able to cross one’s feet in front of the steer tube is easy to do when descending on an Eagle. It is also a great way to relax.

On the traditional HiWheel, however, one must get his legs over the top of the handlebars in order to be free of the spinning pedals. A difficult position to ger into, it also puts its rider in a dangerous position that is then hard to escape from should the need arise.

When I Eagled from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 2009, in climbing the Sierras and across the most mountainous state in the Union, Nevada, it was easy and safe to stay on the bike whether going up or coming down. The fact that mine was the first high bike to ever have been actually pedaled over these Ranges does not mean I was any more fit than any of the others on HiWheels before me. It just shows how superior the Eagle is for hill (mountain) work.

Even on the flats, the Eagle is far more efficient than the traditional HiWheel. Because the Eagle cyclist does not pedal the same wheel he is steering, like one does on the normal Penny Farthing, he can ankle. What this means is that he can take advantage of the full pedal stroke by pulling up as well as pushing down on the pedals. This also means, not only can more force be generated but that the steering itself is not affected by what the stronger and far more powerful legs are doing.

Pulling up on the pedals on a standard HiWheel is improper technique. This is so because you involve your arms as they fight to make those corrections needed to keep you going straight. To illustrate, if you are riding no hands on a standard HiWheel, how unswerving you go is in direct proportion to how well you only push down on the pedals.

There are also certain actions that make the Eagle exciting to be around. It is always easy to get a crowd together to watch me start. While my climbing out of the saddle to accelerate also turns heads, if I really want to get people’s attention, I can jump off the back of the bike to make it stop. In doing so, the smaller front wheel shoots six feet above the ground. This as I do a wide plant with my feet while holding the handlebars at shoulder height.

A bike that came about during the last two years of the HiWheel era (1869-1892), the Eagle is likely what we’d all be riding if the pneumatic tire and refinements in the chain had not made the smaller wheels of today possible.

Blessed with the honor of riding Jim Spillane’s celebrated and near exact re-creation of the 1891 Eagle, regularly affirms for me why I know the Eagle was the highest art form of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the America we know.

All told, we were a colorful group indeed. Our short ride would take us back to the Ferry Building. From there, like Thomas Stevens did 141 years ago, we would travel across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland. When Stevens did his 1884 TransAmerica crossing before he then went on to bike around the globe, the ferries that crossed the Bay burned wood for fuel, cars did not exist and horses were a common form of transportation. Nor did the Ferry Building that helped rebuild San Francisco after the Great Earthquake of 1906 even exist. It would not open for business until 1898.

My ride, first to the Oakland NBG Day celebration, and then across America, would also be different for a lot of other reasons.

Back when Stevens crossed the US, he walked a lot. In fact, according to the 1884 “Harpers Weekly” account of his journey, he walked more than one-third of the time.

This was so because the roads, most of which were dirt, were far and few between. For that matter, his route all the way to Chicago was along the newly constructed transcontinental railroad tracks. From there, he used a mix of farm roads and rail paths to take him to Boston, a city which, at the time, was alive with the brand new excitement of bicycling.

A man of 30, Stevens left Oakland, not in summer, but in April, carrying socks, a spare shirt and a bedroll. During the 104 days it took him to cross America, he carried these items in the bag he had mounted to his handlebars and in the small knapsack on his back. By contrast, our ride, though it would take a little over half as long, would be done on far better roads and our bus would be carrying most of our ride necessities.

I knew that on many levels his accomplishment dwarfed what we had set out to do. This as the consciousness he expanded for what is possible is still felt even today. Stevens showed that man can use his own power to travel from one ocean to another. What before whole wagon trains and then locomotives had been needed for, Stevens proved could be accomplished by the individual.

Since Stevens astounded the world over a century ago, there have been nearly two-dozen documented HiWheel crossings and many hundreds of coast-to-coast regular bicycle treks. Outside of the two-wheel world, as man then went on to swim across large bodies of water, conquer the North and South Poles and reach the top of Mt. Everest, etc, these, and the many adventures that ensued, have all followed the lead Thomas Stevens long before had set.

It was my hope that our ride would endure in the same way. As America’s first coast to coast bicycle author tour, we were also hoping to expand consciousness. Using my book, I had written it hoping I could show our country that we can return to the purity. and simplicity of a more innocent time by building a bikeway system that joggers, hikers, cyclists, skaters and the physically challenged all can use.

Hopefully people will see that we will only gain by retrofitting roads for human power as we interconnect them with Car-Free pathways.

Soon greatly enriching our physical and mental health will become expected by products of such a network as whole new industries also emerge to help us lighten the footprint we leave on our planet. Industries that, as our ride unfolded, I would get a chance to talk about at the book signings and Mayors’ receptions that lay ahead of me. My book and this ride will have succeeded when we as individuals and as a society, finally realize that the only way we can reverse the downward spiral toward which the planet is hurtling is to fight a different kind of war. In combating the atrocities we have committed against the planet, we need to begin by minimizing the reliance all too many people have on of their cars. At which point our leaders will follow as our NBG program helps them show the world that it is possible to drive a burgeoning economy without basing such a huge reliance on fossil fuel.

When mine, the first bicycle and really the first personal transportation vehicle known to man, demonstrates how very little we need to joyously move about, people will begin to question their own transportation needs. When those who depend on cars start to see the real price their bodies and the planet are paying for the illusion of safety or speed, more and more of them will seek out the simplicity of bicycling. And as this once again becomes the predominant way of life, I know my book will have helped to turn that light on in the collective consciousness. And like Thomas Stevens did back in 1884, I know we too will have helped to expand our thinking for what is possible.

The bike cops started walking toward the street as Skot called out, “So are they all done with you yet Krieg? We ‘wanna ride.”

The press cameras that were left followed me over to the group that was waiting for me.

“So are you all ready?” I joked. “What do ‘ya say I lead?”

“Where’s your step?” one of the bicycle police called as he looked back at all the other HiWheelers. They were all standing, ready to go, with one foot on the small footfall that branched out from the part of the frame that curved down to the rear wheel.

“Good catch,” I answered. “This is a backwards facing HiWheel. It’s the most advanced form performance wise. But there is no step...”

People always asked me how I got up on the bike to get it started. Most just assumed that I climbed on a fence or something.

“I just run, jump and pray,” I continued, knowing I had made that pronouncement innumerable times before.

“This I ‘‘gotta see.”

As everyone watched, I put one of my hands on the long leaf spring-like strut that held up the seat. With my other hand, I began turning the big 50 inch wheel and stopped when the left pedal reached an 8 o’clock position.

Surveying the path ahead of me, I moved both hands on to the handlebars. A long pause followed. In my minds eye, I tried to see my foot landing on the pedal when it had come all the way around to 9 o’clock. With the momentum I had created, I saw my body flying high above the seat as the colossal machine I held then hurtled both of us through space.

Nor could what I foresaw be flawed. Especially not now, not with so many people watching.

When it felt right to go, I took a deep breath and tuned everything out but the pedal. Two quick steps followed, then a stutter step so my left leg would fall into the same forceful walking rhythm as my right. In one jumping motion, my left foot hit the pedal. And as it did, I could feel the unstoppable might of my giant wheel as it carried me high into the air. Throwing my right leg over the seat, soon we were soaring.

Cameras clicked and people cheered as other tall bikes fell in behind me.

As I floated through the air and above all the people and the modern bikes below me, I thought about how free, majestic and joyous a ride on my giant wheel, always made me feel. It was almost as if, like a grand director, I was choreographing the scene spreading out below me. Unlike today, where all I could see was human power and the occasional electric bus, I usually watched the traffic and all of the various adjustments it was making so that it could keep moving forward. This almost as if the people in the cars nearest to me were all taking their cues from my efforts because they did not want to miss the show.

As we slowly plodded down Market Street, besides Don’s camera, which always seemed to be trained on me, other image capturing devices seemed to spring up everywhere. Tourists and business persons alike, people in suits watching from the sidewalk, or in Hawaiian shirts as they crossed intersections, even those in buses, an inordinate number of them all seemed to be holding a camera phone at eye level and taking a picture as we rolled by.

It was amid this spontaneous celebration that we would reach the ferry building about a mile later.

Next stop: Oakland!

“Man, could you believe all those people,” Skot said as he rolled his bike to a stop. With one hand on one hip and scratching his head with the other, he continued, “I mean if we slowed down for a light, they weren’t looking at the new bikes, they had these jaws dropped wide open and everyone was asking how you big wheel guys get on ‘em. Seems like there’s two other questions. Let’s see, I also heard, ‘How do you get off?’, and, ‘Are they hard to ride?’ Did I miss any?”

“How would you react if you were Mr. Joe on the Street?” Bill laughed. “Talk about a time warp, look at us,” he joked as he panned the group.

With San Francisco‘s street cars and throngs of pedestrians and tall buildings serving as a backdrop, anyone who bore witness to the spectacle we made, knew we stood apart from the mass of other cyclists on Market St. What we were doing had to be doubly important, onlookers likely had reasoned, because besides all the cameras we could see pointed at us everywhere, Don Loomis looked very official in the way he had his video camera trained on us.

A coast-to-coast cycling veteran, Don was riding the same lime green recumbent bicycle he had used on his solo crossing of the U.S. for us in the 2004 Mayors’ Ride.

Pulling a trailer, he confidently held his movie camera in one hand and handlebars in the other as he filmed us at the slow speed we had been traveling. His clean cut looks and his tall, strong and lean frame completed the picture of professionalism he presented. What people couldn’t see however was that Don knew how to get in and mix it up with the unknown; that he understood the unpredictable nature of adventure.

Don knew the uncertainty of often not knowing who we’d met, and what we’d encounter in the way of road condition, weather, traffic and mechanical failure, etc, etc. In fact, not only had he powered through one obstacle after another in 2004, but he documented hours and hours of that ride with an older version of the same film camera he was busy shooting us with now.

No longer walled in by people, buildings and cars, at the Ferry Building, we were able to spread out just a little bit as we compared notes.

“Wow that was awesome,” Skot exclaimed. “I never knew San Francisco had so many smiles. Where’d they all come from? Usually all I see on Market are the suits looking straight ahead.”

“The drunks always seem pretty happy here,” Bill observed, “I mean happy to see us,”

Skot continued, “Everyone was looking at us with big smiles. I hope it’s ‘gonna be like that in all our NBG Day cities.”

We said good-bye to the cyclists who would not be joining us. Soon, we were loading our bikes on to the ferry. We let Don go first so he could film us coming down the ramp. After he worked his bike and trailer down the short steel gangplank, we waited a few more moments for him to get his camera set up. Then one by one, my coast-to-coast team followed me. Most of us waved as we approached Don. Our fun ride to Oakland City Hall awaited us on the other side of the Bay.

We hadn’t been on the boat long before we could feel the might of its engines forcing us away from the dock. Soon the powerful steel girders of one of the world’s longest bridges (the longest when it opened in 1936), the 8.5 mile long, San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, towering above us appeared to our right. It was interrupted by the small forested island, Yerba Buena, that it then tunneled through. While just ahead lay Treasure Island, the world’s largest man-made island.

Connected to Yerba Buena by a narrow isthmus, one mile in length, and a little over half a mile in width, it was once a dangerous part of the Bay, too shallow for safe passage. Hundreds of thousands of tons of quarried rock and many millions of cubic yards of sea bottom had been used to turn what lwas once a danger to boats of all sizes, into the 1939 World’s Fair and now a vacant military base.

Treasure Island made up of 2,800 residents and 1 (free) gym, 1 barber shop, 1 grocery store, 1 cafe and 1 restaurant is beginning to see new life thanks to plans approved by the city of San Francisco in 2011. Its 403 human-made acres are slowly giving way to housing, including a new multi-billion dollar development project that will add thousands of homes, hotels, retail spaces, and parks. By the time it is complete in 2036, shops, play areas, a 400-slip marina, and many community facilities such as an Environmental Education Center and a Sailing Club will all be within easy walking distance. All this, as downtown San Francisco will be a 10-minute ferry ride away.

To our left a short distance away was Alcatraz, another legendary island. Once referred to as The Rock, it used to house America’s most dangerous criminals and looks out to the Pacific Ocean through the storybook Golden Gate Bridge.

While the Bay itself was alive with beauty, both natural and man-made, a rolling wave of hills encircled it and the busy cities that lay at its shores. I wondered to myself how much of that beauty man has compromised as we tamed the Bay for our own use. In fact, the redwoods that once filled its hills were once so prolific that according to the Spanish who discovered it in 1772, a squirrel could jump from the tops of the ridges to the edges of the Bay without ever touching the ground. I thought about this as the Oakland and Berkeley hills grew closer.

While most of the forests that once covered them had been used to build early San Francisco, there were still a few pockets of such green that had escaped the lumberman’s ax. And it was those little slices of heaven that I used to pedal in and out of as I trained for my first bike ride across the US.

Despite the fact that the reward of a long climb to their ridges always rewarded me with a view of what looked like a San Francisco Bay alive with magic, I could never quite fully savor what my eyes knew was there. Instead, questions about the car wreck that had so altered my life filled my mind.

How much longer would everything I do have to be fraught with turmoil I used to ask myself. I knew that the torture of the therapy I had had to endure had prepared me for the steep ascents I found myself pushing through. But when, I wondered, would blood not always stain my sock from where my ankle hit the crank arm?

Along with many other persistent aches and pains, I was also haunted back then by all the rejection I was experiencing. There was nowhere that I fit in. If people didn’t laugh at me, they ignored me. What would become of my once purposeful and promising life as an accountant, I asked myself. All my friends had left me, even my family had a difficult time with my moods, my impulsive nature and my constant need to talk about how I used to be.

When the only person that had not abandoned me, my mom, died, I set off in search for answers with my first bike ride across America. While that ride had a profound impact on what I then knew to be possible and gave me something else to fill my mind and my interactions with others with, I still was not satisfied that I had honored a promise I had made to myself when I lay in that hospital bed. It was then that I told myself that if I ever got better, that I would do something that would prove my life had been worth saving.

It then took a second coast-to-coast crossing seven years later for me to determine what that something was. When riding the Cape Cod rail path at the end of my last ride across the US in 1986, I felt inspired to see if I could get people to help me to connect the coasts with a bike road. In working that vision, I realized that building all American cities into an interconnected network of bikeable roads and paths made more sense. And when I got into action with that visualization, I knew I had found my way. As I moved forward, I knew I was finally honoring the pact I had made with myself when I was on my deathbed.

As me and my team would soon disembark at Jack London Square in Oakland, I knew we were on a mission that could improve the quality of many people’s lives. Soon we would be pedaling across the Nation with a plan that would reconnect people with themselves, one another and the natural geography all of us take so much for granted.

Soon the mammoth shipping cranes that rose like steel butterflies hundreds of feet in the air marking the port of Oakland predominated the view. Once we reached them we were in a man made estuary with an abandoned air base on one side and massive shipping vessels stacked stories tall with truck containers on the other. In 1902, the muddy lands that once stood between Alameda and Oakland had been dredged. When that happened, it formed the important shipping channel we were in, the Oakland Estuary, and turned the town of Alameda into an island.

We hadn’t been in the estuary’s protected waters long when we could hear the ferry’s powerful engines start to slow down. Soon Jack London Square, our point of debarkation, became visible. While most bike historians know that it was from Oakland that Thomas Stevens began the world’s first ever bike ride across America, little mention seemed ever to be made about Jack London’s bicycle heroics.

It was London’s example that first helped me to see there might be interest in my own story. Since I had grown up in this area, in what was a lot of Jack London’s turf, there were many reminders of him. With the newfound curiosity that my second chance to live had given me, I began to ask questions . When I saw his picture outside of a bar one time and asked Uncle Jam, the man so important to my recovery that he got a whole chapter in my book, “Awake Again”, who he was, he told me all about him.

I had felt challenged when Jam’ used his sometimes stilted English to say, “All his stories real. He didn’t make any his stuff up. Lived all them. He wasn’t like these writers now, just do it safe way. They hide behind typewriters make up stories. Jack London’s way was real thing.”

As the fog of my long coma began to lift more and more after my first bike ride across America, with Jam’s provocation, I had begun to remember some of London’s book’s I’d read. Soon, it began to dawn on me that I too had been on an adventure. And just like London did, I wondered if I could teach myself how to write about it. Greatly inspired by Jack London. I also found out that during one part of his life he used to spend weekends riding his bicycle from Oakland to San Jose and back, a round trip distance of 90 miles! On dirt roads.

Also back at the turn of the last century, he once rode all the way from Oakland to Santa Cruz, at the ocean’s edge, over the challenging Coast Range, a one-way distance of one hundred miles. With his new wife on their honeymoon!!

I thought about how having myself been born in Oakland that I would be taking its rich bicycle legacy across the Nation with me. Indeed, it did seem fitting that I would soon be starting my ride in earnest from the same city where two of my biggest hero’s, Stevens and London, first placed their own efforts on the world stage.

Once we arrived at Jack London Square, a several blocks long restaurant and shopping village at the edge of the Oakland waterfront, and began to push our bikes off of the ferry, we could see our welcome party. The Cycles of Change people, a few more HIWheel cyclists, some bike riders from the East Bay Riders Bike Touring Group (EBRTG) and a couple of bicycle police were there waiting for us.

“You guys made it,” a man surrounded by maybe a dozen kids on bikes called. It was Larry, the Cycles of Change activity director. He and other adult members from the Oakland community ran a successful after school program that showed inner city youth how to rebuild and maintain bikes for their own use.

As I approached his group, I could see the kids eyes all light up. I heard maybe half a dozen different variations of how mine was one of those ‘cool’ bikes that they were just now seeing for the first time. Before I could acknowledge Larry, however, one of kids sitting on a low slung two wheeler fashioned to look like a chopper motorcycle interrupted, “You ‘gonna ride that thing across the US, sir? How you get on it?”

It was then that I knew I had them. Soon I would be able to talk about how they could benefit from the Greenway program that I foresaw but for now I had to have fun talking about my bike.

After I explained to them to them that I did not have a step like the other HiWheels and that I had to use a certain sequence of steps to get the bike rolling, I asked rhetorically, “Aren’t we all riding to City Hall?”

And as a few of the kids nodded, I continued, “I’ll be showing you guys what Î do pretty I soon here!”

I could see that other HiWheel riders from our group had audiences of their own. Besides the young boys, there were also tourists and shoppers who also wanted to know what we were about.

The kids kept asking me questions when Ron Bishop (RIP), the EBRTG leader, called out, “Hey everybody, we got to get these guys to City Hall and we ‘‘gotta talk logistics with the policemen so can you guys let me have Martin for a few minutes? We have got to get going pretty soon here and there’s lots of other interesting bikes here you can ask questions about.”

Ron, a Car-Free and green architect, was so well known for his local bike activism that he was known as Mr. Bike Oakland. In fact, the city council did not give him its symbolic key; they gave him an entire street sign.

Imprinted with a bicycle, it reads,

Ron, the police officers and myself ran through the route we would be taking and how the one-mile ride to Lake Merritt would be structured. There was my group with the addition of four HiWheel bicycles, Larry’s kids, probably seven in all, and the two other adult chaperones who had come with them. I would lead everyone as I followed one of the bicycle police. The other bike cop would follow up the rear with Ron.

As we went through our short overview, I could see that the kids were busy asking Don, Bill, Skot and Jenifer questions about their bikes. Being city bred, they obviously had not seen touring cyclists before either.

“OK, team, these HiWheel bikes don’t have very good brakes and they don’t turn very well, so when you’re riding with us, be extra cautious around us. And if you’re ‘gonna ride close always try to give us the right of way. Cool? You guys all get that?”

I waited to make sure everyone either nodded or said yes.

A few minutes later, Don had his trailer all hooked up and everyone else had their bikes ready to go and we were all rolling again. Car horns honked as their drivers showed their approval by giving us thumbs up signals. Glancing behind me, I could see the excitement on the kid’s faces. And they all wanted to be near us HIWheelers where all the attention was focused.

Looking up, one of them, a heavy set Hispanic youth, called, “When I get my license I want to get a pick up truck so I can get a bike like yours!”

“Why do you need to a pick up truck?” I asked.

“So I can haul my bike around you know. Plus when I get a little older and I’m working on cars, I can use a truck to carry tools and parts and stuff.”

“Wouldn’t you rather grow up and still work on bikes?”

“Maybe but you don’t see any grown-ups doing that. Working on bikes is a kid job,” the boy was matter of fact.

“You might be right,” I said as I thought about how there really were few professional bike mechanics that were able to buy homes and support families. “But that is part of why we are doing this ride. If we get enough safe places out there for people to ride a bike, there will be a great demand for people who are skilled at working on them.”

As the light under the freeway turned red, the first bicycle policeman stopped in the middle of the intersection and the officer motioned for us to continue. We could see that the drivers of the cars on both sides of the light were excited to see us.

“How you ‘gonna do that? Cars are part of life; I can’t wait till I’m old enough to drive so I can take girls out and stuff. You can’t do that on a bike,” the chubby kid persisted.

“Good point. What’s your name?” I asked as the roar of a passing truck made me raise my voice.

“Jose.”

“So Jose, that’s what our ride is all about. We’re going to make it cool to ride a bike. I mean take Cycles of Change for example. Wouldn’t it be ‘stylin’ if you guys had an office at a big old building that was bike central? Kind of like a truck stop where all the out of town cyclists could come to shower up and get their bikes serviced? And then wouldn’t. it be cool if it had all these brochures, like a chamber of commerce, to show them how to safely get to those other services friendly to cyclists in your city? You know, where to go for stuff you may need such as food and lodging and maybe even camping supplies and stuff?”

“That sounds good I guess.”

“But we still ‘‘gotta make it cool right?” I teased.

“That’s what I mean, there’s only so many people like you guys. I mean we like to do other things besides ride our bikes. You know like we rarely ride out of the city.”

“Yeah we like to party,” interjected one of the older kids from the group who had been listening. He must have been 16.

The 21-story Oakland Tribune tower that once used to dominate the skyline appeared. A green colored campanile sits at its top. On all four sides, giant clock faces tell the tale of time. All of this is crowned by a vertical flagpole. In 1923, Harry Houdini astounded the world when, dangling from it, he escaped from a straight jacket.

I kept talking, “OK so for bike central, what we want to do is have a building complex that has an auditorium at its center. You know, a giant room that can hold say four hundred people that would serve as a community room where we could have dances for you guys and then to pay for such a big hall, rent it out so community groups could have classes for everything from ballroom dance to tai chi and yoga and stuff. It would be big enough that we could have trade shows for the local business community and mixers and we could even hold conferences there, even bike swap meets or indoor flea markets.”

I was on a roll as I could see the pages in the NBG business plan I long had been working.

“And then to get the local bike organizations involved, we’d have cheap office space there for them and to make it even more bike central, when the community at large comes in to use the hall, they’d see all these local bike organization names on the door that open into the community area.

”Cool!” one of the kids exclaimed.

I had to keep my eyes on the road as I spoke so I didn’t look back to see who it was.

“And when we get enough financial backing we’ll rent out some of these old Veterans Halls or Moose Lodges that you see around or just reconvert an old warehouse and then we go two stories. Then there will be a catwalk around the dance floor where we will have all these fake doors. And for all the groups that rent space from us, each door will have a different name on it in plain view from the dance floor.”

“I like the dances part!” exclaimed Jose.

“Yeah and how we’re ‘‘gonna make it cool is we want to have a ground level bike museum there with these huge glass windows that will look into the hardwood dance floor. It will have antique bikes on display. And also it will be a place where you guys can show off your own creations. We can turn on the lights during the breaks or we’ll close the curtains and have an attendant there the whole time. That way we can show visitors the bikes you guys pick to best represent your work. We can have bikes like modern day low riders and double-decker bikes there that you guys can show your friends.

They’ll be alongside modern day touring bikes, old-time HiWheels, and fully faired racing recumbents and stuff like that!”

“Sick!” Jose said.

“Every city’s ‘‘gonna have this? Where you ‘‘gonna get all the bikes?”

“Well not every city but every region,” I called in a louder voice as we rolled by a building that was under construction. “Like for here in the San Francisco Bay Area, since all our Mayors’ Ride cities are all so close we’d have just one Hub, probably in San Jose and one in Oakland to start out. And we’d locate all of them close to mass transit so if people want to come in for just the auditorium stuff, they’d have that option.”

“And the one thing we won’t have to worry about is parking. We won’t have any for cars. For those who don’t want to bring their bike with them on the train, whenever there’s an event, we’d have fleets of bike taxis at the train station making runs to our Hubs that can ferry them in. And if you should have to come in a car, you’d have to park in a regular city lot and pay whatever they charge and walk or ride your folding bike or call one of our pedal taxis to bring you in.”

We could hear screaming as a car full of teenage girls passing in the lane next to us slowed down next to me. “We like your bike mister.”

Before I could reply they took off.

“Damn, I want one of those,” one of the kids riding near the front with me and Jose exclaimed. “You guys are getting all the looks with those bikes.”

By now pretty much all of the younger riders were privy to the visualization I was filling their minds with.

“That’s what I mean you guys, you don’t need a car to be cool. All of us can return to the Gay 90’s when it was cool to ride a bike. Back when these bikes ruled the roads, bikes set the trends. They determined the fashion of the day and people made dates just to go biking. And there’s no reason we can’t return to that happier more simple time. Part of our NBG Hub strategy is to get everyone talking about bikes again.”

Up ahead we could see Lake Merritt. A sparkling jewel set in the middle of Oakland, it is, in what is a little known fact today, America’s first National Wildlife Refuge. As a safe haven for birds of feather, it protects more than 90 species of migrating waterfowl. In the late 19 century, such a designation had been required to protect the flocks and flocks of migratory birds from the hunters who saw them as easy prey. Now home to innumerable herons, egrets, geese and ducks, this true urban miracle is surrounded by parks, homes, businesses, even a Children’s Fairyland.

We slowed down near a small path that led down to the lake. As a couple of the HiWheel riders rolled to a stop while standing on the same step they used to get on, I jumped off the back of the Eagle.

The kids all looked amazed.

“We were wondering how you guys get off those things. Pretty impressive,” observed one of the bicycle policemen. Continuing he said, “Well ‘fellas, you have a fun ride. This is where we let you off. We’ll see you again in an hour. Martin knows where we’ll meet you.”

Soon we were pedaling on the path, three and a half miles in length that surrounded the lake.

“I remember when I was a kid in the 60’s sitting over there and watching drag boat races with my parents,” I said as I pointed to a grassy area where the lake spread out below stately apartment buildings that were fed by long staircases.

“They used to come once a year but by 1970 or so, too many people were getting killed, so they stopped ‘em. I can’t believe that’s what it took. Man I can’t believe they ever allowed that.” I shook my head in disgust as just then a giant white bird with huge wings landed in the water right next to us.

“I wonder how those neighbors put up with the noise. Those drag boats are super loud,” Bill said.

Don kept his camera trained on me. “Man we’ve come a long way. As I think about it, there were drag boat races everywhere back then. You know that estuary by Jack London square where the Ferry let us off?”

Not waiting for an answer, I continued, “they used to have them where it rejoins the Bay again, about a mile away. Talk about unconscious, out there they also had this major garbage dump that they had to close because now it’s a little mountain. And hey, you know that little lake that we see when we cross over the freeway when we ride from Oakland to Berkeley? That used to be a full on water ski park. Talk about noise and more oil and exhaust fumes and a lot of it ending up in the water...”

“Well I don’t think people mean to be harmful, they just don’t know. And as they learn they start making smarter choices. That’s kind of how I see our ride this summer, we’ve just been reminding people there are options,” said Don, as he slowly swept around the lake with his video camera.

Looking out on calm, tranquil waters that were sparsely populated with wind and human powered boats, it is this beautiful setting and resulting peace that Oaklanders still use to escape the stress of city life.

Mayor Samuel Merritt donated what was a 155-acre tidal estuary to the city in 1867. Then in 1870 he had a dam built at 12th Street. Since this was near the estuary the ferry had brought us in on, this was how he reduced the amount of salt coming in from the bay.

On weekends, the path we were riding on, marked now by the occasional person out for a stroll, would normally be filled with walkers and joggers. While if the sun was out, because motorized boat are severely restricted, every kind of people powered watercraft would be visible. While there were a few of them to be seen today, if it had not been a work day, kayaks, canoes, windsurfers, little sailboats, pedal boats and even Venetian gondolas would be turning these waters into a shimmering playground that glistened under the wide open sky.

What a setting for a bike race I thought as I reflected back on the Columbus Day races that used to encircle this epic setting. Put on by the legendary Peter Rich (RIP) who used to own Velo Sport in Berkeley, a shop I used to cycle to from Hayward in the 1960’s, and one of the nation’s oldest and most revered, the bike contests ran from 1956 to 1978. Barely noticed, they took place at a time when bike racing in America did not have the benefit of television or corporate sponsorship that it enjoys today.

Wanting to paint more pictures for the kids about how the NBG would affect them, I asked, “So what were we talking about Jose?”

“You were telling us how you’re ‘‘gonna make biking cool but you never did tell me where you’re ‘‘gonna get all the bikes for that museum thing.”

“Oh yeah, good memory guy!” I praised. “As far as bikes, NBG patrons will loan the antique ones out to us for display. I mean there’s tons of great collectible bikes sitting in garages and barns all over America that people will gladly want to get reconditioned so people can enjoy at least looking at them.

“And that’s another part of what you’d be doing in the bike repair area that we will have at all of those big bike centers. You’d have work rebuilding old bikes of all ages so that they can become useful either for transportation or for show. Pretty soon, refurbishing old bikes will become an industry when bike shops start buying them from us. It will keep jobs here in America and become the cool new way to recycle.”

“I don’t get it, why would bike shops want to buy used bikes from the NBG?” Jose asked.

“Good question. They’d do this so they’d have a line of bikes that would compete in the same price range as the Wal-Mart bikes that they lose a lot of customers to. And maybe if I keep talking you’ll hear how we’re ‘‘gonna make that the cool thing to do. To buy NBG!”

As the path got closer to the street, I kept having to raise my voice so I could be heard above the traffic.

“And as such an industry grows up, when people begin to expect more from it, it is going to require craftsmen who can recondition a lot of the stuff that doesn’t get repaired today. So it won’t just be the easy to fix bikes that we will see put back in use but all the latest and greatest will also be kept rolling. And as such, the skills you guys are learning at Cycles of Change, you’ll be able to take with you into your adult years. And proudly so. And yes you’d be able to support a family. And you wouldn’t even need that truck to haul a bike line mine around, because riding a used bike would be the cool thing to do. And no, the new bikes are not going away, nor is the innovation they bring - they’ll always have their place and their market. But when we level the playing field and make it cool to ride recycled bikes, you are going to see a ton more people on bikes. And you are going to see cycling made safer right here in the city where it is needed he most.”

“So you really think people are going to buy used bikes instead of new ones?”

As the bike path moved closer to the lake again, the shouting changed to spirited conversation.

“No doubt Jose. When people start seeing that recycled bikes last longer, because they’re made of better quality materials than the junk you see coming out of these big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target and Costco, there’s ‘‘gonna be a shift. And then when Americans start seeing a way to stop the flow of jobs going overseas so that more of their neighbors can put food on their table and also quit taking resources from the planet, you bet. When the days of cheap oil are soon ancient history and it becomes too expensive to import bikes from the Far East and then truck them to stores, I think the results are ‘gonna be all too obvious. This not to mention the cost to the planet for all these new space age materials they are using to make them light. Soon people will feel much less compelled to buy the latest and greatest, Retro will be cool!”

“I don’t know,” Jose sounded doubtful. “If I got coin you ain’t ‘‘gonna see me buying some used ass bike. I’d be chillin’ in fancy bike clothes and I’d have one of them racer bikes.”

“What’s wrong with what you got right now? I think it’s pretty trick.”

“Yeah it’s tight, but it’s still ghetto.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Instead of feeling like a second-class cyclist because you can’t afford carbon fiber or titanium for example, thru the education we’ll be doing at our Hubs we’ll be showing people that light doesn’t necessarily mean better. And if you’re looking for exercise, it can even mean you’ll be doing less of that too. Unless you’re racing or have tons of miles in your legs and can really feel the difference, what’s the sense of having a nine thousand dollar bike? And isn’t that what most people get a bike for? To get a little bit of exercise as they save money on getting around? Well we can really help them save money as they save their health and save the planet and save jobs as they help to build a new industry not around the car but around the bike.

“I mean, I’m getting more of a work out on my hundred year old bike than you can even begin to imagine. This thing totally kicks my butt. Ten miles feels like thirty and I’m working my whole bod, all of it. My upper body is far more wasted than my legs after an even just a few miles. And yet riding a HiWheel is a whole different subject.

“But back when I only rode garage sale three speeds after my first bike ride across America because I couldn’t afford to keep my expensive road bike on the road, I got as much exercise riding my clunkers just doing errands. I sure didn’t go as far but when you’re in the city who needs to be using a feather light bike to go a mile or two or three to pick up a gallon of milk?

“I mean you spend half the time worrying about flats or a bent wheel and then you worry about someone trying to steal the damn thing. And you’d be a fool to put on racks to carry stuff on a bike like that. So if you bring a lock, you ‘‘gotta wear it on your back. Forget fenders for rain. You don’t put them or a kickstand on a nice frame either. So you know what happens?

“People who buy bikes like that protect their investment by riding them only when the conditions are right. You are far more likely to see them on a car rack instead of replacing car trips where they are needed most.

“And instead of having time to ride by working a job that brings in less money, people with the fancy bikes you guys like, ride less and have fewer bikes because they have to spend more of their time working. And as they are forced to support a more complex way of life, they become just another part of a car-based lifestyle that has to race around to all the things it doesn’t have time for. Because they end up with a bike they can’t make a part of their life, pretty soon they start getting out of shape. I see it all the time. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“Ah, now I get it, that’s why you have so many bikes...” Don observed.

“Indeed, I’ve got my rain bike, my night bike, my mass transit bike, my tandem for dates or business meetings, my beater I can leave unlocked or lightly locked if I am going to be away from it for a long time like at a movie, my long distance bike, my speed bike, did I leave any out? Oh yeah and my folding bike..

“Martin, how can you afford all those bikes?” one of the kids called.

“I don’t have a car. All of my bikes might be able to buy one good used car. And then without one taking up space in my driveway I don’t have to worry about DMV, gas, insurance, repairs, tickets, tolls or parking.”

“Damn, where do you put all your bikes? They don’t have garages at my apartment,” Jose asked as we slowed down for a couple, oblivious to our presence, walking in the middle of the path.

“Toot toot, parade coming through,” I jokingly warned.

Startled, they moved to the side and stopped to look at us as we rode by.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t fully lose myself in the vision I was espousing because, unlike the regular cyclist, I had to keep far more aware of the path ahead. Not only did I have to be more mindful of the walkers on it as well as its surface but I also had to be on the lookout for the occasional tree branch that grew over it.

I could still hear that the kids were excited about what I was saying. So I continued,

“When I had a one bedroom apartment in Santa Cruz, I must have had 20 bikes. Most of them were hanging from the ceiling. I even had a tandem recumbent, probably 13 feet long hanging in the front room. To me that was art. I even turned one of the closets most people use for towels into my little tool room. I had tools and parts and metal cookies and junk parts I’d pick up at garage sales in there. It was great!”

“Cool but what’s a metal cookie?” Jose asked.

“Miscellaneous nuts and bolts. I called ‘em that because I used to put them in these metal cookie tins that you can find at garage sales. Hey but going back to not having a car, I feel rich without a car sucking the lifeblood out of me. If I have a twenty in my pocket, I can stop at a grocery store to feed myself instead of a gas station to feed my car. And all of this is what our NBG is going to show people. We are going to full on educate. We’ll make it cool to not have a car. We’ll be showing people the benefits that you don’t see on commercials or on all those sporting events where every other ad is for some slicked out chick in a car or some macho off-road truck jibe.”

I was on a roll.

“In the same way football games bombard people with truck and beer ads, we’ll have a guerilla marketing campaign going on. And like the bike sticker that says ‘The revolution won’t be motorized’ we’re going to sneak up on Americans. And along with the NBG Hubs that will make us the cool bike central where all the kids will want to hang and then start adopting the ways of real bullets cyclists, we’ll be getting the non-cyclists too. We will be seen as community builders by all those groups that’ll be using our meeting hall for cheap. Business groups won’t think of us as fringe players to be given politically correct table scraps any more either but as a genuine force to be reckoned with.”

“Krieg, you’re a dreamer,” Bill teased, “sounds good but it ain’t ‘‘gonna happen. And yet there again, I must be off my rocker too. I am riding with you....”

Chuckling, I kept painting a picture for the kids to see, “And our Hubs that will usually be located in the more industrial areas of the city, will support our NBG flagship stores that will be located in the heart of each Hub city’s downtown. In increasing the noise level for who we are and what we’re about by also showing up in America’s downtowns, we’ll also weave ourselves into the mindset of the shopper who thinks that going into nice stores is only synonymous with driving to get there. You know we’ll be addressing the guy or usually the gal who associates riding a bike with sweat and grease. You know the ones who don’t want to get their hair or their make up messed up by riding a bike.

“We’re going to make that cool. I mean who would have thought that jeans with stains or holes or messing your hair up a certain way and locking that in place with gel would ever become fashionable? I mean look at you guys and your baggy pants?”

Because we were riding it was not so readily noticeable but they all wore oversized pants that, hanging well below their waistline, they usually had to keep pulling them up.

“Well we’re ‘‘gonna be the stronger energy here. Do you guys know about cuckoo clocks?” I asked.

“No but I heard my parents call me cuckoo once,” one of the kids from behind me, I couldn’t tell who, replied.

“Too funny,” I had a smile in my voice. “No, cuckoo clocks like pretty much anything else in life are governed by the Law of Entrainment where given enough time all the cuckoo clocks in any one given room will all start ticking at the same rate. Whichever clock has the dominant energy, the rest will all follow into the same beat, the same tick tock, tick tock until it all sounds like one beat.”

“Well we may be goofy but we’re not all a bunch off cuckoo clocks,” Jose joked as we made our way around an old man who was walking very slowly on the path.

“True but we are all affected by the dominant beat that is around us. Take the pacemaker for example, you know how it keeps people from getting heart attacks?”

“How?” one of the kids asked.

“It entrains the nerve cells of the heart to beat at the rhythm it sets. And we’re all beings of rhythm. We’re affected by the dominant energy that is around us. We’re ‘‘gonna get everyone beating at our tone because all them car drivers waiting in gridlock are going to want to be part of all the smiles they see on our faces as we roll by. And we’re going to saturate the ethers with how cool it is to ride a bike with our Hubs and our stores. And you’re ‘gonna see as many ads on TV for our Hubs and our stores as you see now for beer and cars and trucks. I mean these billionaires who want to leave a legacy behind are always looking for something that will make a difference.”

“Man if I had a billion, I’d just give every poor kid a tight bike,” Jose quipped.

“That’s just it. The way billionaires got their money was by making smart investments and they know if you give someone a fish, they’ll eat for a day but if you teach them to fish , they’ll eat for a lifetime. They will want to see that their bucks are going to be able to propagate a movement that will generate more of the same. And they will accept losses if they know that in time what they’ve given money to will be able to stand on its own two legs. And that is what our NBG plan will do!! Instead of giving their fortune to some random foundation that does good for a community, they’d love to be able to give to a movement that will really impact the planet. Oh, and there’s another thing these money guys will be helping us with. Once we start getting our hubs built they’ll be helping us with conspiration.”

“What’s that?” Jose demanded.

“It’s a concept that dates back to the Middle Ages at a time when peasants finally rose up as one unstoppable voice to protest their conditions and to make demands of the land barons who controlled them.”

“Yeah but what did they do?”

“They expressed their dissatisfaction in song. Together. And as they more and more gathered in large groups to do so, their breathing and then their hearts began to beat as one. And when this happened, their actual brain waves fell in synch. At which point, the discontentment they expressed grew into a voice that could not be stopped by their masters.

“We may not actually sing at our Hubs, but as more and more of them get built, the energy of many dozens of bike activists under one roof in cities all across the nation will send out a siren call that cannot be ignored. It will call to all those who have awakened to climb aboard the freight train of a two wheel way of life that is coming their way.

“And that’s what we’ll be shopping around with this ride. A plan that makes all of this stuff we are taking about not just talk but real.”

“We get back on the road up there,” Ron called out from the back of the group.

“Let me go first,” I said as we started down a smaller path that led back to the road. “So OK guys, I’m not ‘gonna let all these noisy cars get me off my soapbox. I’m on a roll and Don is taping all of this for posterity. Can you still hear me Don?”

“There is more interference out here on the street but it looks like the mic is picking you up OK. We’ll just be more spread out and less people will be able to hear you,” Don answered.

“OK I’ll talk really loud. So back to entraining! Besides infrastructure such as bike lanes and pathways and stuff, in each of our hub cities, we will have a stand-alone storefront called The NBG Store. Easily accessible by bike, we’ll position them in downtown business districts where there will be high visibility. When you walk in, you will see a huge sign that reads,

‘National Bicycle Greenway, building an interconnected two-wheel America for ourselves, our children and world’.

And they’ll take example from the successful Apple Computer Stores where you can go in and there’s no pressure to buy anything. You know, where they make it cool to say you have an Apple, where you are part of a culture versus like a Gateway or a Dell or any other PC where there’s nothing that makes you cool for owning one.”

“That’s sick! So that means you’re ‘gonna get everyone who rides a bike an Ipod!” Jose who had gotten back near the front called.

“Well not exactly Jose, but they will have a Bicycle Bar that will serve bottled water and juice and energy bars. Cyclists and weary shoppers can come to the NBG store to get a.recharge and talk Greenway.”

“I say you’re ‘gonna need more than just snacks to make me want to ride all the way downtown,” replied Jose. “If I want stuff to munch on, I can just go to the store by my house and then if I want to look at bikes, the bike store’s not far either.”

I could see Don trying to turn around so he could get Jose on camera as he spoke.

“This ain’t ‘‘gonna be like any bike store you’ve ever seen. To begin with, there’ll be a video that will run on a big screen in the background that shows footage from our Mayors’ Rides and our festivals. You know, kind of a video collage that runs continuously that also has scenes showing the cyclists at some of our other programs, you know like people touring our museum or buying a bike at our Hub or attending an event like a dance or a bike swap meet there.

“In another part of the store we will mock up a storefront for the Hub. Remember them? You know the place with the huge dance hall and the museum... Well, at the downtown stores one of the better-rebuilt bikes that we will be selling at our Hubs will be on display. And we’ll spiff these little fake storefronts out with subliminal advertising. You know, like little LED signs that read -

‘NBG: Recycling Transportation for a Better Planet’

and we’ll have these little museum like placards that will start out with ‘NBG Fact’ and the second line will have these smaller letters that read,

‘Did you know that if you buy a rebuilt, you get the button with the NBG logo that says ‘My ride is recycled! Is yours?’

“Customers will also be directed to the part of the store where we will have recycled bikes for sale. There they will find out about the Hub that serves the region they live in so they can go there to see a bigger selection. For weary bicycle travelers in need of a shower and a place to crash for the night, there will be maps how to get to our Hubs and contact information for nearby NBG Members who will put them up in their homes. Also mass transit directions. And for the locals, information about drop off locations for unwanted bikes, parts and accessories will also be at the stores. How people can schedule a pick up of their unwanted bike stuff by our Hub trailer crews will also be on the little teaser signs and brochures. Cool stuff, huh?”

“Yeah! You had me off in la la land there Martin. Aren’t we’re supposed to meet the bike cops pretty soon?” one of the grown ups from the Cycles of Change group who had joined us at the front asked.

Reaching into a small pocket on my vest, I grabbed for my cell phone. I looked at its clock when just then a garbage truck rumbled by.

“I wonder what he’s still doing out? Hmmm, he must be late. Hey but we still have fifteen minutes, you guys want to hear more?”

“Yeah!” I could hear a few kid voices call.

As I looked back to see who was still riding close to us, I recalled how when I first got my HiWheel when I could only look straight ahead. And taking one hand off the bars, like I had just done to grab my phone was not something I could have done.

“We’re ‘gonna really make a big deal about recycled bikes. Instead of like most bike shops today where you’re lucky if they have a bulletin board with used bikes for sale, mostly because they don’t make any money by selling them, we’re ‘‘gonna put recycled bikes on center stage at the stores and at the Hubs. Kind of a pride of ownership thing where those who own one make the well understood statement that they are keeping jobs in America and doing their part to heal the planet as they recycle resources. And this will help the neighborhood bike shop sell the used bikes they buy from us so they can truly give the Big Box stores, where most everything they sell is made in other countries, a run for their money.

“We’ll also have museum like signage that explains the Hub and the programs we have in place there. They’ll also tell how we employ youth and soften the load we place on the planet. The NBG Store will also be the place to come to get National Bicycle Greenway clothing items that you will start to see everyone wearing. You know like NBG T-shirts and sweatshirts and hats and stuff. NBG novelty items like NBG flashlights, water bottles, bike decals, key fobs and shopping bags will also be there and it will be cool to buy stuff like that because each item will have a little tag that reads, ‘Made in America” and

“Helping the NBG build an interconnected two-wheel America for ourselves, our children and our world’,

I had spent so much time explaining this in my NBG business plan over the years, that the words were now rolling off my tongue almost as though I was on automatic, with no shut-off button.

“And once we get the second phase of our program running, the NBG stores will also feature the interactive maps we run at our web site that will revolutionize the way people move about on a bike. Easy and fun to use, even for those people who can’t make it to our stores or hubs, soon our maps will also be hard at work building two-wheel community. In a Web 2.0 way cyclists will be using them to get to know one another as well as find out where to ride, eat, sleep and play all over America.

“Map users will be coming to our stores to claim some of the prizes they will have won for reaching certain goals as they load or even just edit existing routes. They’ll be able to come to our stores to get their prestigious NBG windbreakers and pins that read,

“See my routes at NBG.BikeRoute.com”.

We’ll also have the monthly prizes people can win, such as cell phones and digital cameras and new bike helmets. These will be available for things like the greatest number of edits, destinations and routes, etc., submitted in a one-month period of time.

“Oh yeah, people can buy NBG membership at the NBG stores too and they can use it to get discounts on merchandise and services from participating NBG Sponsors.”

“Am I sounding like a commercial or should I keep going?” I asked.

“This is great stuff Martin. I didn’t see that in the business plan, but of course I’ve been so busy getting ready for our ride, that I didn’t really study it,” Don called as he looked away from his video camera.

“Cool, well like I say in the plan then, besides just local shoppers, business travelers and tourists will also be using our NBG Stores. There they can rent a bike, remember we’re ‘‘gonna make it cool to ride beaters? Well they’ll be able to rent reconditioned 3-speeds outfitted with baskets, fenders, chain guards and locking forks. And if they want to go for training rides or do mountain trails, they will be directed to our Hubs to get a bike.

“This is so because in order to keep the clutter down, only half a dozen rental bikes will be on hand at our stores. And yet if someone does not want to venture out to our Hubs, we can even have what they need delivered to wherever they are staying by bicycle trailer.”

As we made a left turn, up ahead, I could see the two bike cops waiting for us. Straddling their bikes they were at the intersection where we had agreed to meet.

Once we got within earshot, one of them called, “Looks like you found us, we sure couldn’t miss you.”

“You’ve got to be trying pretty hard not to see us,” I said. “Shall we just keep rolling?”

“Just keep going, one of us will get in front of you after everyone passes.”

Soon, I could see our destination, Oakland City Hall. It was a tall square building that filled up the whole block. Completed in 1914, the 18 stories that made it the first government high-rise in the United States were not visible from our vantage point. Once the tallest building west of the Mississippi, it was seriously damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and had to be closed for six years while it received an 80 million dollar seismic retrofit.

In the large plaza area that led up it to its gold-framed doors, I could see people in business clothes. There were cameras set up on tripods. All of this was framed by the eateries and other businesses that serviced the office workers here.

“Is everyone ready? It’s just about show time,” I called.

“So what do we do when we get there? I’ve never been to one of these NBG Day things. Looks like there’s a lot of people there!” Jose asked as we slowed down waiting for our escort to clear the busy intersection ahead of us. I could tell he was excited.

“Each city is different guy,” I began. “In some cities we ride up to City Hall like we’re doing now with the bike cops. And the press is taking pictures of us as we roll in. Last year in Oakland they had balloons floating from these big storyboards that had pictures of some of the bike projects they had in the works. They also had a guy playing acoustic guitar as everyone gathered. But you never know. In some cities, we just show up and someone gets the Mayor who comes down and meets us at the podium they always have set up. Here in Oakland, they have a Bike Coordinator, so she will serve as the m/c.”

“OK, so what’s the program?”

“So you want all the nuts and bolts huh?” I teased, as I motioned for Don to start rolling his video camera for my answer.

“So in terms of a program, what usually happens is that our host will say a few words about cycling in Oakland and what they are doing to improve it. And then she will introduce our riders and then the Mayor will say a few words about how his administration supports cycling. At which point he will read the proclamation and hand it to our riders.

“I’m not sure if the Mayor is going to stick around, some of them do, and visit with our cyclists, but then our host will introduce our riders and where they are headed next. At which point a couple of us will talk about our ride for a couple minutes. You know where they’ve been and, if we have time, why we’re doing the ride. Your Cycles of Change boss is going to say a few words about your program and then I think the East Bay Bike Coalition is going to talk about one of their programs for about five more minutes. And then the announcer will thank everyone for coming. And then we are done with the official stuff.

“And then what happens?” Jose asked.!

“Then we answer the reporters’ questions and then we adjourn to the lunch that our restaurant sponsor for that city always has for us. I think Oakland is going to be Genji Restaurant over there,” I said, as I pointed to one of the storefronts that faced us,“and that’s NBG Day!”

Soon all of us would find out!

As we ate the lunch that Genji Restaurant had donated to us for celebrating Oakland’s two wheel advancements, we were busy revisiting the events of the day when Skot said, “Man that one speaker from the Bike Coalition was good, she made me want to get out and ride a bike myself”

“What do you call that thing?” Bill teased as he pointed to Skot’s two-wheeler.

“Oh yeah,” Skot replied as he faked his surprise. “But I guess I am having so much fun, I forgot I am riding one. Or ‘gonna be riding one again when we get done eating. I mean when she was talking about how they’re ‘gonna make it easier for cars and bike to coexist in Oakland with all them bike lanes and bike boulevards and all that bike to school stuff, it started sounding like they really do want to honor their past.

“As she talked about how they ‘gotta get the kids on bikes, I was thinking about my kids back at school. Every morning we got all these cars lined up dropping ‘em off.”

“You guys mark my words,” I began, “we’re all going to see all of that change in the nex decade or so. People are starting to get it. I mean in cities across the US, the bike activists that are setting the lead, know we ‘gotta start with the kids. It’s like a lot of light bulbs are switching on all across the nation. It’s kind of like we’re the pioneer inventors. And pretty soon everyone is going to be adding to the mix. Like if you read history o watch some of these documentaries, it’s never one guy who really does the invention but all kinds of people wanting to fill the same need.

“Back when Edison was inventing the light bulb, he had a whole factory of guys that were trying to do it with him and there were other inventors whose names we don’t hear who were also trying to make it possible to see in the dark. Airplanes were the same way. It wasn’t just the Wright Brothers but all kinds of guys were trying to fly. Even computers. It wasn’t just Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it was tons of people trying to make computers real for the regular guy to use.

“And now, communities are starting to see that we’ve got to make it easier for kids to get to school on bikes and there are little movements springing up everywhere. I mean there’s legislation starting to happen in Congress now. There’s places like Palo Alto Or where there are bike boulevards and bike tunnels and bike over and under crossings they have built just so kids can ride their bikes safely to school. In the mornings there, you see kids on bikes everywhere.

“And everyone is starting to get that if you make it easier for everyone to use their own muscles to move around, the kids win that way too. It goes both ways. There’s Ray Irvin, the guy who started Indy Greenways and the example they are setting of making what was once a city known only for the Indy 500 into a bicycle heaven filled with miles of trails integrated with all the roads and bus routes and then there’s all the Greenway builders they are spawning. I talk to them everywhere. Tampa has this huge old Greenway program and one of its leaders is a lady who used to work for Ray.

“I mean look at Pittsburgh. They used to be one of the dirtiest cities in America and now, like Indy, people are coming to them to learn how to make Greenways because that city has become so beautiful. Remember Pittsburgh? The green explodes out of the woodwork there.”

“Sure do! That’s Ro Fischer country! Boy, I’ll tell you, she took care of us when we passed through there in, what was it, 2003?“ Bill wondered.

“I know,” I said, “she and Mike from Venture Outdoors got them out there by the thousands up until a few years ago. Her Mayor was a lot of the reason why they have so many bike trails. He’s also the guy that helped get us started back in 2002 when we started the Mayors’ Rides. He let Ro write all these letters to all these Mayors encouraging them to join him in being a part of our first Mayors’ Ride.

“And he was always there to welcome us! And he just knows like we know and like more and more people are starting to know, that if you make it easier to ride a bike, people of all ages will happily choose that option.”

“Well, you can look at it this way, when I’m out there on my trike, I get these mothers who tell me they’d love to do their errands or go to work on a bike like mine after they drive their kids to school. And yet almost as soon as they say that, they tell me the roads are unsafe. When I agree with them they almost always continue with some variation of how they are petrified for their kids when they see the size of all these cars they’re making today. And then they look at me on my trike and they always got to ask me if I am not afraid because I am so low down,” Bill offered. Chuckling as he said it, his voice always had a smile in it.

“So what do you tell them?” I asked. “I mean, I know what I say when I feel lazy and ride my trike, I tell them how comfortable I am and that more older people would ride because of trikes if we just made the roads safe for human power and not just car power.

Sometimes I even talk about that movie, the “Field of Dreams” where the guy builds a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield and keeps saying, ‘if you build it they will come’. And they did. In droves. With that as an example I say that if we build safe access to roads and. paths for bikes, that people will flock to them too. I suggest that all we have got to do is retrofit the roads that already exist to make them safe for bikes.”

I stopped talking as the waitress handed us our menus and said that she’d be back in a few minutes.

Bill continued, “And they always think it’s dangerous to be down so low and I tell ‘em it’s really a safety feature since you don’t have as far to fall. And then I tell them that if you crash on any kind of recumbent, you don’t land on your head, the number one cause of cyclist’s deaths.”

Bill’s jolly voice and trimmuscular frame belied the image many people have of anyone who found themselves on a three wheel bike; that of a frail old person riding one in a retirement community.

“No doubt on all of that,” I added. “Hey but It’s the old and the young and everyone in between that would return to cycling if they could be on the road on a comfortable pedal machine. But as you and I know there’s just not enough bike lanes on city streets for people to feel like they could make recumbents practical for errands and stuff,”

“Well that goes without saying,” Bill said.

Nodding in agreement, I said, “You ‘gotta figure that for an experienced cyclist, the roads are no different for them whether they are on a bent or on a road bike. Except far more fun and far more comfortable when they are on a recumbent. But getting them to let go of all the pain they associate with cycling is a tough sell.”

“Fortunately, mine never hurt me for some reason. But we need the cyclist who gave up riding because his bike hurt him. But we’ll never get them if we don’t create safe places to ride,” said Bill.

“There’s always 4-wheel bikes,” I said, “People love those things but you get these people who worry about you on three wheels, a four-wheel pedal bike usually doesn’t even get off the bike path. But you look at the faces of anyone who rides one and they are smiling from ear to ear.”

“Aren’t hills the biggest problem with trikes?” Don asked.

“That might have been true on some of the older ones. But the way they’re making them now, they can climb a wall. Just slower. That’s one of the reasons why I’m on my touring bike,” Bill said. “And besides I have a sentimental attachment to it. I mean it’s been across once before so I also know some of the tight spots we had to get through that would be tough on the trike.”

“All the more reason for wide bike lanes all across America,” I said as I then took a drink from the non-alcoholic beer I had ordered. Holding it up, I said, “man this stuff is good, it tastes just like beer.”

“Isn’t that what it is? Isn’t it just beer without alcohol?” Don joked.

“Yeah Krieg likes the baby beer, I’ll take my Sierra Nevada any day. Now dats da real brew,” Skot said, as he held his bottle up for everyone to see.

“No seriously guys, I could put a blind fold on you and you’d have a hard time telling the difference. Some of these gourmet n/a beers are awesome,” I offered.

“Well I need a kick. It ‘ain’t beer without alcohol.” Skot sounded pretty final.

“Hey but coming back to what we were talking about, even if we could just get wide bike lanes where all the people are, that would make for a world of difference. I mean there’s these six-person bikes that businessmen could use to get exercise while they are having a meeting. They even have these gondolas they can put on them so they could do so rain or shine. If we had safe infrastructure you’d see trikes and four-wheel bikes everybody . Whole families would use them to go on vacations. They’d take the place of all these expensive to run shuttles people use to get from their car to the beach or other tourist attractions like at these little shopping villages and some of these theme parks and stuff.”

“You know when those Oakland dudes were talking about. improving da biking, I was thinking,” Skot observed, “if Oakland walks its talk, we’re talking revolution. Besides getting kids to school, whether they know it or not, they’re ‘gonna be starting cottage industries for all these new services those multi wheelers you guys were talking about are ‘gonna need. I mean they’re ‘gonna need bike parking corrals and bike thru restaurants and bike washes and stuff. Just like what dese cars need without bringing da pollution.”

It was often hard to tell how much of what Skot said was a joke and how much was serious. Either way, he always made you smile. An experienced cycle tourist, who used his summer vacations as a school teacher to tour different parts of the US and for the last five years ride different relay legs in our Mayors’ Rides, Skot always had the latest in cycle touring technology. All school year long he kept himself on the lookout for the latest advances in mountain and cycling gear and always seemed to devise ways to incorporate such new technology into his rides.

His mountain bike, for example, had every road luxury available. From the padded bar ends that allowed him to switch hand position when riding long stretches to the tires that had the highest pressure and best pattern for the road all the way down to his shock absorbers, every component on his bike featured the latest in road cycling advances.

Skot had even worked out ingenious systems for his own personal hydration, fuel (for his cooking) storage, even digital camera access. What he rolled on was a well-researched study in pedal touring efficiency.

A highly educated man, Skot also had a way of interspersing a few gangster words here and there throughout his language. It always worked to keep you off guard and made it fun to be around him.

“Way to think Skot!” I exclaimed. “I hope other people let their imaginations go free when they hear us talk NBG. Hey but as for Oakland, it is nice to see that they have a plan but they do have a long way to go. But how did you like that one city councilman quoting what Don said about why he is riding in the Podcast? I mean it just goes to show that people are really listening to those things.”

“I know, I had one girl come up to me and ask me if I was Jenifer. She said she downloads our Podcasts on to her iPod and then listens to us on her way home from work. That’s very cool.”

“That’s what I mean guys. We haven’t really even started riding and we’re already getting a following. You know I told you guys when I was doing those bio interviews, as you were getting ready for our ride, that people would find that stuff interesting. And you guys all said, let’s wait for the ride.”

“So whose ‘gonna be the m/c for dem Podcasts now that you’re riding with us?” Skot asked.

“When I get back to the bus, I will include a voice clip that I will have recorded for each new day. And then the staff back home can figure out what they want to use.”

“I was kinda wondering how you were ‘gonna do that,” Don said.

“Yeah, I love this thing,” I said as I looked at my iPhone. “It’s so cool. I can record my thoughts while I am riding and when we run up with interesting people, we can record them too. I’ll also be using it to give a face to cycling in our Mayors’ Ride cities. You know, so people can hear what bike riders are saying from different parts of the country”

“So where we riding to tonight? I keep forgetting,” Skot asked.

“St. Lukes Church,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Skot replied.

In the parking lot there we would bed down on the bus for the night and awaken to yet another new day of excitement and fun.

As we were finishing up our meal, Ron Bishop returned with another cyclist.

“I told ‘ya I wouldn’t let you down. I brought Tom. He knows the best way to get to the BART tracks after we do Berkeley City Hall,” Ron offered.

Tom Ayers was a well-known bike safety expert who was regularly called upon for his expertise in bike accident cases all over the state.

“Hey Tom!” I called, “looks like Ron talked you into helping me again!”

In 2009, he and Ron had helped me get from Oakland and Berkeley to Napa.

“I figured you guys could use me. That’s why I asked Ron to get me out of this meeting I.knew was going to drag on and on,” Tom said.

Soon Tom was scooting off on his quick little recumbent bike with all of us falling in behind him. Instead of the ceremonial route along the San Francisco Bay that we normally used, in the interest of time, we took the most direct path to Berkeley City Hall.

Before we knew it, Berkeley Mayor, Tom Bates, the father of traffic calming who I had done a podcast interview with a few years previous, was greeting us with a proclamation from his city. We took pictures, talked a little bit about Berkeley biking and soon were back on the road to Napa, the gateway to the wine country.

Using the BART bike path and then the surface streets along 880 that Tom and Ron led us on, we passed through Emeryville, El Cerrito, Solano, Richmond, Pinole and Hercules. The roads they found for us had every little traffic.

From the back of our small pack where I usually found myself when the traffic was not slowing us down, I yelled to Skot who was taking his time as we rolled into the outskirts of Crockett, “Hey Skot.” When I could see him turn his head and slow down, I continued, “I’m ‘gonna stop here. I’ll meet you guys at St. Lukes.”

I wanted to buy a gallon of good drinking water so I could fill my water bottles and not be forced to drink tap water tonight. We kept forgetting to get some good water on the bus and my previous two TransAim rides had shown me that no matter how unhealthy the food and drink a store sold, I could still always find water. And if they didn’t have spring water, they nearly always at least had distilled.

“I’ll stop too,” Skot called as he looked back and saw the small grocery store he had just passed. While I dismounted, I watched as Skot turned around and started riding back to the little market.

Climbing off his bike, he said, “Man, I know I keep saying this, but wow, whatta day!”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“I can’t wait to sit down tonight so I can offload all these little snippets I’ve recorded. It looks like I’m on deadline again.”

During the months that had led up to most of our ten previous annual Mayors’ Rides, I had produced a weekly newsletter. Not only did such an advisory let people on the outside know what we were doing, but internally it kept myself and everyone else on track as well as motivated for the campaign ahead.

In ramping up for this year’s ride, however, I had had so many details to attend to that I had little time for writing. Instead I had let our huge Facebook, Substack and mailing list followings know that if they wanted to keep abreast of this year’s adventure that they would have to start getting used to hearing about our efforts instead of reading about them.

Because I knew, based on my past TransAm riding experience, how hard it would be to find the energy just to get even a hundred words keyed in to any kind of electronic device during any part of the day, my reports would be verbal this time around. With the audio files I would be producing on my iPhone, anyone interested could keep pace with us by. listening instead of reading. There was even the outside chance that someone would come forward and offer to transcribe the audio before we got too fa along. And if not, we could still turn it into worthy reading to go along with the documentary we would produce after the ride was over.

In the store, a stop and go convenience market, Skot grabbed some nuts and something cold to drink. As we walked out with our purchases, an elderly man standing there with a teenage boy looked at us as he said, “Tody do you remember me telling you about the bike I used to ride?”

“Is that one of them?” the boy answered. His eyes got big.

“You bet. I was a lot more limber back then,” Tody’s grandfather answered.

Looking at me the boy asked, “Grandpa told me his bike was hard to ride. Are they?”

Normally when people asked me if they are hard to ride, like they had been doing all day, especially when my thoughts or my time were focused elsewhere, I just told them that anybody can do it if they wanted to take the time to practice. At which point I usually tried to keep the conversation to a minimum.

However, from time to time, I’d encounter a man who had had direct experience with a bike like mine. And in such cases I felt called to honor history. Often it was an opportunity to learn something and in general, we spoke the same language.

“Well, it depends on what you want to do with it. If your legs were a little longer, I could show you how to ride this thing to the end of the block in a few minutes. But you ‘gotta remember you can’t stop pedaling. Otherwise you could easily get launched, as in fly over the handlebars and take what is called a header. They fixed that problem on the Eagle, my bike here, but trying to coast on any kind of Hiwheel could get you killed.

“The next challenge would be to stop and I could show you that pretty quickly too. But after that it starts getting harder. Turning while pedaling, and you can never stop, requires practice. And to make the tighter and tighter turns you will need to be able to make when you ride with cars requires hours and hours of practice. The same is true for just taking one hand off the bars to signal a turn. As does keeping a straight line in and amongst traffic. And we haven’t even talked about hills.”

“Boy those hills will kill you on one of those things,” the older man said as his face came alive. “Why, where I grew up, it was pretty flat but I remember there was this little bridge that went over the creek and I always had to get a head of steam up so I could get over it.”

“Ah, but that’s where this one is different!” I boasted, ”it’s a pretty ferocious climber.”

“As I think about it, I do remember something about your kind of HiWheel being good on hills.”

“And what’s also great is having the steering independent of the big wheel. Do you remember turning on yours?”

“Sure do, those things don’t turn very well when you are going slow.”

“That’s what I mean. When I got my first HiWheel about ten years ago, it used to take a. whole parking lot for me to turn around. I used to go to this big church by my house in Santa Cruz and do these big old wide looping turns. And it felt pretty grand. And I’d be see all these people looking out of their windows and coming out on their lawns to watch.

“And I kept after it. And my turns got tighter and tighter. Before I discovered the Eagle, I got to the point where if I took my time, I could turn around on an average bike path.”

“Aren’t you afraid you will fall down?” the little boy asked.

“I used to be afraid of it that’s for sure. I bought my first one from this guy who was leaving town and I thought it would be a nice addition for our bike festivals. When I went over to look at it the first time, he thought I should give it a whirl and not just wonder at it. So I did and I crashed so hard I saw stars. I didn’t buy it.”

“What changed your mind?” Skot asked.

“He kept saying I needed it and he came way down on the price a few weeks later. I figured it would make a great front room decoration and that if I couldn’t ride it to our festivals, I could put it in a bike trailer and haul it over, which is what I ended up doing the first year or so I had it. I had no real intention of riding it when I got it.”

“So where you young men riding to any way?” asked the man.

We talked for another ten minutes about the ride, told them when we would be in the Qnewspaper and said good-bye.

“Why are we riding just to Crockett any way,” Bill asked. “Why don’t we try to get a littl closer to Napa?i When I rode Napa to Berkeley in 2003, I was surprised how close they are to each other. What are we talking 40 miles?”

“You’re right Bill, but remember we talked about the newish bike lane they have out In there on the Carquinez Bridge? And how it’s probably ‘gonna be super windy in the late afternoon?”

“Oh yeah and that wind by Vallejo is pretty mean stuff.”

“Yeah and Crockett is halfway and right at the base of the Carquinez so it will be a perfect staging area for when we meet the Eagle Cycling Club on the other side. And oh yeah, I forgot to tell everybody but Patty called and her club is going to meet us at 10 and ride us in to Napa City Hall.”

“That should be fun. They always get a bunch of cyclists out for us,” Skot observed.

“Patty and her late husband really took care of me when I came down from Portland. I can’t believe that ten years have already gone by.”

We found the bus at the church, slept well and got an early start the following morning. PIn what seemed like no time at all we were high above the San Francisco Bay on the Carquinez Bridge, a bridge that in 2003 had been retrofitted to include a bike lane.

One of the Bay’s shorter bridges, at just under a mile long (the Bay Bridge connecting Oakland to San Francisco, as I said, earlier, is eight and one half miles, while the San Mateo, which, in 1929, was once the longest bridge in the world, spans seven miles), we made it to the other side as the morning rush hour was reaching its highest peak. For me, it was exhilarating to be so high above first the road and then the water itself.

In the town of Vallejo, on the Napa side of the bridge, we found the Eagle Cycling Club at the coffee shop where we had agreed to meet. It was not hard to find them, as there must have been a dozen bikes leaning on the store’s windows.

A cheery middle-aged, blonde woman came out to the street to greet us.

“Well hello Martin and fellow Napa veterans,” Patty Brown called as I worked my way off my bike.

“Wow Patty, we finally meet!! Surely you remember the rest of these guys. They’ve all visited you on previous Mayors’ Rides.”

“Of course I do, it’s great to see all of you again.”

Patty and I had done a lot of email and talked a few times on the phone starting with our first visit to Napa in 2002, but we had never met. She and her late husband, Paul, had even hosted some of our riders at their beautiful home over the years. Today, she and the rest of her bike club would ride us into Napa and our meeting with the Mayor of a town famous for its wineries. Napa was the gateway to one of the largest grape growing regions in the world and soon we would be riding through what looked like an ocean of vineyards.

As all of us talked, the rest of Patty’s group started filtering out of the coffee shop.

Mostly men with a few women, they all wore their brightly colored red and yellow cycling jerseys. The name Eagle Cycling Club was emblazoned across the front in gold letters.

We were busy introducing ourselves and happily shaking each other’s hands when Patty said, “Come on everybody, what do you say we meet again after we ride, we don’t meet the Mayor for a couple hours but if we get going now, we can ride casually.”

After what was a leisurely ride for everyone else and a brisk pedaling effort for me, we got to Napa City Hall well ahead of schedule. Once there, we laughed and talked. There was conversation about our bikes and what the biking was like up here.

The Eagle riders asked us questions about our ride, We also got a chance to learn what some of them did to support themselves in this unique tourist haven. While most of them were middle-aged retirees who had relocated to the area, a few of them still held jobs. Two worked in the local wine industry and one was employed by the local water works.

Soon Mayor Techel, her small staff and a few reporters and their camera crews all seemed to arrive at once. Before long, the Mayor had read our proclamation and I found myself busy staging the group photo.“You too,” I called to one of the reporters who had been busy scribbling on his note pad.

“Come on, we need you in the picture.”

He looked bewildered as everyone started laughing and saying, “Come on!”

Pretty soon everyone else got into the act. And our group kept getting larger as those of us with bikes were calling to anyone in the small plaza to come join us. The Mayor smiled. Even the press took pictures of the small crowd that resulted. What fun!

And yet another NBG Day was complete.

“Where do you guys go next?” one of the tourists who had corralled us, asked. A short grey haired man, he and his wife had been on the lookout for a place to eat lunch, when they made the fun mistake of stopping to see what we were doing.

“Davis and Sacramento,” I answered.

“Oh, so besides Mayors, you meet Governors too?”

“Well not actually. It’s just that the city of Sacramento has its own Mayor and we go to the State Capitol that is there because it is so beautiful. We always meet there for pictures. And because we then will be riding the awesome American River bike path through two more cities, a Sacramento County supervisor always joins the Sacramento Mayor at the Capitol with a proclamation. Have you ever heard about the Jedidiah Smith Trail?”

“I don’t think I have,” the man responded.

“Well I’ll tell ya, it’s about 30 miles of awesomeness along the American River, from Sacramento to Folsom. And I’ve biked across the US twice and it is easily some of the best biking I’ve done anywhere in this Nation. I mean the city leaders up that way have reason to be proud.

“And after we leave the Capitol, we go through what they call Old Town where there are still a few cobble stone streets. It’s the tourist part of Sacramento. I’m pretty sure it’s where the California Gold Rush began. I think Sutter’s Fort is somewhere near there.”

“Not really Martin,” Don smiled as he corrected me. “Sutter’s Fort is about a mile from the river. I know because I came up here on a field trip with my son’s class back when he was in grade school. And interestingly enough, gold wasn’t discovered there or at Old Town. They found it up in the nearby foothills about 40 miles away and shipped it off from Old Town.”

“How come Old Town just looks like a bunch of saloons with wooden sidewalks?” Bill asked.

“They’d come down to Old Town, sell their gold I guess to the banks they had set up there. And then they’d celebrate. They also were able to get other stuff they needed there like food and tools and stuff, at least that’s what the docent told us.”

“Thanks for that Don,” I began. Turning back to the tourists, I said, “And when we ride the river bike path a whole bunch more HiWheels will be joining us. And then before we get to Folsom, the city of Rancho Cordova gets a bunch of their city leaders out to celebrate us with a proclamation ceremony and all kinds of awesome refreshments at Sunrise Park. And I’m telling you, their river park is one of the most beautiful spots along the whole trail.”

Patty walked up to me and said, “Martin, it was so fun doing this today but I ‘gotta go and some of the guys have places they have to be, so I guess this is good bye.”

She started to extend her hand for a handshake but I gave her a hug, saying. “Patty thanks for helping us again this year. You are the best.”

“We’ll be following you guys,” she replied as her fellow Eagles starting getting on their bikes and preparing to leave. Soon we were all hugging and shaking hands and exchanging addresses. It was so hard to go that we kept talking and appreciating one another for the next ten or fifteen minutes.

Since we knew there would be plenty of daylight left, we had decided to make the 25-mile journey north to the resort town of Calistoga for our night’s stay. By the time we were finally back on our bikes, Skot remarked, “Aren’t bike people great! I could have stayed there all afternoon talking, but we ‘gotta check some of dese wineries out.”

There were two roads that went up both sides of the long Napa Valley to our destination. We would ride the one with less traffic. It was called Silverado Springs. And there was less traffic on it because there were fewer wineries. And they were not as big or as famous. In fact some were no more than little farmhouses in which a wall had been knocked out to make way for a tasting room.

Skot and Don stayed behind to sample at some of these wineries, but the rest of us anxious to sit in the famous hot springs at Indian Springs Resort in Calistoga, pressed on. As we rode, we looked off to the miles and miles of vineyards that spread out on our left. Scrub oak, manzanita and rusted barbed wire fences covered the foothills that formed the right edge of the road. A dry, persistent head wind would push against us for the next two hours, right up until the frequency of cars and driveways signaled the beginning of Calistoga.

Soon we arrived at the spa that had, when it was built in 1862, made Calistoga famous. Located at the eastern edge of town and flanked by what used to be a glider port, it was at Indian Springs that this small town’s sulfurous mineral water had been harnessed into an Olympic sized swimming pool. Fed by geysers, it still sat at the center of a resort, 16 acres in all, dotted with bungalows.

While it was tempting to stay the night at Indian Springs after we sat in the baths, or at some of the other spa/lodging providers in this quaint little town that progress had seemed to bypass, the bus had already become a comfortable bedroom for our efforts.

Manny had parked it nearby. Nor did we have to listen to traffic. The slow moving cars here all seemed to have a reverence for what was no more than a four or five block strip of tourist services and homes.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I gotta do my usual water break,” I said. “I want to head off to one of these markets and get something cold to drink. What do you say we all meet later at Checkers Pizza and Pasta here on the main drag at 7 for dinner before we soak?”

“Checkers? I prefer chess,” Skot cracked. “Why there?”

“Hardy har,” I teased, “Skot you are too funny. But seriously, back when I used to do Wine Country cycling guides, they always supported the National Bicycle Greenway. And besides they’ve got great food!”

“Good enough for me!” Skot proclaimed.

Being up here in the peaceful and quiet wine country, I could feel the buzz we had begun to create in the San Francisco Bay Area begin to slip away. It would be in the smaller cities that we could only hope that the press in the bigger cities we had passed through would keep our fire alive.

From past experience, I knew it would take a while for the wire reports to start picking up our story so that the people in the cities and towns along the way would look forward to our visit. And then there was USA Today. Soon they would be publishing my weekly reports from the road. Inside I knew that it would take a few more cities before lots of people were talking about us and the possibility of interconnecting America with a network of bike roads and paths. And yet even with thar knowledge, I was still impatient.

My mind finally grew quiet when I remembered my last ride. It was then that most of the 40 million people who had been exposed to my 1986 coast-to-coast crossing for the Head Injury Foundation, hadn’t even known what I was doing or why I was doing it until I reached the last few states. This time around I also knew that we had planted a lot more seeds that couldn’t help but soon saturate the media. We were coming at them from many different angles. And even then, if the syndication we had worked out with USA Today, my book signings and the NBG Day events themselves were not enough to get the attention of busy Americans, I knew, as I kept reminding myself, the Busycle and my old fashioned bike were going to be very hard to ignore.

Later, as I leaned my bike against the side of a small market, I caught sight of a man, probably in his late 30’s, on an older ten-speed watching me very carefully. When I came back out with a cold drink in hand he was studying my bike.

“I know people must ask you questions all day long about your bike so I won’t bother you about that but you look like you are a bike authority of sorts,” he said as he wanted for me to acknowledge him.

“I sure ‘ain’t no authority about any of these roads,” I replied, I beckoned for him to continue with my eyes.“So I want to ask you a question about all these people drinking and driving up here.”

His face was tan and bore the lines of many miles in the sun.

“Whoa, I never thought much about that....”

“Well aren’t you afraid of some of these idiots running into you on that thing? I mean you don’t look like you can get out of the way very easily if you had to.”

”You’re right about me being a sitting duck. And about all I can do is hope that I am big Thx enough that cars see me in enough time to not run into me.

“As I think about it I just don’t know, we’ve had them run over whole clusters of cyclists up here. They shouldn’t be letting people drive to these damn wineries. That’s why I’m like an outcast.

“I lost my license because I’d been testing wine you know and now I’m at the mercy of cars too. All I took out was a mailbox down in the city but I guess it could have been a person. And yet now that they won’t let me drive I feel like they’ve taken away my dignity....” he said as he shook his head in disgust.

After we kept talking and I found out that he recently moved up here from San Francisco and that his name was Ted, I said, “I wish they’d wake more of these drunken drivers up by making them walk in our moccasins. And I guess you don’t know but I am part of a ride where I will be talking all across the US about the Greenway we are trying to get built that will connect cyclists to cities and all the important spots within those cities all across America.”

“That sounds good but what are you ‘gonna do about all these alkies driving around up here?”

“I am glad you asked. There’s ‘gonna come a time when judges are ‘gonna make drunken drivers do community work on the Greenway. And you know what that community work is ‘gonna be?”

“Not a clue.”

“They’re ‘gonna give able bodied offenders the chance to get their licenses back quicker if they log so many miles on the Greenway every week.”

“I’m not trying to be disrespectful but how can they prove that they did that?”

“There’ll be tracking stations they have to pass by on the parts of the Greenway where cars are not allowed as well as on the on street parts too. And on their bikes there will be a bar code that tells who you are that activates sensor units at the various checkpoints. And then on a random basis some of them will have these little cameras like you see at intersections to catch people who run red lights. That way, they can’t let a buddy do all the riding for them.”

“Hmmmmm, who’s ‘gonna pay for that?”

“The people who want to get their license back. Just like they pay for driver education classes now. And just think, when we get them out there riding with us, we’ll be getting them out doors and away from the toxic environments where most drunks hang out. You know like bars and card rooms and pool halls and stuff. And they’re not ‘gonna go out there and make trouble because they will have their miles to ride.

“And by becoming one of us, they will start to understand our ways and have empathy for the bike rider they used to just dismiss as an obstruction to their progress.

They will also adopt a new addiction. Health. Pretty soon they’ll also start to see they can recreate without their cars. Instead of only feeling alive in Point A or Point B or C, they’ll see that everything in between is fun when you do it on a bike.

“We’ll start seeing them eat healthier foods because they will realize that the kind of garbage that used to sustain them before doesn’t make their body feel good when they are using it for exercise. And since alcohol is an extreme form of sugar, and when you are doing sugar foods, you always want sweeter, the less sweets they consume the less they’ll feel drawn to booze also. We aren’t just suggesting that they get a new lifestyle, we’d be forcing one on them and they wouldn’t even know it.”

“Come to think of it, I have been eating better since all I got is this bike. Things seem to have slowed down and not being in such a rush all the time, I guess I don’t eat so much fast food,” Ted offered.

“That’s what I mean, fast food has a lot of sugar in it. You’re health is paying the price for all that supposed speed,” I said. “Pretty soon more people will start to realize it is an honor not to have a driver’s license. Not to drive. Take your own case for example, what you see as punishment is really making you a better person. Granted there’s a period of shock you ‘gotta move through, but what’s so bad about slowing time down, getting out of the rat race?” I asked not expecting an answer. “I mean you’re getting your health back, what’s wrong with that?”

“Hmm, I never thought of it that way. It just seems like if you don’t drive a car they marginalize you.”

I could see that I had him thinking so I continued with the case for being Car-Free that I’d made many times before.

“Do you ever hear birds sing when you’re in a car?” I began. Not waiting for a response, I continued, “How about smiling? Ever notice how people in cars tend to frown while bike riders more often than not look they are having a good time? Being Car-Free is the most powerful time of your life and we just ‘gotta get you to realize it. Can you get on the web?”

“That’s what I do, I design web sites.”

“Cool, well go to bikeroute.com. Do a search there for ‘Car-Free Movement’ and then. read the link that says ‘How to Win an Argument with a Car Driver’. There’s a very powerful argument there for why you are better off not being in car mode.”

“Yeah but how you supposed to buy groceries or get to the Laundromat? Little things like that are killing me right now. And then how you supposed to have a social life. Woman think you’re a bum if you don’t have a car to drive them around in.”

“Doing without a car is a lifestyle change. As for groceries you just ‘gotta start doing it the way they do it in some European countries. They buy less and they shop every day.

“That way their food is always fresh. And it’s not this big production to go shopping for food on a bike. You get to park right at the entrance!”

As we talked, at the nearby liquor store we watched people drive up, get out their cars, Pbuy oftentimes a bottle or two of alcohol or a six-pack of beer and drive off.

“Do you need you car to do that?” I said as I looked at yet another car with one person in it, drive away from the store. “Not to mention the fact that a lot of these people look like locals.”

“You’re right.” Ted said as he shook his head, “but what about if you ‘gotta get a big bag of dog food home or they have a special on these big things of toilet paper?”

“Part of a true Car-Free, notice I did not say ‘Car-Less’, lifestyle is a bike trailer. I’ve even got three of them, but you only need one. Heck I’ve even brought couches and refrigerators home that I’ve found at garage sales with one of my carts. Plus, they are great for laundry. You can unhitch and roll them right up to the washing machine. And when the dryer is done, you can fold your clothes right in to it. Hitch up and off you go. And they are fun and easy to pull and they make you feel so proud to roll right by all these cars that are always waiting at lights and stuff.”

“Well you can’t put your date in a trailer.”

“As for women, straight up, I ‘gotta tell ya, you don’t want a lady in your life who needs you to have a car. Let me ask you, what kind of woman do you want? Do you want someone who is healthy? And more importantly someone who is going to stay healthy? You know, a lady who can ride a bike with you not some gal who is always worried about her hair and her make up.

“It comes from inside out. If you are solid enough in how good you feel about your self, you don’t need a car to get ladies. They will come to you. You want the kind of woman who wants you for how healthy you are in mind, body and spirit and not for your car.”

“What about dates? Bike riding only works during the summer and even then that’s ‘gonna get boring after a while.”

“There’s a whole new breed of woman out there. The younger ones, the twenty- somethings aren’t looking for a guy to take care of them. More and more they are the ones who are running the show. And the single gals in their 30’s and 40’s are followin their lead. The days of having to be the source of recreation for your lady pal are going away. They just want you to take in interest in them. And they want you for you. Not for your car. Especially if you are active, creative and fun.

“And you can be that way if you are able to take the time to work on you instead of working to pay for your car and all the support it requires. I mean it’s a lifestyle to use a car to attract the opposite sex. You are free to work on you when you don’t have to concern yourself with insurance, oil changes and other maintenance, how much gas you have in your tank, the DMV, tickets or whether you vehicle is bright and shiny, etc, etc.

“Instead of sitting in traffic as you watch your waist line grow, it is rare when an errand done on a bike does not improve your body in some small way. When you don’t have to work so much to pay for a car, you can improve your mind by reading more. You can use the new time you have to grow a vegetable garden, work out in a gym or learn how to meditate. Cars keep you in the rat race while a bike-centered lifestyle brings about inner peace.

“And that’s what it’s all about, realizing that it’s not out there; that it is what is within that you project on to the movie screen of your outside world. Or in other words if you make it such that all you see is beauty within, that is what you are going to attract. And you don’t need a car to get to that place.

“Heck, for that matter, you can even take time to learn how to dance. If you get that down, you are going to have females inviting you out.”

“Hmmmm, that’s a lot to think about. Guess that’s one good thing about a bike. Without a radio or car noises to worry about, I can really think stuff through,” Ted surmised.

“Oh in case you were wondering about rain, if you’ve got the right gear that is not a problem. And for what you spend for DMV every year, you could have all new rain gear for you and your bike each new season.

“And for that matter if you are a true cyclist, besides rain gear and a trailer, you are going to have other bikes for other applications. What you pay for a used car and to keep it on the road, is easily a garage full of bikes and gear. I’ve got my rain bike, my beater bike, my mass transportation bike and etc. You might even think about a tandem for dating. And you don’t have to go far. You can just go to garage sales and farmers markets and festivals and stuff.”

“They have that stuff up here but not very often,” Ted replied.

“That’s part of what I mean by lifestyle. Being Car-Free even influences where you live. I mean obviously you don’t want to pick a place on a hill or off in the country or down some back road but if you’re single you would have been better off staying in The City.”

“I figured I’d move up here and get away from trouble. I can do web work anywhere.”

“The only trouble you had was drinking and driving. Without a car there’s all kinds of neat stuff you can explore right in the city. And if you had a tandem trike you wouldn’t have to wear special bike clothes, and your date wouldn’t have to be a cyclist already or be a certain height. If you had one of these cool three wheelers they’re making now, they are adjustable and you can wear street clothes.”

“OK, OK, I’m sold. I’m moving back to San Francisco,” Ted joked. “I just wish it was that easy. But I’ve kept you long enough. Thanks for talking to me and you and your group have a great ride!”

As I rolled away, I knew that our ride would be filled with people like Ted. People, even if it was forced upon them, like in Ted’s case, who were discovering the many benefits of cycling. And it was my hope that the example we would be setting would inspire more and more people to consider a more Car-Free lifestyle. And I knew that it would be many of these people, excited to be a kid again by bicycling, who would be the Greenway builders of tomorrow!

Even though it was tempting to explore all that Calistoga had to offer, we had all agreed to meet for an early evening meal for a reason. We knew the 25 miles back down to Napa and then the 45 to Davis tomorrow would be insufferably hot and windy if we didn’t get an early start. We got to bed early that night and were glad we did.

Feeling rejuvenated by Calistoga, the early morning ride back down Silverado Springs was exhilarating. As we looked out on row after row of grape vines, it felt like a different world from what the day before had shown us. Even though the traffic yesterday was light, today we had the whole road to ourselves. We also all wore windbreakers not because it was windy, but because there was a notable chill in the air.

Early morning Napa was like a ghost town when at its southern edge, our turn toward Davis appeared. As we climbed through the gentle hills that separated us from the Sacramento Valley, the cool of morning quickly gave way to the heat that would mark this day well before we got to Davis. As the warmth intensified, we passed through mile after mile of parched, gently rolling farmland.

With no shade to protect us from the unrelenting sun, we felt like we were inside of an oven being cooked with all the dry brown weeds that long ago had been drained of life. The fence posts made brittle and gray by the furnace like conditions reinforced this notion. This as the heat rising from the road in the distance ahead warned us that there was to be no relief in sight.

Careful not to push myself in these conditions, I rode slower than the rest when finally, off in the distance, I could see a water tower. It signaled the oasis like green of Winters, pop. 7,115.

We stopped at Fast Eddies, a popular road, bike destination that closes early in the afternoon, for some cool drinks. We enjoyed them in the park across the street. But we still had 10 miles to go.

The long slow slog continued as Davis all too slowly grew closer. By the time we got there, I was beat. Catching up with everyone else, we were soon in the middle of its small downtown. We found the bus. It was parked at a curb, near a park in the middle of this small city of 66,000 people.

On the trailer behind it sat the Busycle. After the tough ride all of us had just had in the 95+ degree temperatures, it was a welcome sight in many ways. Besides the fun it represented and all the new doors our human-powered people mover would open, it also meant our ride would be seen in a whole new way. This was so because from here on out, it would be exposed to people who had never seen the Busycle before.

In all of the major cities our ride would take us through, we would be giving demonstration rides on our overgrown, four-wheel bike to a brand new audience of people. And as we introduced more and more of America to the Busycle, the excitement for what this ride and the NBG is all about would grow exponentially!

Seeing the bus also meant rest, a place where we could get out of the sun. In addition, it represented refreshment as well as nourishment. Even though we had to take care of our own food needs once we left the bus in the morning, Manny, our bus driver, alway made sure that our traveling home was always well stocked with cold drinks and breakfast and dinner items. What could be better?

Early that evening, a Friday night, we made the Busycle known to Davis. Since our people-powered bus had given many hundreds of demonstration rides all throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, we felt it had lost its ability to keep our ride fresh in the minds of the Mayors’ Ride cities through which we had already passed. As such, our reception at Davis was one of renewal.

Bill, who loved the heat, was the only one of us who had any energy left. He drove the Busycle early that evening as many dozen of Davis residents took their turns at laughing as they pedaled it around the beautiful Central Park.

By 8 PM, all of us were all back on the bus again feasting on corn on the cob and heaping portions of brown rice. We ate and ate before each of us retired to our on line mail and computer journals. It wasn’t long before most of us were asleep.

Upon awakening on Saturday, because the day would be a short one, only the 15 miles to Sacramento, and then Ed Cox’s annual Tour of Sacramento, I made a point of rolling a few casual and easy miles in the cool morning air. I did not want to get stuck in extreme temperature like yesterday’s if I could avoid it. I had to strengthen the habit I would need in the months ahead of getting up early so that my riding would be done before it got too hot. From experience I knew how easy it was to fall out of the rhythm of getting up and on the road at the first crack of daylight.

Inside an inner mantra kept reminding me that in order to beat a lot of the day’s heat and traffic, that a lot of my riding would have to be done by noon. I knew I had to keep my mind hungry for the road ahead.

Tomorrow’s fun ride from Sacramento to Folsom along the American River did not concern me. That would be a journey down bike path heaven. The fire I was stoking was the one that would get me up and over the Sierras and across the huge desert that loomed soon ahead.

I reveled in the cool morning air as I slowly ambled along on the quiet downtown streets. With few cars and not a soul in sight, I felt like I had Davis all to myself. By the time I got back to the bus, Don, Bill, Jenifer and Skot were all up and standing next to their bikes. outside.

Wow,” I exclaimed as I rolled my tall wheel to a stop. “I thought you guys would still all be asleep.”

“Food time,” said Skot.

“We’re getting ready to go downtown to go eat,” added Don.

“And by the way, we saw one of your big wheel buddies a few minutes ago.” Bill was always so cheery, even in the morning as everyone else was trying to wake up.

Back in town, it wasn’t hard to figure out where we would eat. Outside the first restaurant we saw, four tall bikes were leaning against the building. And I recognized each one.

As we walked in, Tim called, “come on back here Martin, you guys sit with us. Grab some chairs on the way.” Tim, a former professional motorcycle racer, was an enthusiastic organizer of HiWheel rides down in the Bay Area.

He, Greg, Randy and Marty all stood up to greet us as the rest of my group introduced themselves and everyone met one another.

“Too excellent guys. I already heard from Al and Terry but who else is here? Did Ted make it up from what is it LA or San Diego? And what do you know about Steve?” I asked.

“I heard they were ‘gonna be here but we haven’t seen them,” offered Greg. A fit looking man in his fifty’s, Greg ran the company, Rideable Bicycle Replicas, he had helped his father build that made reproduction HiWheel bikes. In fact, Marty, a tall, strong looking, dark haired man, rode one of Greg’s top of the line machines. And pretty much anyone who rode a HiWheel, had, at one time or another, owned one of Greg’s bikes.

For example, my first two such Ordinaries, were made by either Greg or his dad .

“If Van comes up, I think he is just going to do Rancho,” Tim said.

He was referring to the ride we would be doing that would start tomorrow and take us up to the small town of Folsom. Along the way we would also get NBG proclamations from the Sacramento and Rancho Cordova Mayors.

“Too bad Jack is not with us right anymore. He used to love this gentle up hill ride it was no big deal for him, even though he was pushing 70. In 1984 he had ridden all the way across the US, by himself, on a HiWheel to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of Thomas Stevens’ first ever bike ride across America.”

Because of Jack’s quiet, unassuming nature, not enough people, even to the day he died understand the gigantic size of his accomplishment. In sum, he rode from San Francisco to Boston in 44 days on an 1887 Columbia Expert. On his ride he saw America from a wheel that stood 52 inches tall. His TransAmerica crossing included 15 centuries (one hundred mile days) and he powered through rain and snowstorms, tire failures on both wheels (a big deal on a HiWheel where you cannot just throw on a spare) and a lot of the adversity that often accompanies a TransAm bike ride.

In addition to his home that was filled with HiWheels and other 19th century bicycles and bike memorabilia, Jack had begun to turn his attention to old cars. So much so, in fact that his motorized collection filled a warehouse.

However, according to Tim, Jack always turned down invitations to show his 1950’s vintage Ferrari just so he could do our river ride. During this time of year, Jack’s weekends were usually occupied with car shows. And yet our river ride was so beautiful, he always made time for it.

And it was easy to understand why. A true bicycle heaven indeed, we all looked forward to riding the American River Parkway. Perfectly smooth asphalt, it offered the ultimate two-wheel escape. Tomorrow we would all be on a path that felt miles from nowhere even though busy freeways and the life of small cities lay just beyond the river bluffs. We would look out on a peaceful summer-time river that gently poured over the rocky bottom it often exposed.

Along the way, we would ride through a few tree shaded, lawn covered parks, cross the American River on an historic metal bridge and be entertained by all the people frolicking in the many different swimming holes along the way. As the trail neared the base of the Sierras we would find ourselves passing through miles after mile of untouched open space where even the occasional tell tale sign of human life, such as a far away building or road, almost as instantly disappeared from sight.

Our breakfast was a spirited affair as we talked about tomorrow’s ride, Ed’s tour of the state capital, and about our ride from San Francisco. It was also easy to see which of us was riding across America and which of us was not. Skot, Don, Bill, Jenifer and I all ordered large sides of toast and pancakes and we cleaned them out along with the breakfasts we ordered.

“So is Ed riding this year?” Marty asked. “I haven’t seen him since I used all those spokes that broke on my wheel when we were riding last year to get his back tire to stay on.”

“That was so funny. It sounded like he had snow chains on. But, hey he made it. And he says he’ll be at the Capitol tomorrow,” I began, “he’s still running that wheel he took off a kid bike like I had suggested. He never ever got the bad one fixed, says he’s too busy.”

We were talking about Ed Cox, a stocky guy who, even though his bike was not of the same quality as some of the other HiWheels that annually came out for the river ride, he still rode strong. Like Marty, Van and myself, Ed had lots of cycles. A bike guy through and through, he was also the bike coordinator for the city of Sacramento.

And his passion is contagious. Much of the bicycle renaissance that Sacramento is enjoying in its downtown can be tracked to a lot of the groundwork Ed has laid.

When I stayed in the cool little guest cottage he had built in his backyard when I Eagled to Salt Lake in 2009, I learned a lot about this quiet, humble man. A former architect, he was a founding member of the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates (SABA), the local bike activist organization. Under the authority of SABA to call for more bicycle awareness, some of its leadership then went on to bring about Sacramento’s very own Bike Kitchen. An incubation cell for bicyclists wanting to enjoy more bike centric and not car centric lives, it is this bike co-op that is giving birth to the swarms of cyclists now filling the downtown on every kind of pedal machine.

Ed is also one the main organizers of the annual Bike to Work Day in his Capital City. Probably the largest Bike to Work festival in the USA, it attracts cyclists and exhibitors from throughout the region. As if that were not enough, Ed is also active on the state level. Toward that end, he helped start the California Bike Coalition (CBC). A nonprofit, the CBC keeps an eye on all legislation affecting California cyclists.

All of us rode back to the bus. We made for quite a sight and yet we were a natural fit for the City of Davis. Their city logo is of a HiWheel bicycle.

Nor would we have far to go for Davis NBG Day. Seven square miles in size, its City Hall was located very near where we had stayed the night, at Central Park.

To beat the heat of the day, our proclamation ceremony took place at 10 AM. There were bikes everywhere to be seen both in the park and on all the streets that surrounded it. As testimony to how highly Davis values everything bicycle, all five of their councilors were on hand to greet us. As was Mayor Robb Davis.

Robb and I got along very very well. He and I spoke the same language. Even to this day here in 2025, he still does massive tours of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

In fact, he and I were on the same wave length, so much that the ceremony was short and very business like. I had really wanted to make Davis the home of the. National Bicycle Greenway.

After my five years in Ireland raising my son Cayo till he was four years old, the National Bicycle Greenway organization that I got nonprofit status for in 1993, was disarrayed and had lost a lot of its luster. Without my wife, or son, I returned to America in 2015 to Davis, CA, thinking I could bring the burn back with an NBG relaunch from what some people refer to as the “Bike Capital of America”.

Well, in terms of bicycle facilities, on a per square mile (only 9) or per capita (66K) basis, Davis has no equal. However surrounded on all four sides by farmland, as I-80 (what the Lincoln Hwy yielded to) thunders through it, not only is its human infrastructure built out, but almost like an island, even tiny bits of its example are extremely hard to replicate, even in the three tiny farm towns ten miles away.

This, while its connection to Sacramento, the State Capitol, at only 12 miles away, is directly adjacent to busy Interstate 80 (separated by a concrete, jersey wall and cyclone fencing) and is only navigable by the most hardy of cyclists.

Nor was Davis an attractive destination for those who may have come from out of town to the national events I tried to stage there (while Indianapolis, where I ended up, has the top rated airport in North America, Davis does not have a commercial airport). In the summer, when most people do their bike rides, Davis, a college town/bedroom community, rolls up the sidewalks of its small downtown well before noon. It just gets so hot there that locals defer to their air conditioned homes, cars, offices or classrooms.

Unlike Indianapolis, the Greenway Capital of America (and a city with the most bike friendly downtown in the world), where in the summer, people outside are everywhere, Davis is like a ghost town quietly filled with the well manicured yards of an outsized preponderance of large-sized homes.

Well before I ended up in what I thought was America’s top bicycle heaven, in the 1990’s, while I was in the far more temperate San Francisco Bay Area, as I watched Ray Irvin, globally known as Mr Greenway, transform a dying city with Greenways, I also listened to him gush about the all new Indianapolis Greenway scene that was beginning to emerge. And when I saw it for myself in August 2017, I knew this was where the NBG and I needed to be.

Fifteen pretty difficult miles stood between the State Capitol and us. In getting there we had to ride the five miles worth of Yolo Causeway. On what really amounted to a concrete bike path built on to the shoulder of I-80, we slogged through the noise and filth the vehicles brought.

On one side of us a peaceful rail bed ran through an ocean of marshlands. This, as directly adjacent to us, a 3-foot tall jersey wall kept us separated from the speeding cars and trucks. It was topped by a cyclone fence. Once we got off of the Causeway and then rode the part of the old Lincoln Highway the interstate had replaced, our destination soon became visible.

Looking through the steel girders of the iconic Tower Bridge that took us over the Sacramento River, the seven block long road ahead, called Capital Mall, ended at what looked like a forest tamed by concrete, street signs, stoplights and asphalt. As we got closer, the rotunda that became visible above the palm trees was the California State Capitol. On its steps, we met with Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo who, with the help of her staff, presented her city’s proclamation.

The ceremony was done in ten minutes. The press took lots of photos of the Mayor posing with our bikes and us. We exchanged pleasantries, did a lot of networking and an hour later we were biking back to the bus which was now located in the historic part of Sacramento called Old Town.

The next day we rode along the beautiful American River Parkway. In between our visits to the Mayors as we rode, we seemed to be replaying each stop.

“What a great bunch those Sacramento people were,” Van said after we had found our way back on to the trail from the state capitol that we had returned to for photos. Every year there we assembled for a group photo before we headed out to the river and up to Rancho Cordova and Folsom. When he wasn’t riding his 1884 HiWheel or working on his antique cars, Van supported his hobbies in his work as a dentist.

“I know, Mayor Fargo, is such a great woman. I couldn’t believe she had her staff wait for Peter to get back before we took that group photo,” I answered.

Inside my heart warmed as I looked back to the low to the ground recumbents riding behind all of the HiWheel bikes that towered high above them.

“Where was Wagner this year? Did he forget something again?” Randy called back to me.

A former professional stunt man, Randy’s height, the period wear he was dressed in and the tall 54-inch wheel he rode, all made for a striking sight. His wife who joined him on her fast and sleek three-wheel bike made all this even more poignant.

“Yeah remember when they forget to bring little baby Samuel’s papoose so Jeri could carry him while Peter rode that homebuilt HiWheel of his last year? Well, this year he was having some problems with that baby carriage wheel he runs on his bike. He is not going to make it this year.”

”By the time we were heading to Folsom on the last leg of our ride, we also talked about the little signs that kept showing up as we had neared our Rancho Cordova stop. On wooden stakes that had been hammered into the ground, they read,

“NBG Rest Stop Ahead”.

There were others that proclaimed,

“Welcome NBG Cyclists”.

Every time we bunched up and were within earshot of each other, we didn’t talk about the epic riding that filled our hearts, there always seemed to be an observation or two about the last reception. After the Rancho Cordova event was over, we talked about how excited that city was to be a part of the American River Parkway. All the Mayors who had received us in the past, Linda Budge, Bob McGarvey and Ken Cooley, were all out there for us. While Ken and his wife Sydney had ridden with us one year, their Public Works Director, Cyrus Abhar and his son, Arya, had also pedaled with us before.

Other administration officials, including Steve Harriman, Ted Gaebler, Maria Lopez, Mark Thomas, Nancy Pearl, Curt Haven, Maria Lopez and Kathy Garcia were also out there to receive us.

At Sunrise Park, the little riverside oasis that Rancho Cordova was so justifiably proud of, fresh fruit and cold drinks were spread out under the shade trees on the picnic tables to welcome us. And by the time we had gotten everyone assembled for a picture, there was easily 30 or 40 of us squeezed together.

We felt so excited for the people who had the privilege of living near this amazing natural gift, a treasure that the local governments along the way all did their part to both celebrate and carefully serve as guardians for. Folsom, at the end of the parkway, made more of their connection to the River and its trail than any municipality along the way.

In fact, their Tourist Bureau regularly disseminated a plethora of literature that sung the praises of the American River and the Jedidiah Smith Trail we had been riding to people out of the area. They also made sure to remind the locals what an amazing jewel they had in their midst. Every year, their local newspaper came out. And always a feature story was the result of our being there.

Anything that happened on the river was big news for Folsomites, so when we ended our ride in the park next to their cutting edge micro zoo, a sanctuary for wild pets and other non releasable animals, much of the city’s top brass was also in attendance. Located behind their City Hall, the entire area was festive and alive in support of our arrival.

The first thing we had seen when we rolled up was a huge banner sign that read,

“Folsom where the ride begins”.

Underneath it, on the picnic tables sat a mountain of food and drink. The pedicabs that Charley McCann of the Folsom History Museum had procured for the city sat ready for tours. While smiling behind the welcome they had created for us stood a lot of the people who had always made us feel celebrated over the years.

In helping them plan our annual reception, I had gotten to know most all of the are quality of life shakers and movers. As I looked out on the sea of smiling faces there to receive us, they were all there. And I tried to acknowledge each one of them as best as I could.

There was Lynn LePage, the recreation manager for the city of Folsom, Karen Pardieck, a land use consultant, Andy Morin, a former Mayor, Mary Ann Mcalea, the Folsom Tourist Bureau director, and her two assistants, Jayne and Ali Brenning, Jim Konopka, the guy most responsible for the labyrinth of bike trails in Folsom itself and Dan Winkleman, the docent for the Folsom Powerhouse, the world’s first long distance power plant that we had toured in year’s past.

By the time we reached the Folsom Garden Inn, Manny was busy entertaining the locals with Busycle rides. He even had his passengers doing Busycle cheers as they circled the parking lot to keep the fun meter pinned at high.

Tired from the sun that had sapped the life from us, we were happy that Manny could do this work for us as we rested up in the air-conditioned lobby of this beautiful hotel before we rode the short distance to Lynn LePage’s house.

The bus was parked there.

Lynn, his wife, and their family of three boys lived in a handsome three-bedroom home in a peaceful sub-division where many of the neighbors all seemed to know one another. A high spirited man with high achieving teenagers, when I rode through Folsom on my way to Salt Lake City, wearing flip flops as he rode his mountain bike, Lynn escorted the Eagle and I the 25 hilly miles to the town of Placerville. The next stop on that ride, it was our next stop this year as well.

Handsome and fit, with a large view of the future, Lynn also saw the big picture of the National Bicycle Greenway. As an enthusiastic supporter of our mission and our yearly trek up the American River Parkway, he saw the NBG in its highest art form; what will happen once we get all of America’s bikeable roads and paths interconnected.

He and I had spent many hours talking about the NBG over the years.

Lynn envisions a corridor similar to his Parkway that celebrates the natural, as well as the urban wonder of each of the areas though which it passes to connect the coasts. From his Parkway, he foresees rail trails joining hands with old logging roads and abandoned highways and the like to explore America’s forests, mountains, lakes, and even deserts as it moves across the West.

In his mind’s eye, he saw, as the Lincoln Highway people did back in 1912 (see appendix), the reality of a red line on the map calling for a travel route from ocean to ocean. While the dream they fulfilled was for cars, Lynn knows the right of way from San Jose and San Francisco to Washington, DC, our annual Mayors’ Rides are helping us flesh out, will one day make quiet, vehicle-free, cross-county bike trips possible. This as we extol all the natural and man-made simplicity and wonder that meets the final, perfect world vision of. our path.

Interpretive in nature, the historical background of mountain passes such as the Mormon Immigrant Pass (discussed in detail later in this chapter) ahead, as well as those found in Nevada, the Wasatch, the Rockies, and the Appalachians, will all be marked with tasteful signage that will make them fun to experience for those moving slow.

The wonder of America’s breadbasket will be explained. Even the Platte River Basin’s contribution to taming the West (talked about in the Omaha chapter), instead of being thundered through at interstate speeds, will be greatly savored by all those who use their own bodies to see the USA. The natural features we want to celebrate on the route we envision are endless.

Where the NBG passes through all the urban areas in between often desolate, wide-open America, there will be wonder in our Anchor Cities to look forward to. Signage and information kiosks will be hard at work along the many bike boulevards, we call, Neighborhood Greenways that we foresee in cities small and large all along our route across America. They will tell NBG bikeway users where to go for food, lodging, fun and points of interest along the way.

This as the route we will have chosen, the Downtown Greenways we foresee for each of our Anchor Cities, to most directly get across each of the population centers in question will establish the character that sets them apart from one another. In order to do so, the National Bicycle Greenway will work to make sure our route will take in as much of the best each city has to offer as we can. This in the way of attractions, parks, neighborhoods, traffic tamed shopping villages, places of learning, and whatever natural assets there are to be discovered, etc.

The next day was short. The miles from Lynn’s house to the historic town of Placerville where we would spend the night put me on notice for some of what I was in for. For probably the last ten miles of the day, some of the up and down climbing required a fair amount of concentration on my part. The frequent short and steep ascents had to be attacked just right. Too hard of a charge and I was off the back end. Not enough and I was walking the hill.

For the two severe grades that did force me off the bike, I coasted back down to the bottom and climbed them again. Successfully!

In Placerville, we regrouped at a little park.

“Manny left a text message to say he is at the freeway entrance,” I announced. “That’s over there, a few blocks away. I say we head over now. That way we can lock our bikes and dump our gear so we can go back out and explore. This is such a cool little town and I always wanted to get a closer look whenever I’d drive by on 50 up there. I didn’t see much of it in 09,” I said as I pointed.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the quant little shops of this old Gold Rush town. A town of 10,600 people, in its day, Placerville was once an important supply center for the miners. We splurged for an early dinner at a small restaurant and walked the few short blocks back to the bus.

Upon our return, I excused myself to my little bunk. As the Sierra’s were now becoming a reality, the ascent that had been in many of my thoughts for the last three or four years, was now only a few hours away. Hoping I had done enough to prepare my mind for the many thousands of feet of climbing ahead, I dozed off.

The cool of morning came too fast. Nor did I waste any time getting out and into it. All by myself, by 5 AM I was off and did some easy climbing for the next 15 miles into Pollock Pines at just under 4,000 feet in elevation. At which point the road started going down.

Probably a thousand feet in all, I dropped to Jenkinson Lake where the biggest riding challenge I had faced to date began. A full day’s worth of non-stop climbing without water or other services stood before me.

Called Silver Lake Road and known by legend as the Mormon Emigrant Trail, it was a way to get over the Sierras without taking the car road, Hwy 50, that had long ago bypassed it. A stretch of high country that remains nearly as remote as when Kit Carson and John C. Fremont first traversed this part of the Sierras in 1844. By the time all of us were on it, less than a dozen cars would pass us throughout the day.

There was little except the raw might of nature to distract us from the next 30 miles of steady uphill grinding. Closed during the winter, and sometimes ‘till as late as June, the road, surprisingly smooth, rose, with a generous shoulder at a five to six per cent grade to 8000 feet.

Stopping to rest every twenty to thirty minutes, I could hear the wind whistling through the needles of the pine forests that thinned as we climbed higher and higher. Even though the labored breathing that accompanied each pedal stroke had drowned out the sound they made, I still felt comforted to know there was life up here. It was good that there were few humans up here because each time I stopped, in order to get back on the bike, I had to go downhill and then turn around so I could start climbing again.

In 2009, when I rode US 50 all the way in to Lake Tahoe, I had had to wait for roadside rest areas to be able to do this. Oftentimes spaced a lot more than 20 minutes worth of riding apart, On that ride,I would dismount where they left the road and walk to the top where they rejoined it.

Ten minutes later, after hydrating myself and inhaling a few energy bars, because I had not been able to take my hands off the bars to eat or drink, I would face the bike downhill and climb back on. Using the narrowing parking lot, I turned back uphill from where I had originally stopped pedaling.

Unlike 2009 where I had to keep my focus on the white line at the edge of the road because of all the speeding cars, on Emigrant, I could let my guard down a little. Where the road allowed it, we looked out on a mountainscape sprinkled with almost brush like trees, lightly dotted with grey granite rock formations. The snow that freckled the edge of the road contrasted with the heat that grew more and more intense as we ascended.

The fact that my water was being drained to dangerously low levels paled in comparison to the difficulties faced by the original travelers who built this road. It was the Mormons who had first made it passable for wheels, those of the vehicle of the day, the wagon train. Why it was Mormons who built this road is fascinating.

In the fall of 1846, a battalion of Mormons headed west to help the US Army fight Mexico for possession of California. But by January of 1847 when 363 of them arrived in San Diego from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, they arrived to a war that had ended. While most of them went back, nearly a hundred of them reenlisted. A year later, after their tour of duty was complete, most of the men who had stayed behind went to Northern California to hole up during the winter. There they took work building saw and flourmills, including the now famous Sutter’s Mill.

When the weather made it possible for them to return east that next spring, and a year before gold was discovered, they resolved to find another way over the Sierras. They wanted an alternative to the foreboding Donner Pass that was also fraught with an increasing number of attacks by Indians.

And as such, the road we were on was the result. In fact, in 1848, the Mormon Emigrant Trail became the first mountain passage into Northern California where the traveler did not have make use of complicated and risky tow chains to get a partially disassembled wagon over certain precipices. And for the next 20 years, before the railroad arrived, tens of thousands of Gold Rush pioneers all passed over this important road.

Once we reached Hwy 88, we were still ten miles from Carson Pass, the 8,650-foot summit that separated us from the next state, Nevada. And yet all of that would have to wait for tomorrow. This was so because for the next five miles we would be descending for 1,000 feet once again.

The reward that awaited made up for all the climbing we had lost. Called Silver Lake, soon its shimmering blue waters looked like they had been air brushed into the post card like setting that spread out before our eyes. It was in the parking lot there that we met the bus. With our hearts filled to the brim with the beauty of nature, we all went to bed tired and content to let our conquest of the Sierra Mountain Range wait until tomorrow.

The next day found us still a full day’s worth of riding from the road to Reno. As I climbed Carson, a respected 17-mile ascent on the world famous Markleeville Death Ride, I waited for the last six miles for the real climbing to begin. In fact, I had only been off the bike to rest my arms and my legs once until well beyond the halfway point. From a little over four per cent, the road grade neared seven per cent for almost the last third of the pass. Unlike a bike equipped with gears, on a HiWheel, the rider makes much greater use of his arms to get up an ascent. In fact, even though I was using them much less than if I were on a traditional Ordinary, my entire upper body still got pretty tired. This was so because I was able to climb steeper pitches and pedal uphill for a lot longer period of time on the Eagle.

Before I had to really bear down on the climbing, however, on the Eagle off in the distance I was able to catch some pretty worthy views of Lake Tahoe. Because the forest grew out of what mostly looked liked solid sheets of rock, I was able to see for miles in every direction. What I could not see, however, was what lay behind the top of the road ahead.

Carson Pass was filled with seemingly endless false summits. When we finally got some downhill, we got lots of it. As for me, being on the Eagle made the descent an enjoyable one. With my legs crossed in front of the steer tube, I was able to relax them as I sat high above the road and enjoyed the view. It felt like a magic carpet ride as I looked out on the El Dorado National Forest for well over half an hour.

Our gravity aided journey ended with headwinds as we approached Carson City. From the Nevada side, the Sierras we had just passed through looked foreboding indeed Instead of the trees that softened them as we looked east from California, the skyline that now flanked us was made up of hard and jagged rock formations. Instead of seeing green, everything began to look brown. We were however treated to a sunburst of color as we had come at time of year when tiny alpine flowers with their short growing season covered a lot of the lands through which we were now pedaling.

In Carson City itself, due largely to the efforts of one man, there is a lot of bicycle awareness. Through the activist organization, Muscle Powered Carson City and BikeCarson.com, the web site he uses to report about what is taking place, Jeff Moser is doing a lot to get people on bikes in what is the state’s capital city. And as he does and as others, especially at the level of state governance follow his lead, other cities in Nevada are beginning to take example from the work Jeff has served as the catalyst for.

We were happily surprised to see streets that had been signed for bike travel. We made use of them for well over five miles to safely get downtown where we saw bike racks located in front of popular places of business. In what appeared to be a bicycle friendly Carson City, at its State Capitol building, we met Jeff Moser and several other cyclists.

“”I told you I’d be back,” I called as we rolled to within talking distance. I was referring to the 2009 visit I had made to his city on the Eagle.

As I got off the bike, Jeff replied, “And I told you I’d make it worth your while. We’ve got the Governor and the Mayor!”

Jef f had more of a laid back, almost 1960’s look, than that of someone who was such a results getting powerhouse. Bespectacled, he wore his hair in a ponytail and his beard was not tightly cropped. Over his shoulder he wore a bike messenger bag.

Soon Mayor Bob Crowell and Governor Brian Sandoval appeared with several members of their respective staffs. They were all smiles and told us they were very happy that we had made them one of our stops. Everyone there seemed to know Jeff well enough to let him take the lead. After making sure everyone was introduced, Jeff explained to the small crowd that had gathered why we were there. In all of what must have been no more than fifteen minutes time, we were rewarded with NBG Day proclamations by both the city and the state of Nevada and everyone was on their way.

The Busycle did not make an appearance because it would be showing later in the day in Reno, which at nearly a quarter million people dwarfs the 52,000 residents that call Carson home.

Carson is the tiniest city any of our Mayors’ Rides visit. We had had to put a population requirement in place some time ago. This was so because we still do not have the resources to visit all those smaller towns and cities that want a stop from us when they hear we are coming through. We make an exception for Carson because it is the state capital and to honor the tireless efforts of Jeff Moser.

The route between Carson City and Reno was a most pleasant one once we got up and over the small mountains that separated us from Washoe Lake. Instead of biking along I-395 on its western side, we then much enjoyed the flat, lightly traveled two-lane road on the eastern side of what looked like a large marsh. About an hour later, we were in the small set of hills that gave way to Reno’s outer city limits.

From there the clump of buildings that signaled our destination, grew taller and higher from the desert floor as we rode. This, as during the last five miles, cars, intersections, driveways, stoplights and business storefronts began to compete for our attention.

The city of Reno originally came to life because of the 1859 discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in Virginia City 32 miles away. It was a discovery, which for several decades, produced one half of this nation’s silver. Since the strike was located up an isolated canyon, it had needed what would become Reno to get its precious metal out to the world.

Given life by the Truckee River, the land that is now downtown Reno was already an important oasis for desert weary California bound gold seekers. Beginning in 1849, Reno was the last stop these travelers made before they undertook the challenge of the Sierra Mountain Range.

On May 13, 1868, when the Transcontinental Railroad crossed the Sierras from Sacramento, Reno incorporated. The new city that emerged was named in honor of General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union army officer who had been killed during the Civil War.

Almost overnight, buildings began to replace the temporary settlements that had begun to emerge. Quickly Reno became an important freight and passenger center. With the arrival of rail, it grew rapidly. Due to its mining fortunes, Reno enjoyed great prosperity for the next 10 or 15 years.

When its reserves of the precious metal began to wane, so did its population. It was not until the Lincoln Highway made Reno a part of its route in 1914 that people stopped leaving. It took another 12 years for the Lincoln to be paved over the Sierras but as it prepared for the influx of cars a new asphalt roadway would bring, Reno began planning an exposition.

Welcome arches were fashionable during the 1920’s, so the founding fathers commissioned an arch to be placed at the center of downtown, at Virginia and Commercial, a few blocks away from 4th Street where the actual highway ran. It read:

“Reno Nevada’s Transcontinental Highways Exposition, June 25-August 11, 1927”

Seven years later the lettering was changed to read,

“The Biggest Little City in the World”.

A world famous slogan, Reno still greets its downtown visitors with this catchphrase even today. Because of the Lincoln, Reno had an engine to drive its economy. When another coast-to-coast roadway, the Victory Highway (usurped by US 40) then shared 4th St with the Lincoln, in 1926, automobile tourism became an even larger money generating force in the region.

Later when the Depression struck, in 1931 the town fathers legalized gambling as a way to encourage car visitors. By the end of World War II, easy automobile access to Reno’s casinos thrust gambling into the forefront of the local and state economy. Still looking for even more ways to reinvent itself from the glory days of silver, in 1957 Reno became home to the first commercial wedding chapel.

Today at 264.000 people, tourism is still the major industry in Reno. The hotel and casino industry attract more than five million visitors annually and add over four billion dollars to the local economy each year.

Nor does its proximity to the mountains we had just ridden through hurt. During the winter, they house the highest concentration of skiresorts in America, and it is their visitors who help make for a vibrant year round Reno economy.

While many people know Reno as a weekend car get away for gambling and/or marriage, few know that it has deep bicycling roots. In fact, the man who re-energized bicycling in America, Greg Lemond, was groomed for bike racing by the same club whose outgoing president, Mike Damon, has long supported our National Bicycle Greenway efforts.

When, in 1976, at age 14 Lemond decided to take up cycling so that he could improve his downhill skiing, it was the Reno Wheelmen that encouraged him to test his ability as a racer. Soon, Lemond was placing near the top not only in their races, but in every race he could find. It wasn’t long before he was burning up the California and then the national racing circuits.

When, in 1986, Greg went on to become the first American to win cycling’s most prestigious annual event, the three-week, 2,000-mile, Tour de France, his success prompted many to take up the sport. When he came back against long odds three years later to win the Tour on its very last day, after first overcoming shotgun wounds just to get to the starting line, he became a much exalted American hero. His was a story of hope that touched the sick, the old, the downtrodden, the poor and the rich as it brought people from all walks of life to cycling.

Also here in Reno, besides Mike Damon‘s Wheelmen, there is another man who worked hard to keep biking in the forefront of the local consciousness. For 25 years beginning in 1991, Tim Healion produced an extremely popularly, several day bicycle race that, like his now defunct coffee house that initially inspired it, the Deux Gros Nez, was both eclectic and fun. By adding a bike swap, parties, a century ride, kid, hand cycle (racing wheelchairs), and bike messenger races to the seasoned pro racers who competed for prize money, Tim had come up with a formula that attracted a wide following and enlisted the support of businesses through out the area.

We looked forward to meeting the Reno Mayor. Always supportive of our NBG Day, he had even driven the Busycle when Matthew and Heather brought it out from Boston in 2006. We got to the City Hall plaza well ahead of the 9AM meeting we had scheduled to beat the heat. Next to the Truckee River, the 17-floor City Hall towered high above us. A true desert skyscraper, it was separated from the river by the conspicuous open space where we had begun to assemble. Covered in concrete, it was the staging area for the riverside trail that would soon take us 12 miles across the city and out into the desert. It also served as an outdoor ice skating rink during the winter. With no landscaping or any real sense of order, it felt out of place with the businesses that were all tightly packed around the waterway in this part of town.

When I stopped at City Hall in 2009, I had learned why. It was then that I had put the Eagle in the elevator and traveled up to the 15th floor where Mayor Bob and Councilor Dave Aizzi greeted me with open arms. After they rewarded me with the Reno NBG Day proclamation, they went on to explain some of what I was seeing in the dramatic view of Reno that spread out below us. They said there used to be a building in what is now the plaza filled with people where we stood today.

After that meeting, I resolved to learn more about the structure that was missing from this conspicuous open space. It was the Mapes Hotel and Casino. The first major high-rise (12 stories) hotel built in this country after the Second World War had ended. Listed now in the National Register of Historic Places, it had been demolished in 2000 because it had fallen into a serious state of disrepair. A Google search showed me it was once a world class hotel where movie stars, congressmen and even politicians including Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr., Walter Matthau, Senator Joseph McCarthy and U.S. President Harry Truman had all performed or stayed.

One by one, the Reno bike activists who I had talked to over the years started rolling in. True to form Mike Damon got there before anyone else.

“All right Mike, you’re early like we are,” I exclaimed to a man whose strong body oozed out from inside of his colorful and tight cycle wear.

“I don’t sleep much anyway,” Mike began, “I always have just too much going with school, work and the kids. And I ‘gotta roll the miles and keep the bike stuff in front of the city,” he said with a smile in his voice.

“Like I’ve always said guy, you are one Marathon Man”.

In addition to all the rods he had in the fire up here, Mike always made time to ride down to Sacramento for our river ride. A mostly downhill distance of 165 miles, he did it all in one day. And the next day he rode the uphill ride back, which included the Mormon Immigrant Trail we had just slogged over.

Soon Tim Healion, who I had spent many hours with on the phone over the years, joined him. By the time the clock struck nine, Reno biking activism was well represented.

Mike Galioto, the owner of GSR Bicycles, Cliff Young from the Nevada Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, Ernie McNeill, an officer for the Procrastinating Pedalers, and Mark Trujillo, the owner of Waldens Coffee Shop, the gathering spot for many local cyclists, were all there when Mayor Bob walked down the steps to greet us. Joining him was councilman Aiazzi who never missed an NBG Day opportunity to give face to Reno’s support of cycling. Marcia Morse was there too.

A cheery middle-aged woman, she had always made Mike Damon and I feel like our efforts to involve City Hall were important. And in those years when Mayor Bob couldn’t make it, she went out of her way to make sure there was someone present to give one of our rider/scouts the Mayor’s proclamation in his stead. In fact, her enthusiasm for what we were doing was so contagious that Councilor Dave never missed a chance to meet with us. With or without Bob, he had been there for us six years in a row now!

“Well, well, it looks like all the bike leaders are here.” Dave called as he walked toward us. While he was of average looks and height, his personality was filled with fire.

Energetic and dynamic, he continued, “The Mayor’s got a proclamation for all of you. What do you say we read it, then maybe we can all talk for a short bit!”

Mike, Tim, Dave, the Mayor and me and my crew all knew what that meant. Since most of the local cyclists that were there with us knew Bob and Dave fairly well, there was laughter and jokes as we got our bikes into position. We even got an onlooker into our act when an innocent grandma agreed to serve as our group photographer. By the time our choreography was complete, Mayor Bob then read us the 2011 proclamation. A gentle man, all of us could feel his power when he read the words. We also knew that he genuinely meant what he said.

While Bob and Dave both made us feel instantly comfortable, even as we spoke afterwards for another ten minutes or so, they kept alluding to the fact that they were here to serve the needs of their constituents. They wanted to know what they needed to do to make their city safe for their cyclists. We could tell that it was clear to them that by placing the needs of bike riders above those of motorists only interested in getting in and out of town in the fastest way possible, that they would be improving the quality of life for Reno citizens.

For the next hour, we celebrated the fact that we were leaving Reno cycling in good hands with a few Busycle passes under the original Reno arch that now stands near City Hall on Lake Street. Located adjacent to the Truckee River, it had come to this area in 1995 after it had spent time in a few other downtown locations. As the press and tourists pointed their cameras at us, our short rides were done with Mayor Bob in the driver’s seat again.

Later that evening, several blocks away, on Virginia Street, under the second arch that had come to Reno in 1987, we did public Busycle demonstration rides. In the outdoor mall that was a part of the massive 950 room Harrah’s Hotel & Casino, we were able to let the people of Reno take their turn at pedal powered teamwork in a setting free of cars.

The Reno people even entertained our efforts with a band that played live rock and roll music!

By the time another NBG Day was on the books, we knew we were headed for some long periods were there would be little to distract us from the effort at hand. Our days in the desert ahead would be filled with challenge on many levels as we worked our way through the most mountainous state in the Union. All this before our next Mayors’ Ride stop -

Salt Lake City!

From Reno City Hall, we rode along the Truckee River on a Car-Free bike path that changed in quality, back and forth, from very good to tolerable all the way across Reno and neighboring Sparks. It took us to Interstate 80. We had had to climb a long on-ramp to get on to the thundering freeway that had gotten louder and louder as we approached. Instead of feeling intimidated by all its noise and fury like I had been in 2009, I felt confident and purposeful as I took my place on the shoulder.

Following my example, everyone else got in single file behind me. On our left was 80-mile hour traffic. To our immediate right, at the other edge of the six-foot wide rubble covered shoulder was the hard steel barricade I had gotten pretty familiar with when I brought the Eagle out here last time. It was then, that several times a day, I would make use of the pilings that held up the metal barrier as a perch upon which I could brace myself for a stop. In such a way, I could take a short rest break or adjust something on my person or bike that needed two hands.

From here on out, all the way to Colorado, the lands through which we would pass would be desolate

Instead of the more then 400 miles of this road I had had to endure in 2009, we only needed 35 to get to Fernley. It was from there that we would turn off of I-80 and make our way to Fallon where we would be reunited with Hwy. 50.

The Fernley we saw looked like it was made up of a new town and an old one. 26,000 people strong, the new Fernley seems to be built around a Walmart at the more eastern of its two freeway entrances. This as the more quaint and quiet Fernley, closer to Reno, and farther from the freeway, was almost a throw back to some of the peaceful towns we would find ahead on Hwy. 50.

From Fernley, we headed east to Fallon, 27 miles away. From there, the “Loneliest Road” began. Fortunately for us, we knew from some of the rides our NBG Scouts had done for us that America’s supposedly “Loneliest Road” was only lonely for car drivers and those cyclists who did not like the open road. With towns separated from one another by an average of 70 miles, most of the automobiles on the road would be those out for the long haul and not those busy scurrying back and forth from one nearby population center to the next. And since Interstate 80 had long ago bypassed Hwy. 50 as the preferred way for those in motor vehicles to get across Nevada, we also knew that most who used this road would not be in a hurry.

The local Chambers of Commerce knew how to use their isolation to advantage. In response to “Life Magazine” in 1986 calling the highway that keeps them connected to the rest of the world ‘America’s Loneliest Road’, they began to circulate T-Shirts and a “Survival Guidebook”. The pamphlet they have created even tells road users how to find the “Loneliest Golf Course” and the “Loneliest Phone booth” (solar-powered no less). Even the Nevada Legislature has gotten into the act. They have officially designated this section of Hwy. 50 as the “Loneliest Road in America”.

In terms of the physical challenge of this stretch of US 50, instead of expecting it to be a headwind infested slog through a God-forsaken desert, we knew a lot of the wonder at hand would make up for it. Even though there were lots of mountain passes, 17 of them, some as high as 7,000 feet, the views of the huge wide-open valleys with low sagebrush would be almost constant. We also knew we were up to the challenge.

Having just successfully powered our way up and over the Sierras, we knew we were prepared for the nearly 30,000 feet of climbing over the next 400 miles that this part of our ride would present to us.

Nor would we have escaped a lot of climbing had we stayed on I-80. As the most mountainous state in the Union, Nevada has more than 300 named mountain ranges, all running north south as part of the Great Basin complex. In what is the Nation’s 7th largest state in terms of landmass, there are 172 mountain summits over 2000 feet. And it is interesting to note that the federal government owns most of Nevada, over 85 percent of this mostly brown, mostly rolling real estate.

The lands around us grew more and more desolate as we moved toward Fallon, an agricultural and retirement community of 8,500 that also housed a Navy base. They spoke for what was ahead. From Fallon on, as the road switched from four lanes to two, for miles all we could see was sagebrush never more than a few feet tall. This as barren, brown-colored mountains always seemed to frame the sun burnt plant life whose growth had been stunted by the harsh conditions that now fully enveloped us.

About 50 miles past Fallon, the sameness of scenery was interrupted. We could see a robust tree standing solitary and tall above the sagebrush covered desert floor. It was probably 50 feet in height. What made it all the more unusual was that it had something hanging from its branches.

As we got closer, we began to understand what we were seeing. We discovered that what looked like odd shaped blemishes were actually shoes. Hundreds of pairs of them.

All hanging from the tree by their shoestrings. It was then that we realized that the residents as well as some of those who traveled this road seemed to be doing their best to find humor in all of the desolation that now surrounded us.

Not far from the Shoe Tree (sadly vandals cut this magnificent tree down a few years ago) was the town of Middlegate. The small hand-made, crudely hand-lettered sign that announced it read:

The Middle of Nowhere

Elevation 4600

Population 17 (the number 18 was crossed out next to it)

Welcome to Middlegate

Set in a clump of shade trees, an anomaly out here, Middlegate was one building. Its roof was covered in corrugated tin. Called “The Bar” it served as a bar, grocery store, restaurant, gas station and an office for the several cabins and RV hookups for rent.

Manny was there with the bus, ready for us to spend the night. Inside the bar was a telephone booth in the middle and a random selection of junk and pieces of art all hanging from the walls. The chef made us a tasty veggie burger, though we could have opted for the one-pound Monster Burger. Had we been meat eaters, and gotten one all down, we would have received a free T-shirt that read. “I Ate the Monster, in Middlegate, NV” complete with a large image of the burger itself.

We asked about the shoe-covered tree. We found out that legend has it that a couple that was stopped there got into a fight. After the man threw the woman’s shoes into the tree and drove off, she had no other option but to walk into town. Soon other shoes followed. Then more. Now there is so much footwear hanging high from this out of place green giant, it looks like it has a bad case of acne.

The Loneliest Road still roughly follows the original 1926 Lincoln Highway route that has since been replaced by the numbered Highway system. Its relative lack of services when compared to most American highways serves to remind the cyclist that motorists also once had to be able to go long distances without being able to purchase food, cold drink and shelter.

While a large percentage of it still follows the original Lincoln Highway of 1914 that we talk about in the Appendix, many things have changed over the years. While what Fisher and his Hoosier tour of 1913 and then the Army Transcontinental Motor Convoy of 1919 (both talked about in the appendix) drove on was dirt, today’s motorists travel on roads that are not only paved but graded. Instead of the often steep up and down travel that early day Hwy. 50 drivers faced, we found ourselves on long grades, which averaged 6 to 8 per cent. The vistas that we often found ourselves enjoying as we climbed or descended were of the broad expanse of a wide-open world.

After Middlegate, we rode hard for 64 more miles of up and down sagebrush lands before we came upon a Ghost Town. In 1862, silver was discovered in it. And for the next ten years, people flooded into what became known as Austin, Nevada. So much so that Austin now a remnant of its former self at 270 residents, once boasted 10,000 people.

It wasn’t long before a lumber mill had been built and four hundred homes had been constructed . There were schools, churches, hotels, stores and, in keeping with the Wild West, the required number of saloons and pleasure houses. The first newspaper arrived in 1863 in the form of the Reese River Reveille. It is still being printed today and claims to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in Nevada.

It was in this tiny downtown that we met the bus and stayed the night. I had been working pretty hard out here and knew I had to be fresh for the two big days of climbing ahead. Just to get to the next town, we would have to pedal over two mountain ranges with three passes, one Austin Summit that reached 7,484 feet.

Several hours before sundown, as Don, Skot, Jenifer and Bill laughed and talked about their day, I was fast asleep in my airbed. Not even the almost suffocating heat inside the bus could keep me awake. And even then the relative cool of the next desert morning came too soon. On automatic, I was out and in it, in the early dawn, well before anyone else.

As I worked to get to the former boomtown of Eureka, I had a fair idea of what to expect. This was so because its present residents had done a lot to preserve its rich history in books I was able to find at the library well before I got there. Like Austin, silver was also discovered in Eureka. However, since Eureka’s silver contained high amounts of lead, it wasn’t until 1869 that the smelters it put into action, helped it overtake Austin in terms of production. So much so, in fact, that by the time the last of its mines closed down in 1891, Eureka produced more than four times the wealth that Austin did. During this time, Eureka was also referred to as the “Pittsburgh of the West” because of the heavy smoke belching out of as many as 16 different smelters.

In 1878, Eureka reached its peak in population of about 9,000 people. It was a bustling city with dozens of saloons and gambling houses, There were also several opera houses, two breweries, five volunteer firefighting companies and an assortment of doctors, merchants, bankers and other business people.

As the city’s economy shrank with the closing of the mines, many of the local businesses and residences were acquired and maintained by the families (many of whom had come out of poverty in Europe) who stayed. The 435 people who live there now maintain the small handful of shops and stores in the heart of town as well as the four or five lodging purveyors that accommodate over night visitors.

There are also a few jobs at the local high school, which was rebuilt in 1924. In 1887 it graduated six people. The elementary school, which came much later, joins a working courthouse to employ a few more locals. Two-stories tall and made of brick, the house of justice was completed in 1880.

Everyone had caught up with me well before we got there, but by the time we did reach Eureka, we were all desperate for something cold to drink. We stopped at a business with a bright red sign that must have been 40 or 50 feet long across the top that in white letters read, “Casino Restaurant”. A regionally famous eating establishment and bar, it was called The Owl Club. We found out from talking with the bartender, it began life in the 1870’s as a brewery.

He also filled us in on some other things about Eureka. We had spotted a couple of cemeteries on the way into town and were told there are at least five of them. We also saw a few small churches and heard that a few of them still had active congregations.

Eureka is also proud of the Opera House we had seen that looked more like a saloon than a venue supporting the arts or matters intellectual. The Owl man told us it had been renovated in the 1990’s. Built to be fire proof in 1880, it has an iron and brick front and its two-story walls are two feet thick. During the hey-day of Eureka, famous personalities had supposedly performed there. Today it is used as a cultural and arts center, a community auditorium and a full-service convention center.

We returned to the bus. Once again, I was asleep as soon as I had eaten a few brown rice and bean burritos, finished my half hour of yoga and had inhaled my Sunfood shake. Though Sunfood’s nutritional products had played a big part in getting me this far, out here in the desert where the conditions pushed my physical capacities to the extreme, I stepped up my use of their amazing superfoods. My bedtime was early. And once again, morning came too soon.

A full day of up and down climbing and descending ensued. Seventy-seven miles worth, it was good that I got a lot of them in before 10AM because by the time morning had passed; the heat was at its fullest strength. It wasn’t long before all the water I found myself drinking was warm. Soon, my own perspiration was the only thing that kept me cool as the slight breeze passing over my skin helped to keep me from overheating.

In a groove where all my legs knew was work, I was uninterested in the distraction that towns would have presented. All that mattered to me was the food (Go Macro energy bars and the seaweed treats I had gotten from Maine Coast Sea Vegetable) and drink that I had with me to keep this machine going.

At the 77-mile mark, Ely was a welcome end to a very physical day. As we entered town, the road widened to four lanes. About half way through it, right on Hwy. 50, we found a Mexican restaurant that looked more like a house than a business. The air conditioning it boasted of frightened us.

“When a car passes us out there, that is what they take for granted,” Skot called. “Man they got the a/c on and they think they are toughing it out because they have to sit and stare for few hours.”

“Maybe it’s good we don’t have air conditioning on the bus. If we did we’d never get going,” Don observed. “I already know how lazy I’m gonna feel after we eat..”

“Well you can’t say we didn’t earn it,” Jenifer pointed out.

We all agreed.

The food was great. And the chance to relax out of the sun, in a cool room, felt like heaven. We had a hard time leaving. With a little over 4,000 people, Ely is bigger than Austin and Eureka combined. And yet instead of silver, its fortunes once had been staked on copper. But it took Ely a while to realize this. I knew this and more because once again, I had done my homework before we arrived.

Ely was first established in the 1870’s as a stagecoach station and post office. Only after it was designated the White Pine County seat in 1887 did its population climb to 200. When copper strikes began to crop up all around it, in 1906 the Nevada Northern Railway completed a station in Ely to service the mines that had resulted. By the end of that year nearly 5,000 people were all packed into Ely.

The two steam trains that moved the produce of the mines remained in service until 1941. Forty-five years later, in 1986, the trains, cars and infrastructure were restored so well that in acknowledging them as a National Historic Landmark, they were referred to as “the best-preserved, least altered, and most complete main yard complex remaining from the steam railroad era.” Now known as the Ghost Train, it is this line that takes tourists on a history-laden tour through 150 miles worth of track.

In Ely’s quaint downtown, we also couldn’t miss the Hotel Nevada. Built in 1929, at six stories, it was once the tallest building in the state. It is now a thriving casino and hotel.

Ely, Nevada was the end of the road for America’s “Loneliest Road”. At its Visitor Center, we found a poem that seemed to bring the history of the lands through which we had passed into the context of the harried pace within which most of us live our lives. I took a picture of it with my iPhone:

There’s a road across Nevada that they all talk about.

It’s the loneliest, they say, and every mile a drought.

They see only sand and sagebrush, a land with no tall trees.

And they say if you find trouble, it’s a desperate place to be.

If they could ride inside my heart for awhile, and look out through my eyes,

They’d see a different world out there, and I’ll bet they’d be surprised

To see a land of friendship, with memories to share.

If they could ride inside my heart for a while, I’d love to take them there.

Over there ghost town sleeps, and dreams away the day.

Will crowds of eager people ever again pass it’s way?

Time has passed and left it to be, to gracefully grow old.

Thank God for a piece of America that’s not been bought - or sold.

Sometimes I can almost hear them, in the mines, and mills and stores

The voices of those who blazed this trail a century before.

Their stories light my memory like the glow of hidden gold.

And I can’t help but wonder how many stories went untold.

By day the sunshine warms me, like the smiles of newfound friends,

As I wonder out through history, stopping now and then.

A welcome wave, a helping hand, somewhere along the way.

With deep respect for what used to be, they watch over it today.

At night the highway glistens, for those who care to see.

Hills of silver, stars of gold, light the way for me.

Out there in the distance, a vision fills my sight.

A fearless rider, with a pouch of mail, flying through the night.Over the mountains, to the West, there’s a world where pressur reigns.

And a different breed of people compete to share the pain.

That’s the place where danger lurks, a threat of another kind.

Around each corner a stranger waits to steal your peace of mind.

So I’ll ride out on that highway with a flying pony’s speed

And somewhere between Fallon and Ely, I’ll find the peace I need.

Out there I don’t feel threatened, and I’m never quite alone.

To me it’s not a lonely road; it’s heaven’s pathway home.

Author: Jack Dresson

Before we left Ely, after having had our “Survival Kit” map stamped in the towns of Fallon, Austin, Eureka and Ely, we found a mailbox for the postage-paid form that it comes with. By the time our journey to Washington, DC was complete, we would return home to a survival certificate signed by the Governor of Nevada, a Route 50 lapel pin, and a bumper sticker announcing that we had survived an “uninteresting and empty” road.

Even though for much of the Loneliest Road, a rumble strip fills most of the tiny shoulder, there were so few cars that this was not a problem. A beautiful and peaceful ride, even the temperature cooperated for the most part. Nowhere near as hot as the deserts to the south, we found ourselves biking through 80 and low 90-degree heat.

Nor was water endangered to the point of emergency. The longest gap between it was the 77 miles that stood between Eureka and Ely. In terms of life between towns, the occasional car was not the only sign of it. From time to time, we spotted bands of sheep with their herders and working sheepdogs. We saw a few small bands of wild horses, a few antelope, and even watched a deer dozing in the shade of one of the few trees that can withstand these conditions, a pinyon pine tree.

We found out later that the nuts from inside the pinyon pine cones served as a source of food for area wildlife. A tree that grows best at 7,000 feet, its nutmeat was also enjoyed by the 500 people in the Shoshone Indian reservation near Ely.

Apparently the word about Hwy. 50 had gotten to other cyclists. Upon talking to some of the locals along the way, we found out that they saw about half a dozen touring cyclists per week.

Making use of the route Mike Vermeulen carefully researched, rode and then documented in 2002 when he toured from Reno to Salt Lake City, we left the Lonelies Road behind on the roads he had selected. Over the next four days and 250 or so miles, the long up and down mountain passes were far from done as we biked from Ely to Salt Lake City. In fact with 63 miles to go before we left Nevada for good, we ascended the highest pass we would come across in Nevada, Connors Pass, at 7,733feet. There was also 150 miles of desert left to cross. It wasn’t until we hit Delta, UT, that humans appeared to be in control of the lands through which we were rolling.

From just beyond Delta, the climbing finally gave way to the rolling terrain that housed the former mining centers of Silver City, Mammoth, and. Tintic, Utah’s, version of Eureka.

The last ten miles to Payson, where we stayed our last night before we stopped in downtown Salt Lake City were all downhill!! From Payson on, with the incidence of driveways and intersections and cars increasing, Salt Lake City seemed to have begun.

For the next 60 miles, it was hard to tell one city, Provo, Orem, Lindon, Pleasant Grove and American Fork, from one another on our way in to the big town.

While there were no bike lanes in Salt Lake City, the streets in the center of town, a few made wide enough by the early pioneers so a wagon train could turn around on them, seemed to have less cars. Even though it was a workday of the week, we did not encounter one traffic jam anywhere. While there were a few people walking on the sidewalks here and there, we saw even fewer bikes being ridden.

Bill called out as we neared the Mormon Temple, “Things haven’t changed from when Jan and I rode through here in 2006.”

“How’s that?” I asked as I looked down from my high perch.

“There weren’t many cars then either. There’s no traffic. I mean I’m not complaining but something’s gotta give here.”

“Yeah, I remember you telling me about that back then. What 200,000 people and where are they all at?” I remarked as I kept a close eye on the car slowing down ahead.

“Kinda reminds me of Eugene, Oregon. What they got 175 or so thousand, and cars aren’t bad there either. But in Eugene, you see a lot more people on bikes. Here, I don’t get it.”

“Well we’re almost to the Salt Lake Temple, so it doesn’t get any more Salt Lake City than that,” Bill said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That’s the center of town. It’s where the famous Mormon temple is.”

Bill was referring to the focal point of what is called Temple Square, a ten-acre park like area in the middle of the city. It was there that Brigham Young asked for a church to be built when he settled this area with 147 others in 1847. Even though Young would never see it finished, since it took 40 years to complete, its historical significance reminds visitors of the Mormon’s importance to the settlement of these lands. While it is closed to the general public, the Mormon faithful hold it in such high esteem, that only certain ofits members are allowed to worship there.

An impressive building, its walls are made of granite that are as much as eight-feet wide. Atop of all this are six spires that reach 210 feet into the sky. It sat in and amongst the gardens and various sculptural monuments that we could see everywhere once we reached this holy area.

Adjacent to the imposing church edifice stood a dome like structure that somehow looked out of place. It looked like it could easily have housed a public swimming pool or for that matter a small blimp. Instead, as I was surprised to learn, it was the home of the world famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Local legend has it that the design for this building also came to Brigham Young back in 1863 when construction on it began.

By the time we reached Temple Square, the gently rolling hills we had been pedaling gave way to flat riding turf for a few blocks. The massive snow capped peaks that flanked the eastern edge of the city warned of what was ahead of us in the days that would follow. While Lake Bonneville, the ancient lakebed we were riding through was already 4,226 feet above sea level, the Wasatch Mountain Range, rose to as high as 11,489 feet.

Another reminder of the authority nature placed over these lands, was the city’s namesake, the Great Salt Lake. Fed by four main rivers and numerous small streams, the rotten egg smell that filled the air when the winds blew just right, served as a reminder that the world’s 33rd largest body of water was not too far away.

A terminal lake, fed by winter snowmelt, no rivers took their water from it. Evaporation was the only thing that kept it in check. In 1963 it dehumidified 950 square miles.

However, in 1987, when the atmosphere was not as dry, it expanded to as much as 3,300 square miles. Even though we didn’t ride by it like I did in 2009, because it was north of the city, it was this fluctuation in size that once had a say in the future of transportation in America.

To get around the Great Salt Lake’s ever changing salt flats and marshlands, in 1869, the transcontinental railroad bypassed Salt Lake City when the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific met. It was for this reason that the legendary Golden Spike was driven 90 miles to the north, in Promontory, Utah.

Even though Brigham Young and his followers felt the railroads should have incurred the additional expense of building a trestle over the affected area, Salt Lake City did manage to end up in the national transportation scene. When the Union Pacific was unable to pay cash to the Mormons for labor for some track it had asked them to lay in error, it compensated them with stock. And it was this stock that Salt Lake City cashed in on a year later to lay the 40 miles of track that would connect it with Ogden, Utah, which did get on the original transcontinental railroad alignment. It was this development, combined with the fact that in 1903 a twelve-mile wooden bridge was finally built over Salt Lake, that would then earn Salt Lake City, the nickname, the Crossroads of the West.

From Temple Square, about five blocks away was our destination. Salt Lake City Hall. A spectacular sandstone building, four stories tall, Romanesque arches held its tall windows in place. The pyramid shaped spires that framed its roofline, made it look like one of the castles from old Europe. A clock tower climbed high above all this to 256 feet.

When we found that this impressive structure has been designed to rival Salt Lake Temple as the city’s architectural centerpiece when it was completed in 1894, it all began to make sense.

Located on the site of the original Mormon camp of 1847, it was set back a few hundred feet from the road. Trees, and a big fountain that sent water gushing probably ten feet high, graced the wide sidewalks that led all throughout the well-manicured grounds.

City Hall was the centerpiece of a ten-acre city block. This important building seemed to compliment the statues that appeared everywhere in the small park that surrounded it. Made up of over one hundred rooms, City Hall’s third floor was where the Mayor did his business.

Salt Lake City Hall was grand for a reason, as it had been built to serve as the center of government for both the city and the county and until 1915; it had served as the state capital. Added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1970, it was exhaustively renovated from 1973 to 1989 and stands out as a proud building here now in the 21st Century.

By the time we reached City Hall for our 10AM reception with the Mayor, it was already hot. And even though we were early, there were a few cyclists already milling about.

Though we did not meet when I stopped there in 2009, I instantly recognized Jonathan Morrison of the Salt Lake City Bike Collective. He was a tall man dressed in slacks and a long sleeved dress shirt. If I hadn’t gotten to know him and his sharp mind over the years, it would have been easy to mistake him for one of the Mayor’s administration officials. Handsome, with clean-cut looks, he represented the breed of activists that were coming to greatly out number those tattooed and pierced cyclists that some see as the face of bicycle activism.

And it is a good thing for those of us on bikes because Jonathan has a big picture view of the bike world. Besides the Salt Lake operation, he has begun a national bike collective as a way to pool information and knowledge about how to run a nonprofit community based bike shop.

Toward that end, Jonathan has built a cutting edge web site that makes use of Google maps so other potential and existing bike collectives can find one another. There they can ask questions on the mailing list about the experiences others have had in running such a bike business. There is also information about the new industry he is helping to grow; bike shops that service people who cannot afford or do not want the latest and greatest that the bicycle marketplace has to offer.

In most cases, shops like Jonathan’s are volunteer run and have the focus of teaching their customers how to work on their own bikes. Recycled bikes and bike parts make up the lions share of the inventory at such recycleries. And as result of Jonathan’s work, bike collective people from all over the nation are finding one another. As we move forward with getting our NBG Hubs built into each of our Mayors’ Ride cities, we will be using a lot of the lessons Jonathan has learned as we use his important and exciting new service.

Until 2016, Salt Lake City was becoming an important hub around which the bike world was evolving for other reasons. Their Mayor, Ralph Becker, a lawyer by training, is an ardent cyclist who advocated for bike infrastructure like protected bike lanes. He also launched bike share programs, improved walkability, and made SLC more bicycle-friendly. He even rode his own bike frequently to lead by example. He championed safer cycling by adopting the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide to create better, more comfortable, and safer streets for all users, significantly increasing bike usage in the city.

Nor were his efforts wasted, The two Mayors who followed him, the current Mayor and Jackie Biskupski also ride.

In fact, Jackie was known to actively participate in events like the annual Bike to Work Day and in the promotion of cycling and trail development, by using bikes from the city’s Greenbike program and advocating for green spaces.

This as the present Mayor, Erin Mendenhall even hosts her own community bike rides, which differ from a critical mass ride in the sense that Mendenhall's rides include pre-planned routes and police escorts.

By the time we had all assembled for a group photo, there were maybe a dozen people there to give face to Salt Lake City cycling. Besides Jonathan, the Salt Lake Bike Collective was also represented by Jamie Cowen and Michael Wise. This as Jeff and Sandy Levenson were also there on behalf of the Bonneville Bicycle Club. Soon, a few tourists who were in the area to tour the beautiful City Hall grounds stopped to watch. More sfollowed.

As everyone dispersed back to their Salt Lake work lives after our brief proclamation ceremony, a few of the elected officials stayed around for the Busycle rides we had ready for them on nearby South Temple St. There, a small crowd had assembled to wonder at the machine Manny had gotten ready for us to enjoy.

As Mayor Becker drove his staff and members of his administration around on the Busycle, the press was very active. They took a lot of pictures and video that would appear in the evening news and in the following day’s newspapers.

By the time our Busycle rides were complete, we all had only one thing on our minds. All of us were anxious to get the last two major mountain ranges before we hit the Plains, and then the Appalachians, out of the way. Before us stood the formidable Wasatch. Not far behind it were the Rockies that separated us from Boulder and Denver.

Inside we had ourselves braced for the effort ahead.....

Our way over and through the challenging looking Wasatch Mountains would require a 40 mile U-turn, the first 20 of which felt like a never ending Salt Lake City. We knew to do this thanks to Mike Vermeulen, whose well-documented rides had already helped us to get here from the Loneliest Highway. Once we reached Orem, again following the roads Mike had used to then get over the Rockies, which followed, we headed up the Provo Canyon to Heber City. From Heber City, for the first 5 miles we thought we were in bicycle heaven as we pedaled a separate bicycle/pedestrian path.

It was from there that we got on US 40, which had its terminus at Interstate 80, seventeen miles to the north. Once a highway that traversed the entire United States from San Francisco to Atlantic City, New Jersey, a distance of 3,157 miles, US 40 was built over several of America’s original highways. These include the Victory Highway, parts of the Lincoln Highway as we saw in Reno, the Oregon Trail in Kansas, Zane’s trace in Ohio and the 600 mile long National Road of 1806 on the East Coast.

Built in the 1920’s, by the mid 1950’s, US 40 had become the preferred way to travel by car from one coast to the other. It was a roadway that has been so completely minimized by I-80, however, that now over 800 miles of it have completely vanished from today’s road maps.

We would be riding 40 all the way to Granby, CO, well over halfway through the Rocky Mountains and yet we were not on it long before we were climbing Daniels Pass. For hours. From 5600 feet to 8000 feet, beside the tremendous effort of pedaling this ascent on the Eagle, I also had to deal with boats. Trucks pulling them. On their way to Strawberry Lake, the noise they made as they rumbled up the hill seemed to desecrate the peaceful nature that surrounded us. Nor were we in a place where we could enjoy our high alpine surroundings. In order to keep a straight line, less I veer into their path while climbing out of the saddle, I had to stay very focused. And even then, because of all the strain this was placing on my arms, every 20 or so minutes, I kept having to use every rest area I saw to take a break.

Once we got to the beautiful lake at the top, 17 miles later, we had done most of the work of getting over the Wasatch. Some of the up and down of climbing through a mountain range remained as we passed through Currant Creek and spent a night in Fruitland, but by the time we reached Duchesne, 70 miles from Heber City, we had made it over another significant hurdle on our two-wheel way across America.

Duchesne was a small town of 1,400 people with one motel, a bank, a gas station and afew stores and cafes. Besides giving us a place to meet the bus, it was from there that the welcome flat of the irrigated pastures that led to Roosevelt and then Vernal would begin.

Vernal, was the town I had stayed at in 1979 when I crossed the USA the first time. I had been in a fog the last time I was here because of the water sickness I talk about in my book “Awake Again”. Hoping there would be something I would remember, the town had grown so much, there was not. So, instead of trying to do more with my stay, we did not stop long and crossed the state line into Colorado 30 miles away..

Soon we were in Dinosaur, located in the Colorado Desert, two miles away from Dinosaur National Monument where thousands of fossilized dinosaur remains were discovered in 1909. By the time we got there, Manny had talked one of the motel owners, into letting us use their power. As a result, we were able to run fans to circulate the dry, hot air. Only 243 people lived in Dinosaur so, like in all the towns we seemed to be visiting any more, everyone here knew we were staying the night.

Nor was there much to see or do. While its handful of streets were all named after dinosaurs, Dinosaur consisted of two service station/convenience stores, a post office, one restaurant and two motels. All of this appeared to be stuck in the middle of the brown rolling vistas that made the clear blue sky above look endless.

It was this that we would have to then push through to a night in the tiny town of Maybell, population 76, where there actually were trees, even a small park. Complete with RV hook ups, it was there, in the shade, that Manny once again had the bus waiting for us.Next door to the park, in this minute town located right on US 40 was the By The Way Cafe. We learned a lot about Maybell as we refreshed ourselves with cold drink in the small air-conditioned restaurant. We learned for example that Maybell has the last remaining one room school in Colorado. It was also here that the lowest temperature ever recorded in Colorado history was made. In the 1980’s, the thermometer dipped to negative 61 degrees! We also wondered about if Nevada had been upstaged when we heard that the average amount of people in the county through which we were passing, Moffat, was just 2.6 humans per square mile.

The western Colorado big sky country did not stop until we got just beyond Craig, which gave way to the base of the Rockies and then the spectacular aspen forests of Steamboat Springs. Steamboat looked like it had been painted in to the aspen covered mountain walls that rose toward the sky from every direction we looked.

The 10,000 people who live in Steamboat have a downtown they can be proud of. Here in the 21st Century, they have managed to keep the look of the 19th Century West alive and well. I had remembered this world-class ski community for its rustic charm when I biked through in 1979. Surprisingly, even though it had grown quite a bit since then and there were even a few traffic lights on US 40, or Lincoln St., as it is called where it runs through town, a lot of it looked the same.

There were still two and three story brick buildings, with tall narrow windows, that had their entrances right on the sidewalk. In and amongst them, for three or four blocks, there were also wooden buildings with false fronts. As their walls all supported one another, the mountainside ski runs that produce revenue for this town, appear as a powerful backdrop to this Old West setting. In keeping it working and looking this way, there is even a nonprofit organization called Main Street Steamboat Springs.

Don Loomis had visited Steamboat for us on the 2005 Mayors’ Ride. Then, Riley Polumbus from the Steamboat Chamber of Commerce had treated Don to a soak at the nonprofit Old Town Hot Springs, a beautiful spa and fitness facility, as well as a night’s stay at the luxurious, family-run Rabbit Ears Hotel.

Our board had decided however, that we could not make any more exceptions to the size requirement we had had to set for the towns that we celebrated with a Mayors’ Ride stop. So an NBG Day for Steamboat would not happen any time soon. But we did make sure to enjoy this almost surreal mountain paradise before the real work of the Rocky Mountains began. Like Don did in 2005, we enjoyed lunch in the open air at one of its many cafes. We also took advantage of the giant water area at Old Town Hot Springs.As we sat in the giant hot pool, Skot looked around and said, “Ya know these Steamboat people got it right, they gotta a place like ‘dis to play in in the summer. And then they got all ‘dose ski runs for when it snows.”

“I was kinda wondering how many of them ride the Rockies,” Bill offered. “I’m wondering if I am going to have any energy left after all this luxury to do Rabbit Ears tomorrow.”

Bill was referring to the pass, 9,426 feet tall that was the next monster challenge of our ride. At six to seven per cent of steady non-stop climbing, I had been bracing for it for years. I remembered it from my 1979 Transcon when I met a man having a hard time getting his wagon and horses up the ascent. It had been very doable for me then. But now on the Eagle, all I could do was hope for a positive result.

At altitude, the next morning we made sure not to leave too early because, besides the biting cold, the route would be shaded the whole way. By the time we did hit the road, we began with a seven mile warm up through the flat Yampa River Valley that placed Steamboat at one end and the base of Rabbit Ears Pass at the other. Then as my team left me further and further behind.

For seven non-stop, unrelenting miles, Rabbit Ears climbed. So focused on the effort at hand, I was only remotely aware of the patches of snow I kept seeing and the aspen forests that spread out like a carpet in the valleys that appeared intermittently below. I was going to beat this hill I thought as the challenge reminded me of some of the physical therapy sessions Don Chu had pushed me through in 1978. Then, he and I had been busy working to overcome my paralysis and the many other debilitations caused by my car wreck.

Luckily, we were on the road early enough that there were few cars, but the ones that did pass slowed down to make certain that they were seeing what they thought they had seen. Treating it like the same gym workout I had on all my other climbs, I had to be very careful how I paced myself on this one. Because I knew the ascent would be non-stop with no breaks,

I broke the time between what I began to think of as workout sets into shorter intervals. Every fifteen or twenty minutes I would stop, catch my breath, water and nourish myself and get back on the bike for more.

Remounting did require some bike handling skill. Inside I was thanking Palo Alto, CA for all the miles I had plied on its roads as I hopped on a downhill facing bike and then used the whole road to return to the climb. There were not any of the rest areas I had been able to use for this like there were in the Sierras. However there were enough straight sections where I could see oncoming vehicles that I could use this technique to get up the pass.

I met Jenifer at what she thought was the top. She shouted, “Good job Martin,” as I got closer.

“Whew,,” I sighed as I got off the bike. “That was a grind...”

“I was in my granny gear the whole way, I don’t know how you did it!” Continuing she asked, “Where is everyone? I thought we were all gonna meet at the top.”

“Well Jen,” I said, as I used the back of my wrist to wipe the sweat off my forehead, “this is what you call a false summit.”

“What about all that downhill?” she said as she pointed in our direction of travel.

“Cruel, isn’t it? That’ll last for about a mile then it’s seven more miles of up and down ‘till we get to the real top.”

“How’d they know that?”

I smiled as I said, “I guess they were not afraid to ask for directions. Probably got the word from a passing motorist. And hey I only know because I knew to look for this from last time. Plus there’s a guy named Mark Andrysiak on the web who has done some pretty extensive study of all his Colorado rides. So I did some homework too.”

From the top, after our downhill tease, the intensity of the climb gave way to some pretty stiff rollers that trended down on our way to the tiny mountain town of Kremmling, 27 miles away. Its 1,500 people live at 7,300 feet in the middle of high cattle country.

Instead of wanting to know more we all had our sights set on the highest continuous highway in the United States, Trailridge Road, at 12,193 feet above sea level.

Wanting to be fresh for Granby Lake where we could meet the bus and stage for the road over Rocky Mtn. Nat Park, we called it a day in Kremmling, and went to bed early.

We rode to the lake the next day.

For the next 28 miles, the high meadow pasturelands quickly changed to the forested lands of the Rockies before the grasslands of anther ranching town began. Almost the

same size as Kremmling, also at about 1500 people, and only 600 feet higher in elevation, Granby was made different by the fact that it began life as railroad town in 1905 and is still served by two daily trains.

After stopping at the small grocery store there, we left US 40 behind as we biked for another nine miles to the campground that led to our last major pass between us and Washington, DC. Just like in 1979 when Paul Philips and I psyched ourselves up for the next day, I prepared everyone by telling them what was ahead as they stretched out on their air beds.

“Tomorrow’s gonna be huge, but you won’t realize it ‘till you make it to the visitor’s center at the top. Like any success, you just have to break it into what you can handle before you press on. If that means stopping at all the pullouts, do so. If it means 20 or 30-minute efforts like what I found myself doing, go ahead on. Just figure out a pace and keep that.

Don’t try to attack any part of this pass because it can undulate at times.

“It’s not that steep, about 4 and half per cent, but it goes forever, 20 miles worth. And there’s lots of switchbacks that keep it tame. And don’t let yourself get discouraged by the car driver stopped at a turnout who wants to know how you’re able to breathe up there. They’re not acclimated. We are We’ve been riding altitude since we left Sacramento.

“And get ready to see snow. a fair amount of it. And we’re gonna be above the tree line too. So it’ll look like Arctic tundra up there. Major dress in layers tomorrow too. It’s gonna be very cold in the early morning when we take off. It’ll warm up a bit but by the time we stop at the visitors center at 11,796 ft feet, you’re gonna want to get inside for some heat. Don’t stay long, you gotta keep your heart pumping. And we do have to be out of there by noon because of the weird storms they get up there.

“And then it’s ski glove time for the fast downhill to Estes Park. It’s a real screamer that you’re gonna want to have all your layers on for.”

“I’m ready!!” Skot announced. As he looked around the bus. Everyone nodded in agreement.

When morning came, we couldn’t seem to get enough layers on to stay warm. Knowing we would have to start pedaling to generate some heat, one by one everyone said good-bye to Manny, who would be taking a longer but more bus friendly route to Estes Park. Lucky for us, Trailridge road had recently undergone an extensive overhaul, its first since it was completed in 1932. A road that caters to more than three million vehicles when it is open in the summer, it had been completely resurfaced in 2010 when I was originally supposed to be on it. Instead of delays and probably unrideable conditions if I would have ridden it then, by my being forced to wait by the car that ruined my bike when he turned in front of me, now there was pretty new asphalt everywhere. It was on the road and in the major overlook parking areas and pull-offs!

The work didn’t change though and by the time I reached the tiny visitor’s center, everyone had already moved on. I had told them not to wait for me, so they could not let themselves cool down too much for the work still ahead. Nor could I savor what I had just accomplished. Everyone there wanted to talk to me. Because I knew I had to stay keen for the fast slope ahead, I tried as hard as I could not to be rude, as I kept my answers short.

After a few hundred feet more of climbing, I was on a descent that frightened me as much as it exhilarated me. The 15-mile eastern side of this pass was steeper than the 21-mile western ascent we’d made from Grand Lake. So it was a lot faster. Screaming down it, we were in Estes Park in no time.

We arrived to a town I thought would be familiar. Set at 7,500-feet, there were many buildings spread over what looked like ten or more blocks but there was no one main street that seemed to stand out. Nor was there any anything of architectural significance that we could see. We saw nothing historical.

I asked an old timer on a three-speed bike if I was hallucinating, why Estes Park looked different from how I thought I remembered it when I biked through in 1979.

“Why in 1982, the dam at Lawn Lake above us broke. Destroyed the town. We’ve had to do a lot of rebuilding,” he said as he looked off to a street with Victorian lights and sidewalk benches.

I knew by engaging him, he would want to know about my bike. So after he answered my question, he asked me about it. For the next ten minutes, we talked about the Eagle and why it was the best HiWheel bike for the mountains we had just moved through.

Manny texted me to let us know where we could find him and the bus and after we located him, most of us called it a day. Champagne almost seemed in order. But I was just too tired to celebrate.And besides, having made it to the other side of the Rockies, we were now only 67 miles away from Denver. And even better, Boulder, CO, the home of the world’s first Bike to Work Day was only 37 miles away. With two NBG Days tomorrow, we’d have plenty of time to make merry.

At the Boulder Municipal Building, a structure that looked more like a corporate headquarters than it did a City Hall, Mayor Susan Osborne and Bike Coordinator, Jane Long were there to greet us. Jane and I had been in cell phone contact all morning, so she knew when to have her Mayor down for us.

“Hi Martin!” Jane called. “I never ever thought I’d see you leading a Mayors’ Ride. You made it.” Her erect posture spoke of a woman who did more than get results for cyclists. It was easy to see that she rode too.

“Ditto Jane,” I replied as I jumped off the bike. Looking then at the Mayor whose picture I’d seen at our schedule since last Winter, I continued, “And you must be Mayor Osborne,” I said to to a cheery middle-aged woman who looked happy to see us.

“I am! And I have a proclamation for you and your team.”

Boulder long has been an exemplary bike city. With a population of just over 100,000 people, they have many hundreds of miles of both on-street and off-street bike lanes and trails; probably more per capita than any city in the entire world! There’s even a citywide bike map they update every few years that tells you where they all are. And one can even get a free wallet-sized version.

The 76 bicycle underpasses one can find here, besides being more than in any city, anywhere, also say a lot about the future of cycling in Boulder. Built under roads as a way to keep cars and bikes from interfering with one another, these are an important way to grow the numbers of cyclists who do find their way on to the local streets. This is so because they give young people and those returning to the activity a vehicle free way to fine tune the bike handling skills they will need to be comfortable around cars.

What’s more, about a dozen bike shops do business in this pro-active two-wheel town where its residents bicycle at 20 times the national average. Alternative travel is such a huge part of Boulder that there are close to twenty different active Boulder area bicycle and pedestrian organizations.

We were proud that every year since 2002, Boulder officials have gone out of their way to make time for us.As usual, Jane had a small group of her local cyclists out there to greet us. A photographer and reporter from the town newspaper, the Boulder Camera, were also on hand.

Off in the distance, the sound of a bugle got louder and louder. To our astonishment, seated high atop his 19th Century HiWheel bike, it was Steve Stevens! We had not expected him this year because he had had an engagement he did not think he could break free from.

A Penny Farthing celebrity, Steve had set a world record in 2000 when he pedaled one from San Francisco to Boston in a mere 29 days. And the entry he was making today was the same one he made for us in Washington DC when he led hundreds of cyclists around the Capitol Mall for our Cycle America 2000 celebration. As for the small bugle he blew, an antique from his HiWheel bicycle museum, it used to be the 19th century cyclist’s human powered horn, back at a time when there was little that was not human powered.

Everyone was excited to see Steve. And as we all crowded around him when he stopped, as he climbed down, he joked, “So I hear Martin’s gonna break my record..”

“No way Steve, who needs all that suffering?” I shot back.

We all laughed.

A good sized man, over 6 feet tall, and well over 200 pounds, he was unable to ride an Eagle as they were built for the average man of the day. Which in the 19th Century was a smaller person in stature. And yet if he had been able to set his record on the Eagle, he probably could have shaved even more time off his astounding accomplishment.

Jane was enough familiar with the NBG Day ritual that before we knew it, she had Mayor Susan reading the 2011 Boulder NBG Day proclamation. Moving quickly, I took over at the small lectern that had been set up and spoke briefly about where we had come from, where we were headed and why. Soon Jane was organizing the group photo. Next we were all thanking one another and answering questions from the press and even the people who had wandered by.

Twenty minutes later with yet another NBG Day on the books, we were assembling for another photo. Soon Steve was leading us off to Denver. Nor was it a casual jaunt through the undulating hills that separated the two cities. Steve powered us along in the high teens for a lot of the ride.

As we rolled closer to the Mile High city, I found myself wondering if Bill Campbell who had rolled through here for us in 2006 was correct. He kept saying that it wouldn’t feel like San Francisco when you leave downtown, where cars have an overbearing presence. Though not quite as big, it was still the biggest population center we would ride through since we had left the Golden Gate city a number of weeks ago. What would make Bill right was the fact that Denver’s 566,000 people lived on 154 square miles compared to the 739,000 people who were crushed into San Francisco‘s 49 square miles.

It is hard to think of it in such a way now, but what is now Denver used to be a French possession. When the United States made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 that buy included most of what is now Colorado. In order to divide up the monstrous chunk of land that extended from New Orleans on a diagonal all the way up to the border of Canada, according to a formula, the US formed territorial governments, each of which was created when enough settlers moved into a new area.

Denver, then, was once a part of the Kansas Territory. It was a land speculator whose accident would name what would become the capital of a new territory and then the 38th State of the Union. In an attempt to win favor from James Denver, who he thought was still the Kansas Territory governor, General William Larimer named the settlement he had formed for him. Ironically, however, Mr. Denver had resigned before Larimer’s act could bear any fruit.

Nonetheless, the name stuck and when the Denver outpost became a part of the Colorado territory that was formed in 1861, it also became its capital. When Colorado was then granted statehood, 15 years later, in 1876, Denver remained as its seat of government.

In the same way San Francisco had long ago staked its fortunes on the discovery of gold a hundred miles away, Denver’s early growth was fueled by the discovery of gold at Pikes Peak and Cripple Creek, 75 and 45 miles away respectively. While not as large as the California gold rush of a decade earlier, it is estimated that 100,000 miners, called 59’ers, came to Denver and its outlying areas in search of this precious metal. By 1890, Denver had even out grown San Francisco for a short time to become the second largest city west of Omaha. Gold was in such plentiful supply in Denver, that when the state capital was built here in 1907 the entire outer surface of its 42-foot diameter dome was covered with this prized metal.

As we pedaled along, even though there were plenty of office buildings and skyscrapers to be seen, the riding, as Bill had suggested, was pleasant. The bike lanes were plentiful and the car drivers seemed accustomed to sharing the road. We were made to feel even more welcome by all the green that surrounded us as we then reached Denver’s civic area.

A park like area, the City Hall where we would meet the Mayor looked out on to a wide boulevard behind which stood a sprawling tree filled lawn. Probably half a mile away, we could make out the state capitol building. Even from a distance, it looked impressive.

As was the Denver City and County Building. Filling up a whole city block, four stories tall it was shaped to form a wide arching half circle. At it’s center stood the stone steps that led to its entrance. The six or seven massive columns that rose to its roof, gave all of it an impressive degree of authority. Later we learned that it was opened in 1932 as a part of a popular Mayor’s campaign to create a “Paris on the Plains”.

Until 2011 began, Colorado’s capital city was led by a cyclist committed to making Denver, in his words, “as bicycle-friendly as possible and (to) make it easier for cyclists to commute.” In a widely circulated news release, that man, John Hickenlooper is also quoted as saying, “Improving our bicycle infrastructure is an essential component in motivating people to leave their automobiles behind and instead ride a bike; it’s an affordable, clean and simple way to get around town.”

And far more than words, during his tenure, he made them actionable by requiring his city’s Public Works Department make the bikeability of those roads in the city’s bike route network a top priority. Wanting to get more people on bikes, he even started a non-profit program called Denver Bike Sharing that provides red bicycles to users at different locations in exchange for membership fees. He was so successful with matters bicycle and as a passionate environmental leader that the whole state of Colorado could very well also be on the high road to green.

This is corroborated by the fact that John Hickenlooper then went on to become governor of the entire state of Colorado.

We set our sights on Omaha, 540 miles away. At the eastern edge of the state, it was on the western side of the Missouri River that divided Nebraska from the state of Iowa. Though we still had northeastern Colorado and then the entire Cornhusker state to work ourselves through, it was Omaha that long ago had played an important part in shaping the lands through which we would soon be passing. And as it did, it had helped shape the America we know today.

Soon, we would be traveling east through the Platte River corridor, the passageway beginning in Omaha that had made it possible for man to settle the West. An undiscovered throughway that had before kept America’s first settlers sequestered to the east, it was through this part of America that the pioneers of the day were able to stock up for their journey to the promise of California.

Back in 1804, the Lewis & Clark expedition missed it. Though they made careful note of the Platte River that empties into the Missouri River just south of Omaha, they continued north into the Dakotas on their search for a route to the Pacific Ocean. And as such the Missouri River remained as the western edge of civilization.

It wasn’t until Major Stephen Long mapped the Platte River corridor in 1820 for the US Army that any the expansion of the United States could begin. Over the next four decades, the growing waves of pioneers headed west for the allurement of California’s gold fields, the rich farmland of Oregon or to Utah’s promised land all passed through the Platte. Nor was the river itself worthy of boat travel. Running across southern Nebraska, it was humorously referred to as being “a mile wide and an inch deep”.

Perhaps this was why, for us, since we were traveling up the South Platte, we never saw anything that resembled a river. Since the Platte split into two rivers two-thirds of the way across Nebraska, it had also been Long’s work that had removed any confusion it may have caused. The North Platte which comes down from what is now the state of Wyoming, is what long established this territory as the way to settle far away lands.

The Platte River Basin was very important to America’s early settlers because it was a source of fresh water and fresh meat as birds and small animals were easy prey. They. needed this direction of travel before they hit the desolate lands of what is now Montana and Wyoming.

None of the West’s early settlers traveled through Colorado like we had. They knew to rely on the northern branch of the Platte River, because beginning in the 1840’s, it was the Platte River passage that formed much of the basis for the Oregon and Mormon Trails.

It was fascinating to think that from 1840 to 1870, after most of the first pioneers left St. Louis, their first major stop was our next Mayors’ Ride city, Omaha. It had been one of the main points of departure for the more than 500,000 emigrants who went west along the Great Platte River Road. Since covered wagons traveled at one to two miles an hour, those travelers had needed provisions that would last for up to six months. And it had been Omaha that supplied many of these journeys. Omaha was also kept busy with repairs and any other last minute needs those headed west required.

Omaha also served as a support headquarters for those commercial ventures that had come to rely on the Platte. The legendary Pony Express and Wells Fargo stagecoach lines both had offices in Omaha. The horse racers, many carrying news about the Civil War, were put out of business after only 19 months in 1861 by the copper wires of the first transcontinental telegraph that their route helped to establish. The Wells Fargo operations, however, continued on. They carried gold, mail and other valuables from California right up until rail signaled an end to all this frontier spirit.

In 1869, when the transcontinental railroad commandeered the Platte River basin for its tracks, Omaha no longer stood out as one of the major lines in the sand between the west and the east. Before the Union Pacific left Omaha to meet the Central Pacific in Promontory, Utah, Council Bluffs on the other side of the Missouri River, had once been the end of the line for all trains headed west.

Omaha’s significance in the settlement of the West was pushed even further from the collective memory when the speeding cars of I89, which superseded the Lincoln used the Platte River corridor to connect the coasts. It did so 50 years after, like our bike ride, coast-to-coast travel in a car was a several month journey fraught with adventure. However,, cars and trucks move so fast out there now , they have no appreciation for the rich heritage of these lands. They do so without realizing the hardship their ancestors had suffered to conquer them.

Fortunately however, the state has outfitted the Lincoln Highway, now referred to as US 30 in Nebraska, with a generous bike lane the length of the entire state so at least some of its travelers can slow down and appreciate. We looked forward to soon riding on it!

But first we had to get through northeast Colorado. In 1979 I had ridden the roads that connected Denver to Venango NE at the border. So much had changed about the land around them, however, nothing looked familiar until I got to Sterling, CO about 170 miles away. In fact, for about the first 70 or so miles, it almost looked like one long subdivision from Denver to Longmont and Loveland.

It wasn’t until we turned east at Loveland and had then gotten a ways past Greeley, that the more desolate, ranching lands I had remembered this part of Colorado for returned.

This did not change until we entered the state of Nebraska. Soon, in the fields around us, the green of agriculture began to more and more predominate. And once we reached Ogallala and were reunited with the Lincoln Highway, the riding got easier as it changed in many other ways.

Besides the abundance represented by the walls of corn that exploded out of the soil everywhere we looked, the terrain was flat and the worthy shoulder upon which we rode was marked as a bike lane. This as the history the local trains represented could be heard not far away. Occasionally visible, they made everything seem magic as they rumbled away. The freight they carried was done so on the same rail passage that once was the only link connecting the coasts, the transcontinental railroad of 1869. Sadly, it was from the 19th Century trains that used these tracks that large numbers of the 60 to 100 million buffalo that used to roam America were slaughtered by hunting parties. An action that was promoted by the US Army as a way to starve out the American Indian, it was also desired by the railroads. For them, one too many locomotives had been damaged or delayed by the herds of bison that had been known to stand on the railway.

I thought about this as I wondered at how tame and orderly all of these lands were now. From a time when fierce looking two thousand pound behemoths that could grow to almost 7 feet tall used to rule these lands, man has covered them with an ocean of crops most of which is used to feed cattle for human consumption. Added to the abundance the earth yields out here, there are the roads, farmhouses, grain elevators and fences that tell who’s in charge now.

The water that man hydrates these lands with in ample amounts was another luxury for us. Cold drinking versions of it could be easily had, usually no more than twenty miles of riding away. It had not been this plentiful for us since we left Folsom and the America River behind. If there was not a small town on US 30, there was always a home we could ask for it at.

There were also many community swimming pools. Every town along this mostly tame highway seemed to have one. Although we would not need them this time around because of the bus, in 1979, I had used them for a shower and a place to pitch my tent.

Fifty miles from Ogallala is where we would reach the town of North Platte. It was near there that the Platte River made its split. Though there was nothing to mark it, we had reached the point where the fortunes of early pioneers we either made or broken.

Making it somewhat of a rest day, we stayed the night in North Platte. The bus was parked near the same large playing area I had survived a wicked thunderstorm in in 1979. Called Cody Park, it was named after Buffalo Bill Cody, the showman who had sadly built his fame on the fact that in 1867, over an eight-month period, he had killed 4,280 bison.

Because we did not have any mountains to work, we were able to up our daily mileage pretty readily. Toward that end, the 280 miles that separated us from Omaha rolled off pretty quickly. Pedaling through small towns that had once been given life by the Lincoln Highway, we turned north away from Interstate 80, which loosely paralleled it, at the town of Grand Island as we headed up to Omaha.

As we approached Omaha, now an active city of 487,000, I felt sad that we would not using our ride to acknowledge the visionary bike work that former Mayor Mike Fahey had brought to this region. I had had the honor of speaking with him a few times over the years and he had always made time for our annual Mayors’ Ride. A tireless fitness advocate and coalition builder, he had brought the many parties to the table that in 2008 made the world class Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge a reality. And as he teamed up with Mayor Tom Hanafan of Council Bluffs to connect their two cities with a bridge over the Missouri River, he had helped to drive the Golden Spike that would celebrate the power of human muscle to truly conquer this nation’s lands.

Three thousand feet long and 27 feet wide, Omaha’s landmark bridge has placed this city at the American forefront once again. A beautiful suspension span, this water crossing not only connects two important cities, but it is also connects two states and is important for the symbolism it represents. It allows man for the first time to use his own two legs to move easily back and forth from what was once the new frontier of the West to what used to be the more civilized East. And all of this leaves Nebraska soil at the spot where the Lewis and Clark expedition first landed in Omaha.

And now that the bridge is built, Omaha, is now busy getting its existing infrastructure hooked up to it. Thanks to the Papio Missouri River Natural Resource District, it already has 80 miles of concrete bike trails running north to south through the city. Add a zealous Convention and Visitors Bureau, lifelong bike advocates such as Steve Schnitkner and various non-profits (ACT!vate Omaha, National Park Service, Omaha by Design, Visit Omaha, and the Omaha Pedalers Bicycle Club) that daily work to improve Omahans’ quality of life, and solid east to west cycle connections are now beginning to follow.

And as they do, they are connecting to a lot of the good work those Nebraska cities west of them are also doing for their cyclists. In effect, it will be the ripple effect that began in San Francisco that will result in Omaha bringing wealth back from the West once more. We look forward to the day when Omaha once again stands out as a lynch pin for east/west travel. This time for long haul cyclists as they make the Lincoln Highway across Nebraska an important part of their transcontinental journeying.

Instead of the Platte River basin being a car wasteland to be ignored as it is now, it will be our National Bicycle Greenway that will make for a celebration of Omaha, these lands and all the small towns that serve them.

At a dock overlooking the Missouri River, set not far from the Bob Kerry Bike and Pedestrian Bridge, a small group from the Mayor’s office had assembled. Jim Suttle and his staff were there with a few people from the press who had stood there waiting for us to arrive. Representatives from Papio, ACT!vate Omaha, the National Park Service, Omaha by Design, Visit Omaha, and the Omaha Pedalers Bicycle Club were also onhand.

The Omaha NBG Day proclamation was read. There were a few short speeches about the Bob Kerry Bridge and a large part of the group adjourned to the cafe in the parking lot above. There we gave another half hour of demonstration rides before yet another NBG Day was on the books.

Next stop Des Moines..

After crossing over the spectacular Bob Kerry Bike and Pedestrian Bridge, we landed in Council Bluffs, Iowa. As we headed southeast for our next Mayors’ Ride city, Des Moines, we were turning away from the familiarity of the Lincoln Highway. The geography also changed our riding.

For the next 156 miles, the roads rolled up and down as they looked out upon a tapestry of different colors and different crops. Every parcel one could see looked as though it had been carefully groomed by man, a sense of order seemed to prevail. However, we could not just settle into a more strenuous pedaling groove and enjoy the view.

While everyone was busy shifting gears, I was busy in a different way. Because the hills were not long, I had to attack them. However, as my feet straddled the steer tube to descend, I had to work the timing of getting my shoes back on to the pedals just right so I could be ready for the next ascent. And this went on many times throughout the two days of riding this connection required.

To make it even harder to relax into a groove, the wide shoulder we had grown to love in Nebraska had been reduced to little more than a white line at the edge of the road. This was not a problem for the most part. But whenever there were towns nearby or as we neared Des Moines, the increased number of vehicles on the road, added irritation to each such mile.

Skot stopped at a turn out at the top of one hill. One by one, we all got off our bikes and joined him for a break. Unable to eat or drink while we were riding because of all the attention the road required of us, we used this time to do so.

“Man I keep getting passed by a lot of the same cars and trucks. What’s that?” Skot demanded.

“That happened to me when I came through Iowa in ’79,” I replied. “I asked lots of questions and I can’t remember if someone told me or what, but if you’ll notice when that happens, it’s when there’s a lot of towns bunched up 10 to 15 miles apart. And what happens is they’re running errands and stuff between them. Hardware store in one town, soccer practice in another, church stuff, etc.”

“That makes sense I guess,” answered Skot as he shrugged his shoulders. “So they do know where they are going after all.”

“Well, at least they got a plan. Kind of like us you know.” I said.“We got two plans,” Skot shot back.

“That’s right and good point Skot. We got the Mayors’ Ride and we got the business plan for the National Bicycle Greenway.”

“But I’m a little worried about da second plan,” Skot said as leaned back against the railing. “I mean we’re halfway through Plan A right now. You know we got us out here on all dese fancy bikes and riding da Mayors’ Ride cities and dey get all excited about us every year,” he said. And as his words got faster and faster, he finished the thought with “and then it all goes away, boom.” After a pause, he slowed down and started again, “but how you gonna get everyone first off even knowing about Plan B and den sticking with da NBG year round?”

“I’m glad you’re worried about that Skot but you know how they say ‘everything has a price’?

“Yeah but hey we’re talking bicycles here. How you gonna get all dese heavyweight bubbas outta der cars or off der couches or out from in front of der TV sets? Money’s how dey got dat way to begin with. It made ‘em lazy. How you gonna unlazy dem??”

“We’re gonna brainwash them. You know the same way that the beer companies make it look athletic to drink beer by saturating the sports ethers. Whether you go to the games or you see them on TV, everywhere you look there’s an ad for beer. They’re on the signs, on the programs, on the tickets, on the commercials, on the scoreboard, they get their name mentioned for every little break the players take. They’re part of the culture. It’s kinda like if you’re not having a cold one, you’re an outsider, you’re not part of the game.

“They got the same thing going on with all these cars and trucks. It’s like they’re targeting all these 20 somethings who are just getting started with their lives and they make it look like driving is a given. Like there’s no other option. I mean how can young people be expected to think otherwise? Have you ever watched a football game on TV lately? I used to love that stuff. Then there were too many games to watch and now I know why. It’s just one big infomercial for driving and drinking.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Don who had tuned in offered. “I saw a few Viagra ads when I was over a friend’s house one time.”

“How about Taco Bell?” Jenifer added.

“OK, OK, I forgot the fast food needed to make you fat and add to your unhealthiness. And then they gotta pimp pills so you can get it up after they kill all your life force with all the crap they want you to eat and drink and forget exercise to burn it off, they want you to drive,” said Don.

“I know, It’s all so sick,” I began, “the Ad Man makes them think they are real men and women and no longer kids when they can own a car. Like it’s some kind of rite of passage. That’s why a lot of kids who first start to drive, look down on cyclists as less thans..”

“Didn’t I hear you say that when you go to Critical Mass that that is the cool ting to do now; that a lot of the kids are starting to get it?” Bill who had been listening to us interjected.

“That’s right,” I said, “They’re playing all this major loud music. And it’s one huge rolling party with kazoos and boom boxes and everyone is laughing and taking their time and most of the riders are in their 20’s. And there’s even children and a few old people. And most of the people stuck in cars or eating at the restaurants or just walking on the sidewalks are all cheering us on. But hey that’s San Francisco. We’ve always been ahead of the curve. And yet there again, that’s only one day of the month. And then every other day, the young people got to go out and contend with all this car propaganda. And who do you think pays for all these ads the young people see?” Not waiting for an answer I continued, “we do, because they just charge more for their cars, and everyone else charges more for the stuff they sell so they can buy them.”

“Dat’s what I mean. We bike dudes don’t got a chance. I mean we’re talkin’ major do, re, me here. We’re talkin’ major millions. And dose guys buy de major advertising. And dey don’t just buy it once or twice, dey buy it day in, day out.” Skot said. “Where you gonna get dat kind of money? I mean we are talking bicycles now remember. Even if you got some rich benefactor dude to will his whole estate to you when he dies, that’s only one time. But dose beer and oil guys got something we don’t.

“You can’t drink bikes and when de beer is gone, hey, you gotta buy more. And you know as soon as we get to Des Moines, I’m gonna find me a bar and dat’s what I’m gonna do - I’m gonna buy me an ice cold draught. And those truck guys also got something they use that we don’t use either. Oil.”

“Skot that’s what got us into this mess to begin with. People taking from the planet and not putting any thing back in. And yet, like I was telling those kids back in Oakland, there’s a whole new breed of people who want to make a difference with how their riches are spent. They’re not trying to grow their investment portfolio by investing in companies that promote those things that take from our health or take from the planet. They want to know that what they are investing in will not only solve a need now but lighten the load for future generations. We’re gonna find those angel investors who want for their lives to be remembered as having saved human kind from spiraling down the dark hole which we are digging for ourselves.”

“What investor is going to keep throwin’ money at a bunch of outlaws?” Skot began. “I mean if you think about it, most cyclists like their independence, that’s why dey ride. That’s why I ride. But you get all dese car people an der always waiting in lines wherever dey go. But we don’t do dat so that makes us fringe players dat dese money guys can’t control.” Skot observed.”

“That’s what they said about computer nerds. The money guys couldn’t see how they could make money off a bunch of long hairs who smelled bad who gave all their ideas away. Back then the only real intellectual property you had belonged to authors and lawyers and that was easy to control. But building a whole company around thoughts that you had to hide from the competition and doing so with a bunch of renegades required the same kind of out of the box kind of thinkers we’re gonna find for our vision.

“You look at these guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and all these millionaire tech guys that are out there now and a lot of them used to be outcasts in the same way people who don’t own a car are viewed in many parts of the country today. Ever heard of Mike Markkula?” I asked.

“Nopers,” Skot answered as we looked around to see if anyone else knew.

“I know,” Jenifer volunteered.

“You can’t answer,” I teased.

Jenifer had heard me talk about this many times before.

When everyone else seemed dumbfounded, I continued, “Markula to me is the reason we have personal computers. He was the moneyman who took a chance on the two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs back in the late 70’s. Initially most of the money he invested in these guys was on image on two levels. For this he relied on the massive public relations firm, Regis McKenna,

“When they first came out,” I raised my voice as a farm tractor roared by, “computers were no more than these ugly boxes that made a bunch of noise that only the more advanced tech nerds could get any benefit from. Something as simple now as word processing, took a lot of specialized skill back then. Words like ‘spread sheet’ and ‘data base’ were not a part of the regular person’s vocabulary. So in order to make computers attractive to the masses, as they more and more simplified them, they also had to make it cool to use them. Besides making them look like something you would want to have in your home, they had to make them look sexy from the ground floor up. And that included making the early pioneers who had before seemed like such a bunch of outcasts appear like the trendsetters of the day.

“And it was here that McKenna, then went to work remaking their two Golden Boys, Steve and Steve. They got a lot of investors to take a chance on their new technology, then they made rock stars out of them. By getting their faces on the covers of the leading magazines of the day and pushing for the innumerable magazine articles that chronicled what they viewed as newsworthy successes, soon, almost what seemed like overnight, the American dream was alive and well. Their journeys from working class beginnings to riches inspired hope among the regular Joe consumer. By carefully planting stories every where they could, it was Regis McKenna’s marketing muscle that helped to create soaring demand for the Apple Computer, the hands down leader of a brand new industry.

“And it was this new face that Mckenna carefully sculpted for Apple that turned wild eyed fringe members of society into executives who people suddenly began to listen to and take seriously. The effect of which was to attract those who sought to imitate Apple’s success and has become the computer industry which has so much changed the world as we know it today.”

“So are you saying they’re gonna make Wonder Kids out of you and I?” Skot teased.

Skot had successfully overcome what was thought to be an incurable cancer to be able to do this ride.

“Maybe they can do something with your story, I’m done talking about mine. And along with that, what I foresee is having enough money to get these huge old PR firms to use our Mayors’ Rides to celebrate the every day cyclist who is out there on the roads.

That’s who’s usually out here visiting these Mayors. You know, really having the resources to turn the volume up for the reports our Scouts send in from out here and getting their bio pages and the Podcast interviews we do with them all over the media. And year in, year out, we get a fresh new set of celebrities to keep the public excited for the human interest part of these things.”

“I guess anything’s possible with money,” Skot shrugged.

“With just our Mayors’ Rides, for example, if we had just one national office with one or two really good PR people, bombarding the media with news releases, pictures, stories and other copy these news people can easily slip into their papers and TV shows, even radio, then something’s gonna stick. And as the press starts picking this stuff up, it starts to take on a momentum that can’t help but hit the wire services. And we’ll also be able to rely on that to alert the smaller cities and towns along the way who will want to get into the fun by doing stories of their own. They’ll be contacting us and asking us to stop for an interview on our way through.

“And when cities big and small interview our riders you know that when they ask them why they are doing the ride, they’re gonna get a healthy dose of Greenway information. And how those tuned in can help and etc.”

“People forget though. Dat’s what I mean, even if we have a great summer, it’s still gonna start raining and it gets cold and de people don’t do de bikes,” Skot said.

“That’s what exciting about these Mayors’ Rides. Once we get money, we’ll really be able to use these rides for NBG recognition to make it a lot easier to advance all of the year round programs we foresee. Granted we’re not out of the gate yet, but we are going to keep using these rides and this year my book until we find those big thinkers that will help us get our business plan under written. Then we’ll be able to use a fully funded version of our Mayors’ Ride to bring even more people and resources to all the other Greenway programs we’ll be able to get off the drawing board.

“You’ve heard me talk about all these huge NBG Hubs we’re gonna have in all our Mayors’ Ride cities and all the activities that will be going on in them. You know, like the bicycle visitor’s bureau, all the bike recycling, the bike repair classes, the museum, the rentals, the swap meets, the bike rentals, the community bike repair and all the community events like mixers, booksignings, lectures, dances and youth activities and stuff.

“Then there’s the regional festivals we foresee. And the guest home program and our on line bike route directory. And we’ll really be cooking when we can even give away free email addresses at nbg.bikeroute.com”.

“I never got that one, how’s free email gonna build anything?” Skot asked. “What are we just gonna be these goody goodies that give away free email just to be nice?”

“That’s what Yahoo and Google do. And you know they don’t give away free anything just to be nice. It’s all about getting their name out there so they can generate more advertising dollars. But in addition to that, once we get people using NBG.Bikeroute.com, they just might want to nose around a bit and visit some of the other links we will have running very subtly in the background. And the beauty is they don’t even have to be cyclists to use our free email so we are planting a seed there aswell...”

By the time, I had poured my gut out on everyone, we were ready to leave. More up and down riding followed. A few hours later, we made it to City Hall!

The 214,000 people who live in Des Moines are represented by a three-story building, built solid and square, capable of withstanding the harsh winters they yearly endure. It was hard to tell by the suffocating heat that we felt as we rolled up to its steps, but wintertime low temperatures can plunge below zero for days on end and 15 to 25 inches of snow in a month’s time is not uncommon. In fact, a 3.5 mile network of fully enclosed walkways, the 2nd longest in the country, heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, helps Des Moinians get around their downtown in the extreme seasonal weather they face.

City Hall itself, a grey stone building, had originally been constructed in 1910 using the Des Moines River for its entry way. Back in the day, most of its customers arrived from this slow moving body of water which cuts a diagonal for 525 miles across the state from northwestern Iowa to the Mississippi at it’s southeastern corner. Besides local transportation, this waterway, in the decades after the city of Des Moines was first commissioned as a fort by the War Department in 1843, used to be the source of power for the city. Besides satisfying the city’s energy needs, for fifty years, from 1840 to 1890, it also drove the more than 80 water mills that ground grain along its banks.

Though office buildings and shopping malls have replaced a lot of its fields, agriculture still remains a big part of the city’s economy. However on much of the soil that used to grow crops, factories now make tractors, drills and cotton pickers. Des Moines also has the nation’s biggest insurance industry. In fact Des Moines is now so far removed from its river and agrarian rootso that it is only dependent on its namesake river for one thing since it gets its water from the nearby Raccoon. Along with rafting and miles of trails, it is now an important source for recreation, something they take very seriously here in Des Moines.

As testimony to the value this city places on good healthy fun, the Raccoon River, located just around the river bend from City Hall, also has an extensive network of people power pathways. As such, while there are not any bike lanes in this lightly trafficked city, there are over 300 miles of trails for hikers and cyclists that travel to the outermost reaches of the greater metropolitan area. In addition, in a city blessed with water and green, there are 147 bridges crossing over its creeks and rivers, and most all of them are bike accessible.

For 20 years, until 2024, he man these people elected to represent them was not only aware of what had to be be done to keep the fun meter running at high, Frank Cownie was also all about service.

I learned this first hand when he did a 30-minute podcast interview with me in 2006. A family man and modern day fur trader, he runs Cownie Furs, a natural clothing store that has been in his family for generations. A popular Mayor, reelected in a landslide, he thinks he can track his family back to the early day fur trappers who settled this area.

Consistent with following his family’s tradition of wanting to give back to the community, Frank is working to make his a sustainable city. It is this passion that fuels Frank’s interest in bicycles. In fact, he and his teenage daughter both showed up at our 2005 Des Moines NBG Day on bicycles. In the rain, no less!

“Well, well, well,” a tall, handsome man exclaimed, “you’re late.”

Laughing, I knew what he meant.“It’s been so long, Lorna couldn’t wait any longer,” his smile grew wider as I climbed off the bike and everyone else stopped.

He was talking about Lorna Davros, the scheduler who had arranged for he and I to meet almost ten years ago now.

“Technical difficulties,” I teased back. “But hey we made it.”

“Great! So let’s get this show on the road. Who’s got the proc?” he called to one of the two staffers he had present.

A couple of reporters were there along with a few locals who had stopped to see why my bike and team were all there. Before the Mayor started reading the document, he talked for about ten minutes to the small crowd that was there. After he said a few words about how he saw his city fitting in to the bigger picture of the NBG, he boasted about Des Moines. He talked about why people are moving in to his city from both coasts. He pointed out that his constituents were all about quality of life. He noted among other things that they have 70 parks to play in and enjoy one of the shortest commutes, 15-20 minutes, in the nation.

He had all of us sold when he then began reading the proclamation. Almost as soon as he finished, he said, “Ok, so where’s the Busycle? I told my kids we’d get to ride it today..”

No sooner had we taken the 2015 Des Moines NBG Day photograph, than Frank and his daughter were joining us as we all walked our bikes to the nearby Embassy Suites Hotel, also on the river. Upon our arrival, there were crowds waiting for us. A spirited couple hours of demonstration rides followed as Embassy Suites, one of the many sponsors of the world famous RAGBRAI, a week long ride that annually passes through Iowa, had let their huge mailing list know we were coming. What a great way to end a purposeful Des Moines NBG Day!!

Chicago here we come!

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For the next three days we rode the rolling and oftentimes wooded terrain of eastern Iowa. It wasn’t until we crossed the Mississippi River that we entered the state of Illinois. From the small town of Colona there, we began the first of what would be 115 miles of bike trail heaven. From the Old Man River to the Illinois River, finances had delayed construction so much that by the time this path was opened in 1907, the canal it relied on had become no more than a recreational waterway. The towpath itself was covered with limestone, a varying-sized, translucent pea gravel. It crackled beneath our tires and sometimes shot outward as we passed over it. At times it reminded me of the wet orange seeds we used to pinch between our finger and thumb when we were kids.

Along the way, we passed people in canoes. The families fishing along the grassy banks, sat beneath huge branches spreading from giant oak, poplar, and sycamore trees. Blue Heron stood in newly sprouted fields like surrealistic muses watching us as we rolled by. It was an idyllic setting.

All of this joy ended in Rock Falls, IL. From there, we rode south for a day on lightly used roads to the town of La Salle on the Illinois River. There we would begin riding another towpath, the Illinois and Michigan Trail. Along the I&M, we stopped a lot as we read the historic markers along the way. The interpretive nature of this passage is a real world example of how we see National Bicycle Greenway lands being explained all across America.

A wonderful alternative to the roads that grew in number as we neared Chicago, the I&M steered us clear of all of them. About a hundred miles later we found ourselves on neighborhood streets near the Chicago River! By the time we got on to the roads of Illinois, the shoulders improved, often giving way to bike lanes, as we pressed closer and closer to the heart of America’s third largest city.

At almost 2.8 million people, Chicago sits at the southernmost edge of Lake Michigan. Still referred to by some as the cycling capital of the United States, during the 1890’s, more than 10,000 cyclists hailed from 54 different bicycle clubs. With 80 different bike manufacturers by 1896, Chicago was to bicycles, what Detroit once was to cars. In fact, by as early as 1900, the Chicago region made two-thirds of all the bicycles and bicycle equipment produced in the United States.

As testimony to Chicago’s two wheel prowess in the late 19th Century, consider this from present day Chicago cyclist, Howard Kaplan. He found it in a 1953 book entitled, “Fabulous Chicago” by Emmott Dedmon:

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“The most popular form of transportation remained the bicycle. The Chicago Post reported in May of 1897 that all society was awheel and the boulevards and parkways gay with the latest model cycles. “The fashionable girl no longer lolls about in tea gowns and darkened rooms,” the paper said, “but stands beside you in short skirts, sailor hat, low shoes and leggings, ready for a spin on the wheel.” Every afternoon and evening cycling parties might be found at the Saddle and Cycle Club north of the city. A popular rendezvous for less fashionable cyclers was Fisher’s Beer Garden at the north end of Lincoln Park. The Auditorium Hotel was another cycling center. Neighborhood clubs met at their own clubhouse, took a preliminary spin and then converged on the Auditorium for dinner. In the evening, there might be a spontaneous parade on Michigan Avenue, with the clubs moving in column down the street and then breaking ranks to move off towards their homes.”

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By 1905, Arnold, Schwinn & Co, aided in large part by their exclusive contract with Sears, Roebuck and Co., emerged as Chicago’s number one bike manufacturer. As the market matured, even as makers sprang up in other parts of the country, by the 1950s, Schwinn still sold about one-quarter of all bicycles in the United States. As late as 1970, before imported brands began to gain prominence, Schwinn still employed as many as 1,800 people in Chicago and made about a million two-wheel machines a year.

Besides influencing the economy, bicycles also influenced Chicago politics. In fact one of the campaign slogans one its early mayors, Carter Harrison II, used was “Not the Champion Cyclist; But the Cyclists’ Champion”. He held office for 18 years, from 1897-1915! In walking his talk, one of his acts was to create the bike path to the city of Evanston fifteen miles away that still is in use today.

In the next half of century, another of its Mayors, Richard J Daley, the father of the outgoing Mayor’s predecessor, was also a strong proponent of bicycling. By the time the first Daley died in office, he served from 1955 to 1976, his administration set the gears in motion for an elaborate bike route network that today includes an expanded lakefront path, rush hour bike lanes on two of its main thoroughfares and standard use bike lanes on many others.

Thirteen years later, when his son, Richard M Daley was elected, Chicago bicyclists had a champion working for them once again. An avid cyclist, his goal was to “make the City of Chicago the most bicycle-friendly city in the U.S.”.

The Mayor’s Bicycle advisory Council that the second Daly established to encourage bicycling in his city, installed 10,000 bike racks and a hundred miles of signed bike routes. The Millennium Park bike station that he opened at summer’s end in 2004 is another one of his cutting edge achievements. A large facility, far more than indoor parking for bicycles in the heart of the city, it also features repair, showers, rental, lockers, and a cafe.

Of all the Mayors Ride cities that we regularly visit, none has a Mayor who has done more to advance the cause of cyclists than Mayor Richard M. Daley did. He served for 22 years from 1989 to 20111! Even before their state of the art Millennium Park bike facility was put into service, in 2001, “Bicycling” magazine honored Chicago as the “Best Cycling City in the United States” of cities with more than one million residents. With the help of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, a bike organization emulated and admired by two wheel advocacy groups all over America, Chicago continues as one of this Nation’s leading bike cities.

Chicago’s Mayora have continued the Daley legacy. The next Daley successor, Rahm Emmanuel, the former Chief of Staff for President Obama, followed through on his pledge of creating 100 miles of bike lanes. A triathlete and passionate cyclist, bicyclists worked hard to get him elected. They were welll rewarded. Even many long planned bikeways that had been dotted lines on the Chicago biking map for as long as ten years and more became a reality because of his zeal.

Highly disciplined by his years of training as a ballet dancer, while also using the bike as a part of his fitness regimen, he is a man who knows how to get things done. He also knew that to make his city attractive to the Creative Class we talk about in the next chapter that he had to make bicycling a safe enjoyable activity in his city.

Our reception with Mayor Emmanuel and two members of his staff did not involve the Busycle. Instead, it was a simple affair in which he offered us words of encouragement and posed with us with his city’s proclamation. Five minutes later we were on our way.

A Chicago would still know we had come, though, thanks to Mr. Letter. Mr. Letter, the sign making company that created the beautiful logo art our 40-foot support bus displayed, had done a lot to let Chicagoans know we had arrived. They had alerted the press and made sure that their huge following was aware that we would be at their Schaumburg office with the Busycle. And since the Busycle had visited Chicago on its way to us from Boston in 2006, many were excited that it had returned.

By the time we adjourned to the business park that housed their national operation, the media was there and people stood in lines for their chance to ride around the block on our 15-person smile invoker. Several hours and many rides later, the fun continued.

By the time “Mr. Letter/NBG Day” was done, we must have given 40 or 50 Busycle rides! Cameras and cell phones were aimed at us everywhere we looked. I did three different interviews, one for the Chicago Tribune and two for the evening TV news. Jenifer and Skot even took turns driving the Busycle when I wasn’t doing so. It was then that I really turned the interest up as I wowed the small crowds with panic stops on the Eagle. What a day!!

Fortunately the two Mayors that followed Emmanuel have been good for cyclists. Lori Lightfoot was elected on a bike-friendly transportation platform. That included promises to earmark $20 million a year for bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure; install 100 miles of bikeways, including 50 miles of protected lanes.

Current Mayor Brandon Johnson has built more than 100 miles of new bikeways in Chicago. The new bikeways are low-stress bikeways, which are protected bike lanes or neighborhood greenways designed to provide comfortable routes for people of all ages and abilities.

While Indianapolis has the most bike friendly downtown in America, if not the world, it still has a lot to learn from Chicago. With that in mind, Indianapolis, the Greenway Capitol of the World and home of the National Bicycle Greenway was next!

Lucky for us, getting to and through Indianapolis, which at 368 square miles and over 888,000 people is this country’s 12th largest city, would be a lot easier than my first time through in 1979. This was so because of the work of Ray Irvin, aka, Mr. Greenway and Mayor Greg Ballard.

Thirty years ago, Indy, as it is referred to by locals, offered nothing more than high speed roads on which shoulders were absent. In fact, the days of questions and map study that had led up it on my first ride across America, told me that the only way to get to the other side of Indianapolis, and the vast metropolitan area that it sat in the center of, was to go around it. In all, the detour that had resulted required an extra one hundred or so miles of travel.

Since 1990, however, much has changed. It was then that Indianapolis began its Greenway push with Ray Irvin. Once an Indianapolis councilman, and then the longtime Director of Indy Greenways, it wasn’t until 2008 when Irvin moved up to the state level in former Governor Mitch Daniels administration as the Director of Greenways and Bike Ways that Indianapolis knew what it had lost. In his easy, folksy way, Ray had kept everyone so busy, that most were blinded by the Greenway tidal wave he had them swept up in.

Through Indy Greenways (IG), the infrastructure Ray built for people power through several different Mayoral administrations, caused a whole new Indianapolis to emerge. So much so, that it is now a nationally respected leader in the Greenway universe.

Under Ray’s watch, with also the help of Indiana University, he had been able to document the rise in property values of those homes located in close proximity to IG’s growing network of trails. This as the numbers of its users, even today, has not stopped growing. Many informal communities have also emerged in Indianapolis as people get out on to the IG pathways where they are no longer separated from one another by glass, plastic or metal.

Once a dying Rust Belt City, because of the still virile Indy Greenways that Ray has left behind, Indy has also witnessed a new vitality. It has become desirable to the class of people most American post industrial cities are just now realizing they need to attract in order to keep their economies growing. Called the Creative Class by noted author and economist, Richard Florida, this is the new generation of college graduates who work in high-tech businesses and knowledge intensive industries such as biotech, information technology and telecommunications.

Such workers are drawn to those cities where thinking is not walled in by the noise of freeways or traffic choked streets. In the same way large computer employers attract the best talent by turning their places of employment into college campus like settings with walking paths, fountains and lawns, Indy Greenways has been working hard to turn Indianapolis into one giant university grounds.

Indianapolis knew back in the ‘80’s, that in a part of the country where there was no ocean to hear or mountains to wonder at, that to attract the new blood of a virile work force, that its main attraction needed to be its beautiful green spaces. Toward this end, then, it had to get them interconnected as well as more accessible. The many miles of trails that resulted now reach 56 parks, 24 schools, a zoo, a stadium, museums and three arts and cultural districts.

Because IG also works with the bus lines and has a hand in bike travel in Indianapolis, its trail network is also inter-modal. In such a way, large employers, hospitals, libraries and most all-important destinations are all built into this exciting interconnected labyrinth. All of Indy’s buses and its 300 miles of signed on street bike routes interconnect with IG’s paved pathways making for a transportation system that functions quietly and efficiently in the background of a huge city at work.

The low cost travel network it has built enables its minimum wage earners to safely and efficiently get to their jobs at its restaurants, hotels, laundries, movie and sports complexes, and all those businesses that just make a city run as well as fun. While far from a perfect bike route system, many are still usually able to get to and from their work without getting caught up in the traffic on the streets.

By making it easy and affordable for its service industry workers to get around, Indy also knew that since a lot of these low paying positions are entry level jobs, that these people would keep using Greenways as they moved up in their positions. And already this is starting to pay off for Indy as these people graduate into their careers or move on to more responsible employment and even start to raise families.

While some of this urban renewal did require that Indianapolis eliminate a blighted neighborhood and several deteriorated factories, the bulk of its recreation and transportation corridors came from the same stock of land many American cities already have at their disposal.

Indianapolis created a lot of its linear parks by laying a small ribbon of asphalt on its once unused flood plains and abandoned rail corridors. And it is here that Ray sees a way for other cities to build Greenways that can pay for themselves. He feels that underground utilities can be laid under them and that cities can charge a subterranean lease for this privilege. As such, digging up city streets every time a new gas, phone, sewer or cable line needs to be serviced would become a thing of the past.

In making it desirable for people to get out of their cars in Indianapolis, so that he could begin building a Greenway consciousness, Ray had to fight against tradition. Founded as the state capital in 1821, Indy’s geographic presence in the center of the state has always made it a cross roads for travelers headed north to Chicago, south to Louisville, east to Cincinnati, or west to St. Louis. With the help of the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad, Indy’s population swelled from 8,000 in 1850 to more than 169,000 in 1900. By the time car travel pushed this number to 314,194 people in 1920, it rivaled Detroit for America’s top Motor City honors. In fact, the Duisenberg, Marmon, National, and Stutz all had their car factory headquarters there.

Indianapolis car culture became officially ingrained in the national consciousness in 1909 when 3.2 million bricks were used to build the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As we show you in the appendix when we discuss the Lincoln Highway, the racetrack was just one of former bike shop owner, Carl Fisher’s, many creations. The coast-to-coast road that he envisioned became a reality because he was able to call upon Indianapolis business leaders to build a nation wide momentum for his dream.

Every year when its speedsters are in town and a great preponderance of city resources are dedicated to the racetrack, Indy keeps its place in the national consciousness as a city that takes its leadership from cars.

This despite the fact that the city does not see itself this way. In the 80’s Mayor William Hudnut set the city on a different track when he began the work of establishing Indianapolis as the Amateur Sports Capital of America. Aided by nearly 60 million dollars from the patriarch of the Lilly Endowment, Eli Lily himself, there were many projects that issued from Hudnut’s mandate. Besides the new tennis and swimming centers, and track and field and football stadiums that resulted, the world class Major Taylor velodrome also got built.

However in going from a dying car city once known as ‘Nap-town’ and ‘India-no-place’, the one project that most benefitted from the new image that Indianapolis firmly established for itself at the local level, was Indy Greenways. Now a part of Indy Parks and Rec, it is this organization that Ray drove for many years that continues to make it not only safe but also desirable to not be in a car in Indianapolis. So much so that communities from all over the country come to Indy Greenways for guidance on how to improve the quality of life in their cities - with Greenways!!

Nor was any of this awareness lost on Mayor Gregory Ballard’s Mayoral administration. In Indianapolis, Mayor Gregory Ballard was happily at the steps that led to the entrance of the Bottleworks Hotel, the centerpiece of the huge shopping district that used to be a Coca-Cola bottle plant. It serves as the downtown trailhead for the Monon Trail, a 26-mile work of Greenway art that Ray deserves to be proud of. The Monon was the first piece in the growing 200+ mile Indianapolis greenway network, a network that has a 326-mile master plan. An abandoned rail track and once a blighted wasteland eyesore, overgrown with weeds, refuse and the occasional rusting automobile, the Monon has inspired a new renaissance in how the local Hoosiers relate to their lands. Connecting a dozen residential neighborhoods with schools, parks, commercial districts and even the state fairgrounds, it is one of the busiest Car-Free pathways in the nation.

Along the Monon, property values continue to far outpace those in the rest of the city as people find the adjacent housing to be some of the most desirable anywhere in Indianapolis. As the genuine community builder that it is, the countless informal neighborhood groups that use the Monon as an anchor, have made convivial exercise one of Indy’s predominant mantras.

While Ray has done a ton of work creating off-road infrastructure for his city, Mayor Ballard moved mountains for those who ride his roads. In 2008, just as Ray was moving away from Indy Greenways, Ballard pushed the plan that developed the 200+ miles of bike lanes we were able to enjoy. He also led the charge that resulted in a Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council and his city hired its first Bike/Ped coordinator.

Under Ballard’s reign, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail that Ray long had as a work in progress, was hammered into place. 10 miles in length, it has fully transformed the city’s center of commerce. In fact. I have cycled in cities large and small all over America and the western world, and nowhere have I found a more bikeable downtown than the one here in Indianapolis. Not even close. And all of this is due to the fact that this history laden city (NBG Histories we developed as we built the 3 minute, 55 second Cultural Trail Video) has the only functional Downtown Greenway in the world.

The Indianapolis Cultural Trail (ICT) is the secret sauce needed to connect the Nation from one coast to the other with the Greenway we long have envisioned. This is so, because what it has done for the most centrally located metropolitan area in America can quite readily be replicated in all of our NBG Anchor Cities. Once a critical mass of people can see for themselves the giant playground the ICT has brought about in Indianapolis, all of our other population centers will all feel compelled to follow in its footsteps.

As the anchor for the Greenway Capital of the World (Indianapolis has the highest concentration of Greenways anywhere on the planet), the ICT is the crowning jewel for the greenway movement that has completely transformed the entirety of what used to be a tired Rust Belt region. It symbolizes the return to people power that has had a ripple effect all throughout the counties that surround it. On the Cultural Trail itself, property values have skyrocketed and the businesses that service its users are flourishing. Not only has it also engendered a building boom along its right of way, it has benefitted many cutting-edge large employers (Anthem, Sales Force, Cummins, Eli Lilly, Rolls Royce, NCAA) who use it to help them attract and keep the best talent.

Because the retail establishments along the way have embraced it, they and their clientele know to be more mindful of the needs of ICT users, and by extension, bicyclists in general. It is this attitude that they often bring into the communities where they live. And here in Indianapolis, we often hear about the town fathers and mothers in other smaller population centers in the region who want to be connected to the greenways that feed the Cultural Trail.

In a city that once was drunk with speeding automobiles as symbolized by its world famous Indy 500 Motor Speedway, the ICT has become a breeding ground for cyclists young and old. It has spawned the creation of well over a dozen informal bike groups who meet regularly to ride on it. This has had the effect of making the bicycle attractive to young people who would normally turn to cars once they become old enough to drive.

Fourteen blocks wide and eighteen blocks long on just its main grid, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail is a functioning Greenway locals use every day to do their lives. On it there is a state university, 67,000-seat football stadium, 17,000-seat basketball arena, the iconic main library, a plethora of parks, as well as concert halls, giant murals, fitness facilities, grocery stores, hardware stores, drinking establishments, book shops, hair parlors, restaurants, coffee, pastry and thrift shops, breweries, a theatre complex/dance venue, even a popular comedy club. For visitors who come from afar there is a healthy selection of lodging purveyors.

The ICT also connects a world class zoo, State Park, monolithic memorials, historic statues, a 12,000-seat baseball park, very soon a 20,000- seat soccer stadium complex, the 284-foot tall Soldiers and Sailors Monument of 1888, its globally renowned 1.5 mile Indy Canal, world class art and history museums, national calibre entertainment venues, the State Capitol, its massive Convention Center complex (the busiest in the world), the 600-foot wide White River, and Union Station, the first, in 1853, train station hub in the world. It was Union Station that connected the East Coast to the Transcontinental Railroad and the promise of California.

On the ICT, the smooth surface of a handsome, red brick has replaced concrete sidewalks to pass ten or so feet away from the front doors of the myriad of businesses it accesses. Add beautiful landscaping and tastefully designed interpretive signage that call out everything from old buildings and fire tragedies to other historical events that took place at the locations they herald. In such a way, this is how our Anchor Cities will also use their downtown Greenways to tell the stories about their own unique character.

On the ICT, where there are retail businesses, shoppers on foot are often separated from cyclists by a wide variety of greenery and gardens. This as the entire greenway is intermixed with historic churches, cathedrals and grand buildings.

Because the ICT’s signature red brick, has the cyclist in mind, its smooth surface is tapered back down to the road level where it meets the street. As such, there is no bumping or jarring when it meets the traffic lights that favor the cyclist. This as rental bikes can be seen ridden or in their stalls all throughout the Cultural Trail.

In selling itself to the world, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail could almost just rest on the laurels of just one of its stops, the Indy Canal. Footsteps from the State Capitol that anchors its downtown is a man made canal that dates all the way back to 1836. Rebuilt beginning in the 1980’s to serve as a recreational haven, the Indy Canal offers a little bit of everything to most anyone.

One can sit on a bench or in a restaurant along the canal and just watch the world go by. Tastefully designed buildings and beautifully landscaped grounds line this peaceful waterway. On its wide sidewalks, couples, hand in hand are gently passed by 2, 3 and 4-person pedal cars, often with families in them, that slowly scuttle about. In the water, 4-person pedal boats, kayaks and gondolas with opera singers stream by the several fountains that send bursts of water high into the air. Ducks, geese and other waterfowl come and go. A novel break from the city all around it, the white noise of water not only streams from the fountains in the middle of the canal, there are even walls that border the walkway that are covered in liquid cascades.

During weekday summer afternoons, public concerts at several different venues are a weekly treat. And as Canal strollers revel in the wonder at hand, there is a park like area at its northern end that also features a music series. It is here, under a signature bike and pedestrian bridge that music performances are regularly scheduled throughout the summer months.

On the other side of this part of the canal, during the weekends, a drum circle can often be heard as they play alongside acrobatic yoga, even capoeira practitioners. Here picnics can be seen spread out on the lawns adjacent to the massive play structure that is filled with children. Hammocks hang from the trees. Zip lines support young people practicing their tight rope skills.

By bringing cyclists downtown with attractions like the Indy Canal, city government here is helping local bike riders and out of the area pedal tourists alike to spend money in the places of business in its central core. And as we as bicyclists help downtown Indianapolis thrive, we also help cyclists on all the roads in somewhat near proximity. This is so, because the people who run the city also know that in order to get our pocket books, they have to provide safe passage on the streets and paths that feed the city’s center.

Besides city planners working to make it easier for us, as cyclists, to get to downtown with safer streets and paths, those in vehicles also want to help us get to where we can spend our money too. Because they often know someone who has employment because of us (a job related to the greenway, or merchants who have benefitted from our expenditures of cash), motorists near downtown seem to keep more of an eye out for us. More often than not, as we touched on above, we get the teence of wiggle room we may need from them for clear passage when our paths cross.

Consciously or subconsciously, drivers near downtown here also tend to react this way, even if they don’t cycle themselves, because they often know someone who does. And as more of their neighbors and friends join us, those of us on two wheels are not seen as enemies to their transportation efforts but a part of their extended family of friends. It is with this realization that downtown Indianapolis cyclists are seen as an important part of the woodwork.

As on-line commerce pushes one brick and mortar business and industry after another to extinction, the only retail establishments that will survive will be those that offer people a place where people can socialize. Off the beaten path, enormous, ceiling covered, temperature controlled shopping malls, surrounded by a sea of parking, once served the purpose of bringing humans together. However, as they age and lose their novelty, and as people tire of the car-centric lifestyles they require, Americans are returning to their downtown business districts.

Growing numbers of people are leaving the suburbs altogether. In removing traffic filled commutes from their personal living equations, those leaving the outlying residential areas are rejuvenating the new neighborhoods of America, its downtowns that are being revitalized everywhere. It is these rediscovered areas that will be looking to Indianapolis for the example it sets. And as they do they will see Indianapolis has the bicycle at its core.

There are many winners when the private automobile is not the ruler king of a city, especially its downtown. Not only do its neighbors get to know one another, but they are able to more readily share the world around them with people from places far and near and even from other countries. When it is safe to move about on your own two legs to take advantage of the fun offerings that can be had, many non-fuel driven forms of conveyance can be enjoyed.

Besides one’s own personal bike, like what we see here in Indianapolis, locals and tourists can also explore the city on rental bikes, and 2, 3 and 4-person surreys, even in bike taxis and on rental grade recumbent pedal machines. As more and more smiling, wide-eyed people let these fun new ways of self propulsion move them about, downtown Indianapolis has begun to feel more like a village. A happy place where we can spend our money without feeling like we are in a noisy city filled with foul smelling cars, trucks and buses that we have to constantly be on the lookout for.

It is this that will make our cornerstone cities attractive to large non-industrial employers. Here, for example, in Indianapolis, as more new office towers rise above the street. the inner core is becoming more and more like a college campus setting. Locating in such fun circumstance makes it easier for employers to give their employees places to eat and play when they are not on the clock.

Turning Anchor City downtowns into bicycle playgrounds has other ramifications for cyclists far and near to these cities as well. As it turns such business centers into biking destinations, it will spawn other pathways that connect to them. Surrounding areas will all build people powered connections to their Downtown Greenways. Already the Indianapolis Cultural Trail is served by the Centra Canal towpath, the Pleasant Run Trail, the White River Trail and the 26-mile long Monon Trail which will, in time reach Chicago.

People come from all over the world to experience the 10 miles of this amazing piece of bicycle infrastructure. The ICT is unlike any greenway anywhere on the globe as it plants the seed for the greater peace and prosperity that can result when a town or city shifts its focus from a car-centric one to a bike-centric one. As a brightly glowing Downtown Greenway with no equal, these are the seedling miles that I am proud to be a part of. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is the trophy we can now genuinely hold up as an example of what the entirety of our National Bicycle Greenway can become.

About the magic that prevails in downtown Indianapolis, because of the ICT, Mr. Greenway, Ray Irvin, says,

“the ICT is a showcase of how the businesses of the future will all operate – car visits will not be encouraged, but human powered ones will.”

It was Irvin who, from Indianapolis, led the charge that resulted in Greenways all over America and Europe. As the genuine prophet that Ray is, he says that,

“to be successful in the not too distant future, your storefront will have to be on a people powered throughway – it will have to be bike friendly.”

In going forward with our plan to position Cultural Trails in all 19 of our other National Bicycle Greenway Anchor Cities, we need the Nation to understand that because of the ICT, Indianapolis has the most enjoyable, activity-filled and bike friendly downtown in America. We need cyclists from all over the country to want to come here to prove this for themselves. Whereupon, as they go back to their communities seeking to follow the example we have set, this will help us lay the foundation for replicating Cultural Trails in all 19 of our other NBG Anchor Cities.

Because city officials greatly honor the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, here is the proclamation we have drafted that we look forward to getting read into the public record -

WHEREAS, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail hereinafter referred to as the ICT, is the only Downtown Greenway in the world; and,

WHEREAS, the ICT connects to Indy’s broad Greenway network of trails, as well as its river, wild lands and burgeoning new business districts; and,

WHEREAS, at 10-miles long, the ICT safely connects cyclists to a broad selection of places where they can eat, sleep, shop and play; and,

WHEREAS, while business is being conducted a safe distance away, ICT journeys are augmented by history, art, beautifully landscaped grounds and a smooth red brick pathway on which their tires glide; and,

WHEREAS, as the ICT acts like beachfront property to greatly increase real estate values, new businesses and lodging opportunities regularly petition for inclusion; and,

WHEREAS, in making downtown vibrant and giving it a sense of community, the ICT acts like a Commons where locals regularly have face-to-face encounters; and,

WHEREAS, ICT has a 10-person staff made up of professionals who efficiently look after its every need, from maintenance to promotion to community engagement, etc., the ICT will continue to grow as a beloved treasure..

The group of men and women we rolled up to, were all dressed in suits and other office wear. In addition to Mayor Ballard and his staff, there were others there that were known as local Greenway shakers and movers. Familiar faces, I had worked with many of them over the years. Joseph Wynns, the director of Indianapolis Recreation, of which Indy Greenways is a part, was there. As was Ron Carter the Indy Greenways director who replaced Ray when he moved on to the state level. Even John Glick, the man who talked with me about his fixed gear bicycle rides to work as far back as 2002, was there also on behalf of the recreation department.

The others we had no way of knowing, moved their Greenway mountains behind the scenes. There were officials from firms who had done construction work on Indy Greenway trails as well as from Indiana State University. The college continues to supply Indy Greenways with the mountains of data they use to procure added funding for their trail building efforts. In a city driven by the needs of its Greenway, members of the Indianapolis Greenways Development Committee, a 15-person volunteer board of directors assigned to their positions by the Mayor, Council and the Recreation Board, were there. A representative from the Greenways Foundation, the charitable trust which finances the Indy Greenways operation gave added authority to our reception.

Ron Carter was all smiles as we rolled up to the group that had assembled.“Martin,” Ron called. “ Welcome to Indianapolis.”

Instantly though we’d never met in person, I know who he was from all the talking we had done on the phone as he and I organized this event.

“Wow Ron,” I said as I worked my way off the bike to the amazement of most everyone present.

“So that’s how you do it. I was wondering how you were going to get off that thing,” Ron said.

“Getting off is a skill just like getting on,” I replied. “And it looks like you’ve got a few Greenway friends!” I was happily impressed

“Well I figured you were worth it,” he joked. Pointing he continued, “Now why don’t you bring you and your team over here so we can get everyone introduced to our Mayor.

The 48th Mayor of Indianapolis, Gregory Ballard and I both graduated from Catholic high schools and then college at about the same time. However while I was busy recovering from a head injury and just trying to get to the starting line of a life where I could be productive, Ballard saw the world during his 23-year career in the Marines. A tall and strong looking man, the force of his character was apparent when he looked me in the eyes and said, “So Ron tells me you want to do what we’ve done here with our Greenways all across the US. From San Francisco to Washington, DC,” as he shook my hand.

“You’ve got it Mayor Ballard. That’s why we’re visiting you on this ride.”

As the two of us exchanged pleasantries, the media pressed closer with their cameras and notepads.

“So are you going to DC to call attention to some kind of Carl Fisher bike path you want to build from here to San Francisco?” a voice wanted to know.

“Whoaa, what newspaper are you with?” I asked.

“The Indianapolis Herald,” his reply was matter of fact.

“I should make your talk to your book review editor then,” I teased. “She asked me the same question when she was getting a story together about tonight’s booksigning.”

Seeing that he was too busy taking notes to react, I was happy that he had given me this opening, “So like I told her, and I am sorry I can’t remember her name, it is not a bike path but a coast to coast network of bikeable roads and paths that will connect cyclists to cities and the important destinations within those cities. And in time some of that will give way to a dedicated arterial for bikes but we gotta make it so cars and bikes can safely coexist now in as many places as we can.”“In terms of strategy, we have determined that the best way to build this consciousness is to follow the same precedent that Carl Fisher’s Lincoln Highway set all the way back in 1913. As America’s first coast-to-coast highway, it started out as a red line on the map. In his boldness, your native son prescribed a route from New York City to San Francisco back when most of the roads west of the Mississippi were no more than ruts in the weeds.

“And as they struggled to get it built, other roads and highways sprang up all over the nation. In time, the Lincoln disappeared into the numbered US highway system, much of which was then usurped by the I-80 that we know today. The example they set, howevel, is how I foresee us going forward. We’re asking for a coast to bicycle highway at a time when dedicated bikeways are far and few between. And just as the people of the early 1900’s thought that roads that extended beyond the city were only for the rich hobbyists of the day, we will be showing how we can rebuild America by connecting cyclists to its cities and all the important place within them.

“So just like Carl Fisher and Henry Joy did with their Lincoln Highway, that I show in the appendix of my book, we are going to keep promoting the San Francisco to Washington DC Mayors’ Ride route. Heck after Fisher formalized his route with his 1913 cross-country trip, after World War I, they even got the US Army to take a convoy across the US on it as a kind of a victory march.

“Instead of sending 72 vehicles, most of them heavy military trucks, across America to rally a sense of patriotism like they did, we will keep sending every day bike riders and not racer celebrities, to meet Mayors. All of this will get people more and more excited about reconnecting to their health, one another and to themselves with the Greenway we foresee.”

Seeing that they were busy taking notes, I announced, “OK, so let’s get everyone together for a group photo. I know most of you are hammered for time so let’s get rocking with this.” Pointing I continued, “I say we all stand here”.

I walked up to Mayor Gregory and joked, “Mayor Greg we’re gonna make you the star today. Is that OK?”

He smiled back at me as I pressed on with my choreography, “Can we get all of you standing here to move closer to the front?”

I kept nudging and coddling until I had everyone in place. Soon, one of the Mayor’s staffers was snapping pictures. By the time Indianapolis NBG Day was complete, there were probably twenty of us celebrating the proclamation Mayor Ballard had prepared for us.

The rest of the day, as Ron and I compared notes and took a closer look at some of his pathway projects, I began to realize something about what I was experiencing. If other cities put more of their people to work studying and building Greenways as well as using them and enjoying the enhanced quality of life they bring as they also grow richer at the bank, that they would all try to be like one another. That was how a coast-to-coast Greenway network was going to become real.

I knew I had work to do. I had to get the Indy Greenway story out there. Already I was starting to get ready to do so for our next stop, Cincinnati.

With Don Burrel’s help, we easily bridged the 100-mile gap that stood between Indianapolis and Cincinnati. Don worked for OKI - Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana Regional Council of Governments. OKI, a council of local governments, business organizations and community groups committed to improving the quality of life and the economic vitality of the region did a lot of their work in the transportation sector. And over the years of our Mayors’ Rides, they have always been there to help us with routing issues.

Cincinnati, located on the Ohio River, stands as a perfect epicenter for OKI. While Kentucky is on the other side of the river, the Indiana border is a mere twenty miles west of it. In 1789, it was called Losantiville. And yet that name only lasted a year. In yielding to the systematic plan the US government put in place to formally populate the area bounded by the state of Pennsylvania, the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Great Lakes, and Canada, called the Northwest Territories, it was placed under the rule of the governor of the Northwest Territories. He renamed Losantiville to honor the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of American Revolutionary army officers who had taken their name from a Roman war hero named Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

In 1803, thirteen years after Cincinnati was established, it became Ohio’s first city when it was determined that there were enough people in the area to form an entire state. As such, Ohio became the 17th state in the United States. Cincinnati benefited from being connected to the Mississippi River by the Ohio River, which is also a commercial shipping worthy tributary. When the Miami and Erie Canal`was completed in 1845, joining the state with Lake Erie to the north, a population boom resulted. By 1850, there were 115.000 people living in Cincinnati. Now, with a population of 309,000, Cincinnati is Ohio’s third largest city, behind Columbus and Cleveland, and is the 56th largest city in the United States.

The proud home to the Cincinnati Reds, who in 1869 became the world’s first professional baseball team, with its river and gently rolling hills that overlook it, Cincinnati, also known as the “City of Seven Hills”, is an attractive city. In fact, Winston Churchill once called it “the most beautiful of America’s inland cities.”

Even many of the bridges that connect to Kentucky on the other side of the Ohio River, are works of art. In fact, one of them, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge takes it name from the man who later designed the world famous Brooklyn Bridge, an engineering marvel that we have passed over on some of our East Coast Mayors’ Rides. There is even a bike and pedestrian only water crossing called the Purple People Bridge that joins the two states. At 2,670 feet, until Omaha built the Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge, it was the longest bike and pedestrian only bridge in the United States.

Cincinnati is also the largest city in the U.S. to provide an all-renewable electricity supply. While wind farms or solar arrays don’t directly generate all of the city’s power, Cincinnati has a deal in place with its energy provider that all of the coal and other non-renewable energy that its 53,000 homes and businesses use are all offset by renewable energy credits. These credits finance the production of wind, solar, biomass, and other renewable resources.

Nor is this city stopping at electricity - it’s also working on a plan to completely remove fossil fuels from all vehicles in its municipal fleet by 2025!! And by 2035, it wants all of the city’s energy too be renewable.

As Cincinnati got closer and closer, besides Don Burrell, I also looked forward to meeting Chuck Smith. Chuck was another bike activist who we had been working with over the last several years. Representing OKI and the Ohio Bicycle Federation respectively, Don and Chuck not only do a lot to advance bicycling in Cincinnati, but every year, they work with us on the phone to make sure ours is a warm welcome.

Cincinnati was also only one mile away from the Reser Brothers, Jeff and Jason. Located in Newport, Kentucky, on the other side of the Purple People Bridge, not only had they done some big scouting rides for the NBG over the years, but it has been the beautiful Mayors’ Ride logo that Jeff produced for us that adds authority to our mission. This, as Jason’s bike shop, Reser Bicycle Outfitters, a long time supporter of the NBG, has also been very active with the local trails community.

By the time we reached the Cincinnati city limits, Steve Shaw and Rob Currens were there to help ride us in to the city in which they were both so well connected politically. Toward that end, it was Steve, a lawyer and a former small town Mayor himself, who back in 2004 helped us put Cincinnati on the Mayors’ Ride map. A friend of Mayor Charlie Luken who led the city at that time, Steve had convinced us that he could get us connected if we stopped there before we pressed on to Columbus.

As luck would have it, when Mayor Mark Mallory assumed the leadership post of the city, he happened to be good friends with another ardent cyclist, and NBG supporter, Rob Currens. Rob is the owner of Madison Park Productions, a locally well-known audio production company that does voice-overs and makes commercials for companies big and small throughout the greater Cincinnati area. Wherever he goes, Rob tries to set an example as a cyclist. As he helped me set up Cincinnati NBG Day one year, for example, the kinds of questions his employees asked told me he had turned their interest up in the two-wheel way as well. One time when I called, and Rob was on his way back from a meeting he had biked to that was 40 miles away, Jonathan told me he’d love to get out of his car but that he could not afford the many hundreds of dollars needed for a good bike.

I told him about the MOBO BIke Collective that Lucia Pamarini and some friends had opened to help make cycling affordable for more people. He was excited to hear that MOBO had refurbished bikes for sale that were inexpensive and worthy. When I told him they also offered classes on bike repair, he told me that that was where he would be that next weekend.

One other time when I called, Johnny, one of Rob’s regular cyclist employees, told me about a one-day ride Rob and a friend did every year from the Ohio River to Lake Erie 240 miles away. When I asked Rob about it, he told me that he and a buddy had a yearly ritual whereupon after dipping their rear wheels in the Ohio River at the bottom of Ohio, they would not stop pedaling until they reached the Great Lakes at the top of the state. And that every year as they did so, they kept getting faster. If at all you can fathom this, Rob says they are getting close to breaking the eleven-hour mark!

That’s 22 miles an hour, non-stop, on a bicycle! Granted they take turns drafting behind each other and can hit level land speeds that sometimes hover in the high 20’s and low 30’s, but talk about focus and concentration. Rob said that they switch back and forth from lead to follower every minute as they bear down on either the road ahead or the wheel several inches in front of them. While the route they have carefully chosen does not have many hills, they still have to also allow for slowdowns caused by other users of road as well as all the intersections they must pass through.

By the time we reached the heart of the city, we located the bookstore where I would be doing my book signing. That night in town, as I talked about the part Cincinnati would play in our National Bicycle Greenway initial route to Washington, DC, I made sure to acknowledge the important part Steve and Rob had played in making the western half of our Ohio cycling experience a joyous one indeed. The next day, Cincinnati NBG Day, a Saturday, would take place at a City Hall that looked like it had been imported from 19th Century Europe.

Because the photos that had resulted from past Mayors’ Ride celebrations here made me curious about this epic looking building, I made sure to research it well before I arrived. Made distinct by red spires, the one that houses the clock tower, I found out, climbs 228 feet into the sky. This as the main building below stands four and a half stories above the plaza that surrounds it. Using stone quarried from as far away as Wisconsin and Missouri, it was completed in 1893. Though we stayed outside, I also found out that inside is a grand marble staircase and that there are stained glass windows that depict various Ohio scenes. Wow, what an honor to have all this as a backdrop once again to this year’s celebration.

Today we would be capitalizing on the momentum Steve had begun and Rob had continued for us. The Mayor was there, as were a handful of city officials in suits. And there were bikes everywhere. Jen Clippard had also been busy getting her Cincinnati Cycle Club together to meet us.

And they were out there in force. Everywhere I looked there were her club’s bright and colorful, yellow, green and orange cycling jerseys. I even kept seeing different club members sitting in the back of the pedicab that was merrily scooting about in the huge City Hall plaza.

Besides Jen’s club, there were plenty of other cyclists there too. For this I also knew I had Chuck and Don to thank. Jeff and Jason were among the 75 or so bikes that were there to greet us. And to give added authority to our reception, there were even three HiWheel bicycles there!

“Wow Jeff, you were so right those first two years. We did have to make a stop in Cincinnati when were riding from Indy!” I said as I walked up to the two brothers. Jeff was obviously the older of the two. They were both dressed in bright bicycle wear and stood next to equally shiny mountain bikes.

“I can’t believe you’ve ridden all those miles on that thing,” Jeff said. We were both about the same age and I felt the strength of his character as we shook hands. “And this must be the team I’ve been reading about. I feel like I know all about each and every one of you.”

“So team, this is Jeff Reser, the guy who created our beautiful Mayors’ Ride logo,” I said to my fellow riders.

One by one Skot, Don, Jenifer and Bill introduced themselves to Jeff while I greeted Jason.

Soon, Rob walked up to me and said, “Martin, this is Don and Chuck. And Mallory should be here any minute now.”

Rob and I had talked so much over the last several years that I knew who he was just by hearing his voice.

“You rock Rob!” I said, “but I didn’t know you were so tall!”

“Six foot one isn’t tall,” Rob replied. “But I guess I do have long legs, you know good for bicycling.”

Rob had fun written all over his face. With short hair combed straight back and a mustache, he looked the part of a lean and fit cycle athlete.

“So we meet at long last,” I said as I looked at Don and Chuck. While Don was wiry and strong, Chuck looked big like a football player.

“You guys really got the troops out for us today!”

“Repetition is all. You guys give us the show and all we had to do was remember to keep our mailing lists aware of the fact that you were going to be here,” Chuck said in his cheery voice.

“Chuck got us some good press too,” Don added as he looked at the media people who were there. “I saw his news release but he or Rob must have followed that up with a phone call or two. This is great. Having the Busycle this year adds a whole new dimension to all of this. I mean I saw where the Enquirer and the Post not only announced your book signing last night as well as today’s event. But they are also here to cover it! Channels 5 and 12 are here too...”

As he said that, he looked off to the media types who were there taking notes as they talked to my team. Several others were also busy taking video and still pictures of what was taking place. Already they had pointed their cameras at us when we had earlier rolled into the plaza. They wanted to talk to me, but I had asked them to let me greet all of those who had made this possible first.

Soon all the attention shifted to a different part of the plaza. All the newsmen rushed over to get an action shot. Mayor Mallory had taken off his suit coast, rolled up his sleeves and one of his pant legs and was all smiles as rolled around in circles and snappy little figure eights on the racing trike one of Jason’s customers had rolled in on. Soon, everyone was cheering him on. His joy was infectious as there were smiles everywhere. By the time he stopped, a minute or two later, joy became the rest of the day’s theme.

Then a voice could he heard calling us to order from the portable lectern that had been set up. It was Chuck. And after everyone quieted down, he continued, “So now that I have everyone’s attention, I want to thank all of you for coming out today. In terms of logistics, after we hear from Mayor Mallory and the NBG Day proclamation is read, we’ll have a couple speakers from the local bike community before we take a few demonstration rides on the Busycle everyone is dying to try. So without further ado, here is Mayor William Mallory.”

We applauded. Mayor Mallory said a few words and read the citation his city had prepared for us. Chuck, Don and Steve all said a few words. We posed for a few photos and then got the Mayor, some of his staff and fellow councilors on the Busycle for even more pictures. A short ride in the block that surrounded City Hall followed, as there was laughter, people clapping and cameras snapping the whole way through.

Later in the afternoon, another round of Busycle rides was held at the nearby, stunning Millennium Hotel. There, almost a hundred more people joined in the fun as Queen City Bike, an organization committed to making Cincinnati as bike friendly as possible, let their membership know. The laughter was non-stop before another NBG Day came to an end.

As we gave our last demonstration ride, several of the people who had climbed aboard were talking about their wanting to get home so they could catch the latest episode of Survivor. According to them, it was supposed to come on right after a pro football game that was supposed to be ending pretty soon. Even though none of us were regular TV watchers, this was one show all of us were familiar with.

As soon as we got back out to our bikes, Skot remarked, “Those Survivor guys ‘otta be watching our ride on their TV sets.”

“Yea, I was kinda thinking the same thing,” Don added. “I watched that show one time. Seemed kind of silly for them to create these fake movie sets in those far away places when there’s all kinds of people doing adventure all around us. Guess it just would be a lot harder for them to package it for a TV Show.”

“Hey, we make the nightly news after most of our Mayor’s receptions and people always seem interested in what we’re doing. I mean we’re colorful with all these different bikes. And look at us. It looks like we came in from the jungle as we meet with all these people who come out of climate controlled cars and buildings. I wonder if we really can make our annual Mayors’ Ride into one of them reality TV shows?” I asked.

“We could begin by showing these guys going to a bike shop and getting the application for the Mayors’ Ride. And they could be talking about which relay legs they hope they get picked for,” Jenifer offered.

“Yeah, well I’ll tell ya, every time I get new riders to join me I gotta hold their hand when they fill out your application form,” Skot began. “You’d laugh if you saw how they wanted to answer some of your questions. The Paschal must know what you want to hear because you always pick my guys. We could have this big build up with dese guys filling out questionnaires to see if they get picked.”

“I don’t know, I think a good picture helps. I was at the NBG office one time when they had this one applicant putting his bike in the back of a Humvee. I don’t think he got picked,” Don said.

“Yeah we could do a scene where they go out and do practice shots and talk about which picture they should send in or something,” Bill added as he used his bungee cords to tie a loaf of bread on to the top of the small load he was carrying.

“I think a cool scene would be for them to go into a library to print out a new map fromour on-line map interface,” Jenifer suggested. “And then..”

“Hey wait a sec, what’s supposed to be wrong with their old one?” Skot interrupted.

“Oh, we’d have to have a scene where it fell in the campfire the night before.” I volunteered, “or it got all sticky and stained from eating the blackberries they picked from the bushes along the roadside. We could come up with something. But no, we could have them going over the route they want to take as one of them jokes about the days not so very long ago where they had to ask car drivers what the roads they wanted to use were like. We could have them marveling at how all the roads at our site are now specced out for cyclists with traffic volumes and hill profiles and shoulder conditions. It’d be really great if we could figure out some way to plug at least some of the advertisers they’d be seeing on the map banners too.”

“They wouldn’t do that on reality TV. Then it’s not real. From what I’ve seen you have to wait until the commercial until they remind you that the story you are watching is a promotion for advertisers,” Don said.

Busy trying to get my trail mix to fit in one bag, I rolled my eyes as a couple of noisy motorcycle engines fired up. “Man is nothing sacred to those guys? I thought when I got out of Santa Cruz I was done listening to them. But they love terrorizing nice places, I mean what’s wrong with quiet?”

I could see that everyone agreed with me when Bill kept our TV fantasy alive, “I think the mornings are important to show. If the camera crew is awake enough, they can show us getting up and out of our tents and slogging through our morning chores of getting the little village we made the night before broken down, and oh yeah, we should show how we set up camp too. But I’ve always thought it would be funny to see what I look like when I’m half awake and scrunching things up so they’ll fit on my bike again. We could even show the delegation of duties. You know one of us could be getting the water for oatmeal, one of us could be firing up the stove and one of us could be studying the maps. And on NBG Day we could show the meeting we have right before we leave where we talk about the towns we gotta hit and when we gotta hit em so we are not late in the big cities.”

“Hmmm, maybe on NBG Day they could interview some of the younger riders so they can show what they are going through before they are in the spotlight and all the TV cameras and reporters want to know about them and their ride. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to show the nervousness some of them experience before meeting the Mayors,” Don said with a smile in his voice.

“Heck if we’re gonna show detail like that, we should also show them passing out their NBG business cards. And we could have them talking about the NBG when they visit certain stores and stuff. We could even have them stop and tour an advertiser of ours,” I said, always keeping in mind how we could support our sponsors to get such a possibility paid for.

On a roll, I kept introducing new possibilities from the business plan I had spent many years writing. “You know how they shift scenes in movies and stuff, we could even bring the NBG Hubs into this. We could show how everyone at the NBG Hub each Mayors’ Ride city has is going around cleaning up and getting their operation ready for our visit. And then we could tour each Hub’s bike museum and visit them when they are getting their meeting hall ready for some kind of community event they are hosting there that night.”

“Didn’t I see that you wanted to hold the Mayor’s press conferences at the Hubs? Why don’t we hold the one for each city’s NBG Day there and film that?” Don offered.

“That’s only gonna happen if they have something else going on at City Hall. We do our NBG Days at City Halls to give them a sense of place; to associate them with the symbolic center of the city.”

“Good point but hey if we’re gonna cover more than just the NBG Day reception, since the cities know they are going to be on TV, we could show how they are making the routes we’ll be on look all pretty before we get to City Hall. We could have one of the photographer guys go ahead of us by a few weeks or months and catch some of these city workers in action while they are restriping a bike lane or something, That should be pretty easy to coordinate with their Public Works department,” Don said as he scratched his head. “How ‘bout filming them filling a pot hole or fixing a traffic light sensor?”

“Whoaa,” I began, “if we’re gonna go that far, if we can get one of the Mayor’s offices to cooperate, why don’t we see if they’ll let us talk to their staff. The TV guys can interview them and ask them what all they are doing to get ready. We can show the Mayor’s staff alerting their contacts at the newspapers and TV stations and going through the checklist we send them. Besides the basic stuff of making sure they have a digital camera and podium there, we could show them talking about how involved they want to get. Whether they want to do a police escort for us. Which organizations they are going to invite to speak and for how long. Whether they are going to have storyboards to talk about the bike projects they are working on. We could even show them worrying if our riders are going to be on time or if they’ll find the staging area they are supposed to be meeting everyone at for the couple blocks long ride into City Hall. In a perfect world, we could do one of the cities where the Mayor rides in with us.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Skot called out. “Why don’t we get ‘em to film us as we queue up for our ride from dem parks they have us wait at until those news guys and the Mayor are all ready at City Hall. Sometimes we’re there for a long time. You know we could be talking to dem bike cops that are gonna give us a police escort while we’re waiting. They could like listen in on our group leader when he’s talking to the Mayor’s staff on his cell phone. Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be wild if we had a woman ride leader?”

“What do you mean,” Jenifer teased, “I thought I was your leader. “

“No offense,” Bill began “but we’re lucky if we get women on any of these relays. But I’ll tell ya what I like about these Mayors’ Rides,” Bill continued, pausing for a moment to make sure everyone was listening. “I really think it would be great if they could film of us going past those banners that welcome us.”“You mean ones that say this city or that city NBG Day, the ones that that hang on lamp posts?” Don asked.

“Hmmm, how about bus stops that read, ‘We support the National Bicycle Greenway”. And hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could get our message on to the side of a few trains?” I offered.

“You mean like those railroad cars that are painted all gawdy like for Walmart or something? I don’t think so,” said Skot.

“They don’t have to be all these bright colors and busy looking,” I began, “we could be classy. We could paint each car different. One could be cyclists riding by a mountain lake with the words ‘National Bicycle Greenway’ tastefully inscribed in the corners. We could have ‘em riding in a city scene in another. And maybe across a bike bridge like that suspension Bike Bridge they just built over the Missouri River in Omaha...”

100 miles more to Columbus, Ohio...

At the main library in the small town of Grandview Heights OH, about three miles from Columbus City Hall, we met popular, former Columbus City Councilwoman, Maryellen O’Shaugnessey (podcast with NBG). Now the Clerk of Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, she oversees a vast system of county records, as well as hundreds of staffers and a budget that runs in the millions.

On her bike, dressed in bright and colorful cycle wear, she was there with maybe a dozen other bicyclists, including Jeff Stephens. Jeff, referred to as Bubba and also loved by everyone out here, was locally famous for competing in the prestigious Race Across America back in 2001. A couple of HiWheels stood tall next to him as we rolled up.

“Well hello Martin, it looks like we finally meet,” Mary Ellen said as I stepped down from my bike next to her.

“Isn’t this exciting?” I said as I gave her a quick hug. Casting a glance behind me, I continued, “and this is the team that you’ve been hearing about in our reports. I’ll letthem introduce themselves while I meet Bubba! “

I walked up to a big man also dressed in bike wear like most of the cyclists and reached out my hand, “Well Jeff, we did it. We made it as far as Columbus!” And, looking at all the bike riders he had collected, I continued, “and you filled your end of the deal!“

“Great to finally meet you too Martin, we did have some touch and go years there. I am glad to see that the Mayors’ Ride just keeps getting bigger. And hey, where’s the Busycle?”“It’ll be at City Hall. Our driver has it with our support bus. He’s probably stocking up on provisions but it will be there when we get there!” I answered.

Looking around, I could see Jenifer, Skot, Don, and Bill were busy mixing in with the rest of the cyclists, a few of whom were on fancy, low down recumbents, who would be riding us to City Hall. I walked up to the two guys who had audiences of their own. Dignified, they leaned on their HiWheel bikes, as they looked happy to know the answers to all the questions that were being asked.

“So are you guys also gonna ride with us? Carl and Stephen right?”

Members of the national Wheelmen society, they had been in communication with me over the last couple of years.

“Looks like it,” Carl began. “My boss said to go ahead and take the whole afternoon off. And Stephen’s ready.”

As everyone soon began queuing up to leave, I said to Carl and Stephen, “Yeah, here is where it gets interesting. I remember when I rode with Steve Stevens eleven years ago. All the locals out there in DC were all cheering him on. They weren’t looking at any of the high tech recumbents or the tandem trike that I was on, they were looking at Steve.“

”We do have quite a show here,” Stephen observed.

As I thought about it, seeing all the attention Steve and his bike were getting, had planted a seed. Back then even though I could now see that the HiWheel created a lot of excitement, it had been easy for me to dismiss the notion of riding one. Reasoning that I needed my bicycle for errands, there was not going to be any way that I could build one into my world. As a transportation cyclist, I needed to be able to get places fast without a lot of effort. And it was for this application that I knew that the HiWheel was in a word, impractical.

I was closed to the possibility of doing anything more than admiring them until a year later. That was when I bought a well-used, replicated version, as I said earlier, to bring attention to our booth at the NBG Festivals we used to produce. It was when I finally worked up the nerve to try it, even though it was not mechanically sound, the joy of floating above the cars and the rest of the world below, forced me to rethink my priorities. The danger of being so high off the ground suddenly paled in comparison to the sudden feeling ofmagnificence that soon overwhelmed me.

Almost as immediately, I determined if I could learn how to walk again and do what it took to reverse my paralysis and all of the other complications brought on by my 1977 head injury to ride a traditional bicycle and then a recumbent across the US, that I could ride a few blocks on a HiWheel bike. Besides, I now did yoga and had been doing so every day since I had completed my last coast-to-coast bike ride. I knew that no matter how bad my bones got shaken out of alignment, there was always a pose I could figure out that would remedy the situation.

I also loved making people smile. Soon, the joy riding my HiWheel brought to others told me I had to do what it took to be able to ride it more. But where would I find the time, I wondered.

Soon I determined that if I rode one a few days a week when I was not working out with weights, that I could develop enough expertise to be able to ride it in a parade or two.

However, once I got the bike repaired and it became evident that the longer I rode, the less energy I had for the gym, I asked myself if I could ride more and work out less.

When I could see that my body felt and looked as fit as it ever did the more I HiWheeled and the less I pushed iron, I did a very hard thing. I gave up my gym membership! I traded in the safety and familiarity of a social world of fellow health seekers sequestered from the rest of the world by walls and windows for asphalt, cars and the fit and the mostly unfit.

For 24 years, working out had been a way of life for me. It had gotten me beyond the helplessness of my head injury setback. I had become so accustomed to seeing my body change as I focused on different parts of it with resistance training that I was only minimally aware of the fact that most people only paid attention to their bodies when they were sick.

As such then, I would be using all the time I had spent under a health club roof to place the National Bicycle Greenway vision before an America that really needed it. The several hours a day I spent working out in the gym, I began to spend on my HiWheel bicycle. And just as soon, I could see that just by riding the Penny Farthing I was bringing hope to the young and the old, the overweight and the fit and all the different ethnicities that make up the world around us. All the happiness that resulted pushed me on.

Ten years ago, I would have been happy with a couple of blocks worth of pedaling, while being able to ride a parade or two would have tested the limits of my joy. And yet here now, I was finishing my ride across the country on the bicycle where modern transportation all began; the same machine that forever changed the way man would move about.

Besides connecting me to the people on the street, the HiWheel was also connecting me to cyclists on many different kinds of pedal machines. Since even within the ranks of cycling there are different factions all with their own agendas, needs and desires, the HiWheel bike seems to have built in leadership qualities. As I got around on the HiWheel and more and more touring, racing, training, commuting, off-road, recumbent and casual cyclists got a chance to see motorists give me more respect than they themselves were getting, I could see that more and more of them wanted to be a part of my family. And as my family of regular bicyclists grew, a critical mass of us would be elevating the public consciousness to show how important it is for all bicycles to be on the road.

And it is here that I count mountain bike cyclists as an interested party. Even though their preferred riding turf is off road, in getting to the dirt many of them pedal the road. And more of them would travel that way if the streets were safer for them. Nor does any of this account for the fact that studies have shown that most of the off road bikes that are sold today spend most of their time riding not off the road, but on the road.

And then there are the people who ride recumbent bicycles, a marginalized population of cyclists indeed. They are seen by many of the mostly younger cyclists who ride traditional upright bikes, as being less capable. They dismiss the recumbent rider as being a man or woman who is limited by age, health or weight problems. So the fact that since 1982, I had only been riding recumbents, partly in an attempt to get attention for the National Bicycle Greenway, seemed to communicate that I had special needs; that I couldn’t ride a “real” bike. It seemed to be telling people who had no visible way of knowing that I had already crossed the country on an upright, that I wanted a Greenway so I would have a place to ride my ‘sit down’ bicycle.

I had not realized that I was limiting the support I needed for our vision until I started riding the HiWheel. In hindsight, however, I do take comfort in the fact that I am still cycling all these years later. Looking back I had seen so many of the same upright cyclists who looked down on me for riding a recumbent, fall by the way side because of the discomfort their bikes were causing them as they got older.

While my pedaling kept me fit, I watched as the familiar faces around me were in a constant state of change. While I knew some of them had simply moved to new cycling turf, I was also sure that an even larger number of them had traded in the two-whee road for the luxury and unhealthy ways of the automobile. This was corroborated for me once in a while when I would spot one of them filling up at a gas station or sitting behind the steering wheel of a car at a traffic light.

Besides the butt, shoulder, neck and sometimes arm pain that forced a lot of them off the saddle, there are also the issues of attire, functionality, even peer pressure. As many of us grow older, only to find more and more demands placed on our time, the conventional bicycle often becomes less and less attractive because it is harder to build into our lives.

In terms of special wear, padding and chamois for one’s hind quarters must be bought, kept clean and just changed in and out of with each ride in order for one to be an effective upright cyclist. Besides wearing the right, tight-fitting bike clothes for two wheel efficiency, there is also the subtle pressure the upright bike industry (97+% of bikes sold) places on its cyclists to remind them that they must look and go fast. From what their helmets and upper body wear (preferably brightly colored jerseys with lots of corporate logos on them) are supposed to look like to the kinds of biking events that appear on our TV screens (the Tour De France and to a lesser degree the Race Across America), to how cars are needed for our activity (at such races, we see a mass of cars and motor homes with bikes on top of them following the two wheel speedsters around), etc, there is both a dress code and a code of conduct anyone who wants to be seen as a serious cyclist must abide by.

Despite the fact that recumbent cyclists do not need special clothes and their bikes can carry much, much more, something we’ll talk more about later in this chapter, those who ride them, even if they look young, healthy and fit, are still dismissed as being lazy cyclists. This notion was affirmed by the UCI when they banned them from racing in 1934, saying bike racers should not be allowed to gain advantage because of their machines The now defrocked bike racer, Lance Armstrong, helped to embed this attitude in the mass consciousness. For the better part of two decades, the myth of who he was served to define the meaning of the term serious-cyclist.

For the many millions of cyclists following his lead, results took on far greater importance than how much fun they had when they cycled. It became necessary to look like you were working for your miles. Smiling or waving at one another was frowned upon. And no longer were your rides about processing thoughts or communing with nature or your Maker. You achieved esteem by calling your time spent in the upright saddle a “training ride”. Made all the more important by how well you watched your various metering mechanisms, your watch, speedometer and/or your power, cadence, or heart monitors, etc.

In such a way, not only was comfort on your bike a secondary consideration, but the real heroes of bicycling, those who replace car trips, are cast by the wayside. As a result, the needs of transportation cyclists are not placed on center stage. Instead, those chasing speed become the unofficial ambassadors of what is supposed to be seen as a sport that also requires motorized support.

While there are becoming more of those who make, sell and promote conventional bikes that are designed for comfort, even transportation, the market of such users is always reminded that they are B-League cyclists. Because such pedal machines go slower, those who ride them are made to feel almost like they need to apologize for not being young and able to withstand the pain of a traditional road bike any longer.

When I say conventional bikes are limited in how much they can carry, the racks and saddlebags that can be added to them change the handling characteristics of the bike. And odd shaped purchases or things one might have to get to, and/or from work, school or play, are more difficult to mount on a traditional pedal machine.

All of this changes on a recumbent. Because the seat is shaped more like the chairs found at one’s dining room table, besides the comfort of a large seating area and then having your back supported, it is easier to hang or drape things off of them. All this as the recumbent cyclist pedals away in loose fitting clothes that one does not have to change in and out of in order to do a strong ride. If all this is not enough to warrant that we should see more of them on the road, if for no other reason than to keep older cyclists out there with us.

The higher speed potential of recumbents the UCI affirmed in 1934 when they banned them, keeps increasing. .In fact all the present day human powered land speed records were established using the recumbent design. They are pushing 90 miles an hour with the recumbent power plant. Even the English Channel was flown over by a man pedaling supine because engineers determined that that was the only way they could get enough power for such an effort. And if one wanted to spend the money, depending on their fitness level, there are recumbents a person can buy that will put them at the front of most any racing pack.

Recumbents are also safer bikes to ride. Because you are much closer to the ground, the impact of a fall is not nearly as great. Over the years, I have known more than a few upright cyclists whose lives were ruined, some of whom even died, by crashes from a machine, the upright road bike, that makes the head and not the butt the point of impact. Nor is the recumbent rider so low that he or she cannot be seen. Not at all. In fact the biggest part of their body is what is most directly in the car driver’s field of vision instead of legs or skinny bike tires.

Besides their comfort, safety, speed and practicality, are there other reasons why do we not see more recumbent bicycles on the road? To begin with, we do not see many of them in bike shops. And if they do show up there, they are often not supported by an enthusiastic sales staff. This is so because the same pressure the ad man uses to tell a person what serious cyclists are supposed to look like, finds its way into the bike shops where most of the employees have not reached the age where comfort on a bike is a concern, Since they tend to sell and be knowledgeable about what their conditioning has told them is acceptable, even fashionable to ride, the recumbent is an unknown oddity to them. As are those who express interest in knowing about them.

Sure one can go out on the web and find such a machine. However, since mechanical support is harder to find from the bicycle marketplace, a lot of shops for example do not like to even do repair work on recumbents, interested buyers will often need some mechanical aptitude in order to build one out of the box. And once they get it out on the road, they must be able to play the game of being an instant cycling authority as they answer all the many questions that will always be asked.

If however they are new to cycling or have been away for a number of years, much strength of character will be required in order to consistently ride a recumbent. This is so because as they redevelop their skills or learn new ones, it will be harder for them to remain anonymous. Insecure in themselves as cyclists, it will be harder for them to ignore the looks of disdain or outright disapproval that will also come their way once in a while.

Such a cyclist, lacking in confidence, will also have a harder time laughing at comments such as ‘get a real bike’, ‘quit laying down on the job’ or ‘where’s your remote’, etc, that they can expect to hear on occasion. And yet new or returning bike riders, the ones we most need to grow the activity, are the same ones who may never get a chance to really ride the only bike that it makes sense for them to ride. I could not wait to return to the speed and the comfort of a recumbent bicycle but for now I was a man on a mission.

By the time Jeff called, “OK, let’s get going. We’re gonna let the big wheel guys lead so they’re gonna set the pace”, it felt like a grand love in as we all reveled in the joy of being with fellow like minded bicycle brethren. Continuing he added, “Like I told everyone in email this is not a fast ride. It’s a slow ride. So take your time and when it starts getting congested in town, take the lane. At about a mile from City Hall we’re going to get a police escort, so you will have that to look forward to also.”

“Just tell me where to turn,” I said once I had mounted my bike and started riding. Soon we were a colorful procession that had everyone’s attention. Cars slowed down to get a better look and pretty much anyone outside stopped whatever they were doing to watch. Many cheered us on.

After maybe twenty minutes, our ride became official when two police motorcycles rumbled up along side of us.

“Are you the guys that need an escort?” one of the officers joked.

“You got it!” I laughed.

“You really don’t have brakes on those things?” asked the other policeman. He and Jeff had been talking on the cell phone so they would know where to meet us.

“Well not really, we can slow down but kinda like a train, we need a lot of lead time. I have a brake but it just slows me down. And not by a whole lot....”

“You guys are crazy. But you did make it this far and City Hall is only a few blocks away,” he returned.

And City Hall welcomed us with open arms. As we coasted into the plaza, in front of the building’s marble steps, balloons flew above a banner that was maybe ten feet long.

Stretched across two folding tables, it looked familiar as later I would find out that they had made a color print of the NBG home page and then had it sized up by a local print shop. I had seen it probably thousands of times before on my lap top computer. I just had never seen it that big before.

Just off to the side of the table, was Rosemarie Rosetti. A sharp looking woman with black hair, she sat in a low to the ground three-wheeled bicycle. An author and professional public speaker of wide acclaim, Rosemarie was confined to a wheelchair by a freak accident that happened on a local bike path when a tree fell and crushed her and her bicycle.Much in demand all over the world for the words of inspiration she speaks, the few times she took part in our annual event, she always had the respect and honor of the local cycling community. The local media celebrated her as well.

The woman most responsible for all the excitement at hand was busy talking with a bunch of middle-aged cyclists, all dressed in colorful cycling gear. Soon, I would discover that Erin Miller, the Director of Environmental Stewardship for the city, was talking to people from Columbus Outdoor Pursuits (COP). A few years ago, her predecessor, Michael Schwarzwalder, who I had laughed with a lot on the phone, brought out dozens of cyclists to welcome Scott Campbell when he crossed America for us. Founded all the way back in 1937, COP is a 4,000 member organization that gets people of all ages into the fresh air with biking, hiking, caving, rafting, snow skiing androck climbing activities, etc.

There were also people dressed in suits for our arrival as well as even more cyclists. All eyes were on us as TV and newspaper photographers jockeyed into position to get us on film as we rolled up to the steps that separated us from the inner bowels of a very grand building.

Completed in 1936, Columbus City Hall was marked by windows held in place by thick black panes that looked to run the length of the three-story building’s first two floors. Its doors were outlined by gold leaf and made to look massive by the black granite frame that encased them. At the top of the immense rock slab from which this entry way had been structured, ornamental shapes had been carved.

When it came time for our short ceremony, Maryellen welcomed us, “I am excited to see all of you cyclists out here today. You are our strength and what makes Columbus such a great place to live. I only wish I could spend more of my time out there riding with you but I want you to know I drive as little as I can. As many of you know, I no longer serve the city but serve you at the county level and am here because I was introduced to the National Bicycle Greenway when I was one of your city councilors. A cause, I believe in as a cyclist myself, I asked your Mayor if I could help welcome the NBG today. I want you to know you have a great Mayor who is on your side. Please help me welcome the Greenest Mayor in America, Michael Coleman.”

The longest serving Mayor in Columbus history, 16 years, Coleman began by saying a few words about how, as Mayor, he wanted his city to be a green leader and toward that end, he wanted to empower the efforts of local cyclists.

Obviously pushed for time, he then read the Columbus NBG Day proclamation. At which point Maryellen took over as m/c again and excused her city’s leader.

“We’re lucky that we were able to get Mayor Coleman out here today. He had to be across town 15 minutes ago for a transit district meeting. So thank you Mayor Coleman,” she said as he waved to us and walked back into City Hall.“We have a couple other people from the local cycling community who have a few words they’d like to add before we send the NBG off to Pittsburgh. So, next I’d like to bring up a man many of you know, Jeff Stephens.”

After Jeff and then Rosemarie fired us up with their words and after my teams and I and our mission were introduced, Maryellen took over again, “Martin will be signing his new book about the National Bicycle Greenway at the 3rd Hand Bike Coop at 7PM tonight. I encourage you all to try to get over there and show your support. I’ve read parts of it and he even visualized today in there. I encourage you to go, get a look, and see how close he came. He and his team will be there with the Busycle too!”

With that our 8th visit to Columbus was now in the official record. From what I had seen, Columbus was all about people. Their hearts were big and their desire to be thought of as your friend was huge.

Back when we had rolled through what looked like was once the broad expanse of farming lands, I recalled how I had begun to question what had drawn so many to this area. By the time we had approached the core of America’s 15th largest city, I still could not figure out what the attraction was. What had drawn nearly three quarters of a million people to this part of the country? For as far as the eye could see, it was flat. Mountains or forests were not to be found. Nor were its two waterways cause for excitement as they lazily surged through town. Columbus sat at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers.

The fact that these tributaries were too small for commercial shipping added to my curiosity. What was it that first drew all these great people to this land locked geographic center of the state so they could form the alliances that obviously still exist today? As soon as Columbus NBG Day was over, I determined that I would do a little research to find out.

So as soon as I could, I asked Maryellen. Not only was she a cyclist and a big fan of the NBG, she was also well versed in the history of her beloved city. Based upon what she and others from her staff told me, here is what I was able to piece together:

When the state of Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, and a small number of cities began campaigns to make theirs the state’s capital, it was determined that a new capital city, located in the center of the state, was a necessary compromise. Ultimately it was a coalition of land speculators who made the best offer to the Ohio General Assembly when in 1812, named to honor the man who discovered America, Columbus was founded.

A little over a decade later, in 1825, when the state began an active canal building program as a way to transport the state’s chief industry, agriculture, to the markets of the east, Columbus soon found itself at the center of an extensive network of man made waterways. Reaching forty-four of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties, and connecting the Great Lakes (via Lake Erie) with the Gulf of Mexico (via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers) at its peak, there were almost 1,000 miles of main line canals, feeders and side cuts. Then, in 1831, when The National Road from Baltimore was completed, the population boom that resulted spoke to the fact that Columbus was now the true center of commerce for the state if Ohio.

Besides all of the national businesses now headquartered in Columbus, Wendy’s, Borden, The Limited, and Nationwide Insurance, to name a few, that have taken advantage of being epicentered in this way, people are also drawn to Columbus by Ohio State University (OSU). At over 50,000 students, OSU is the third largest public university in the United States. The school’s influence on the city, in the form of culture, diversity and creativity, serves as yet another magnet to bring a great multitude of forward thinkers to the Capital of Ohio.

In terms of present day Columbus, here is what Mary Ellen wrote:

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What draws people to Columbus and its environs today is the wonderful people who make their homes here, and the opportunity that they find for good jobs, a good education and an excellent quality of life. Don’t forget that we have a strong and active biking community. And as for natural features, we don’t have mountains or oceans, but we do have rivers, creeks, streams and ravines that offer environmental interest. The nearby Darby Creek watershed, for example, was recently named one of the Last Great Places in the country by the Nature Conservancy.

===========

I did just a little research at bigdarby.org and found that at 580 square miles, the very high quality waters at the Darby Creek watershed are home to one of the richest arrays of aquatic diversity anywhere on earth. This as the forest and prairies that line its creek banks also house an intricate web of life including birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, even many rare and endangered plant species. All less than 20 miles from the heart of this very alive and happy city! Wow!!

In the end, I could see that as people kept drawing people to Columbus, they made sure to make the most out of these simple lands. Not only did they make certain that their watershed, for example was world class but all up and down the Olentangy River banks, from one end of town to the other and beyond ran a top grade bike path that hikers, skaters, joggers and cyclists were all able to enjoy. On kiosks and telephone poles, I saw flyers that announced the many different events, festivals and concerts that were scheduled to take place along the water’s edge. All this, plus they have their beloved sports teams from Ohio Sate to enjoy.

Tomorrow would find us on our way to Pittsburgh. And I would be leaving Columbus, Ohio with a very warm spot in my heart.........

Three riding days separated us from Pittsburgh. Using the route David Huggins Daines had carefully plotted for this Mayors’ Ride connection in 2005, we spent the first day on US 40. What had seemed straightforward changed to a left or a right turn very five or ten miles for the next 100 as we were on and off of US 22 and 43 and many other roads all the way into Pittsburgh. The hills that stood between the two cities were not steep, they were just long.

The Pittsburgh that we reached is much changed from nearly 40 years ago when the last of its mills shut down. For that matter, it began its renaissance in 1945 when Mayor David Lawrence first proposed the overhaul that resulted in the beautiful city it is today. With the recessions of the 1970’s and the advent of cheap foreign labor, Pittsburgh’s steel mills found themselves unable to compete with foreign steel mills and most closed down.

Once known as “The Smoky City” because billows of smoke poured from its thousands of stacks, it was recent Mayor and NBG booster, Tom Murphy, who would help earn Pittsburgh a reputation as an environmental showcase. Today, civic leaders from all over the world come to Pittsburgh to see the amazing changes that have taken place.

From a city where on its worst days the streetlights and automobile headlights had to be lighted during the day and downtown office workers needed to change shirts at noon because of the sooty air, a whole new Pittsburgh has emerged. From a city where the constant pounding of its industrial machines once lulled people to sleep and protracted periods of silence awakened them, one today could never know that so much filth, dirt and noise desecrated this innocent looking paradise.

The Pittsburgh of today looks almost surreal against its surroundings. It shines like an emerald jewel dropped into an ocean of lush, forest covered hills. Seated at the convergence of two mighty rivers, its very geographic positioning combines with its storybook skyline to communicate power. It is against its many shining glass skyscrapers that all of this is painted.

Instead of steel and other heavy manufacturing, the new Pittsburgh is fueled by finance, high technology, health care and service-based industries. Education is also a major local employer and Pittsburgh boasts many specialized professional institutes as well as top-flight universities.

Pittsburgh played a very large part in early America. In 1754, twenty one years before America’s war for independence began, the French, who owned the territory that would be called Pittsburgh added a footnote to history that is little cited today. It was then that they forced a young George Washington to lay down his arms and walk his army back to Williamsburg VA, nearly 400 miles away. When he came back four years later as a part of Gen. John Forbes’s forces, however, the French were the ones who left with their tails between their legs. They were so thoroughly defeated that when they left they used the cover of darkness to burn the military post, Fort Duquene, they had built at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers.

This location was of strategic importance to early settlers as these two rivers form the confluence of the mighty Ohio River, which stretches all they way to the Mississippi River 981 miles away. As testimony to the Ohio’s might, once it reaches the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois, it contributes most of the water that then flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way, it forms part of the border of six states; Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. As a line in the sand, the Ohio River also roughly separated the north from the south during the Civil War since the two states below it, Kentucky and West Virginia, were Union states that still permitted slavery.

When the French left, the British built a new fort and named it Fort Pitt to honor William Pitt, the British war minister. Also known as the first Earl of Chatham, Pitt would go on to help England win the French and Indian war (Britain versus the French colonist who had teamed up with the Indians) which had pretty much begun when Washington was first defeated in what is now Pittsburgh. It was also Pitt who would unwittingly go on to foment the unrest that would cause England to lose its possession.

He had gained great popularity in America during the long battle by lavishing cash reimbursements on the colonists for their military expenses. However, by the time the war ended in 1763, the British had forced France off all of the land east of the Mississippi River, but they were also faced with massive public debt.

When they then started to tax everything such as glass, lead, paints, paper, tea, sugar, wine, cloth, and other goods imported into the colonies to help pay that obligation down, the unrest that resulted grew into the Revolutionary War.

By the time Pittsburgh became a city in 1816, it wasn’t long before it surged ahead of the former colonies as the growing nation’s number one industrial powerhouse. Many factors conspired to make this so.

Besides its excellent water highway positioning, it was aided in 1761 when a coal seam was found on “Coal Hill”, now known as Mt. Washington. The mine that soon formed would lead the rest of the state of Pennsylvania, still a top coal producer even today, as it fueled the First Industrial Revolution in the United States in the late 1700’s.

Mount Washington is now a popular tourist attraction with a nighttime view that “USA Today” says is of one of the most beautiful in America. It was from this spot, now noted for its boutiques and restaurants and even a centuries old tram that climbs the steep incline that separates it from the rest of the city, that the colonial iron industry drew the coal to fuel its furnaces.

Not only was Pittsburgh and soon its outlaying areas rich in coal, but when in 1859 Edwin Drake figured out a way to capture the oil that long had long been seen bubbling from the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania, the global petroleum industry was born.

While as far back as 1810 “black gold” had been skimmed from Oil Creek, placed in hollow logs and floated down the creek to Pittsburgh 88 miles away, it was Drake who figured out how to drill for it. For the next 40 years countless wells sprung up in Titusville, Pennsylvania, making Pittsburgh, which brought the oil down for refinement on the Allegheny River, the center of the oil industry, producing half of all the oil in the world.

Then, in Cleveland 100 miles east of Titusville, in 1863, John D. Rockefeller built a refinery. For him, he saw it as a way to capitalize on the home lighting market which was converting from whale oil to kerosene.

However, the emergence of the automobile and its thirst for the formerly near worthless refining by-product called gasoline increased the demand for it to before unthought-of of levels. By 1890, through merger and innovation, Rockefeller surpassed Pittsburgh as America’s oil leader. His dizzying wealth was the result of his ability to get western Pennsylvania’s oil wealth first centered in Pittsburgh, out to the machines and cars in the rest of America.

Before Rockefeller took over, Pittsburgh had been helped by the B&O railroad. When the B&O made it through the Appalachian Mountain Range and arrived in Pittsburgh in 1855, it had established Pittsburgh as the center of the industrial universe. Not only did the many lines that serviced it help to make it the oil capital of the world, but in showing oil as a commodity from which riches could be had, it got the interest of John D. Rockefeller

Pittsburgh’s superior transportation positioning also helped to build the second richest man in the world. Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie began his working life in Pittsburgh as a bobbin boy in a textile factory, later graduating to a telegraph operator for the local railroad. Once in business for himself, he advanced with his competition in large part because of Pittsburgh’s ability to move both raw materials and finished products long distances. When Carnegie started Cyclops Iron Works in 1864, he joined sixteen other iron mills that were taking advantage of the rich coal, iron ore and limestone deposits found there.

However, when a higher grade of iron called steel was patented in 1866, he knew he could rise above his competition if he could go to northern Michigan to be able to make it at a competitive price. After forming a new company in 1875 called Thomson Works, he completed a new factory and went to the Great Lakes state for the less expensive, better quality iron ore that would make his steel the best in the world. It would go on to help him build bridges, railways and skyscrapers all over America. By 1901, Pittsburgh would increase its concentration of American wealth when Carnegie sold his company to a banker named JP Morgan.

The company that resulted, US Steel, once the largest in the world, at 22,000 employees is now the third largest on the globe. Its influence is felt the world around even today. Even though its smokestacks are gone, and it is owned now by Nippon Steel, US Steel is still headquartered in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh grew and grew as it took from the natural perfection that envelops it. In 1950, it reached a peak population of 676,806. When the steel industry collapsed in the 1980’s, however, by 2020, Pittsburgh only counted 302,971 people as its resident population.

Of note to cyclists is the fact that Pittsburgh is widely believed to be right behind San Francisco as the “steepest” city in the United States. As testimony to this, Pittsburgh has more public staircases (700) than any other city in America. While this last fact is important to walkers, it still shows those on two wheels that once you leave its downtown, Pittsburgh has more than its fair share of precipitous turf.

All of this is what our group, which had grown to include maybe forty others riders from the local area, entered when we met at a park on the western edge of town. Since we somehow ended up behind schedule, we only regrouped long enough to tell one another that we would exchange names as we rode in to town. The half hour ride was spirited and fun. There were questions about my bike and our ride up from Columbus.

We laughed a lot.

By the time we approached the linear park along the Allegheny River where our destination, the Venture Outdoors Festival was being held, we found ourselves separated from Pittsburgh’s famous skyline by water. Bordered by two rivers, the city’s downtown is located in what is also called “the point” because it is where the Allegheny joins with the Monongahela to form the mighty Ohio River. It was here that the original Fort Pitt of 1758 was located. Today Pittsburgh City Hall occupies some of the land in this area.

Though we no longer visited it, it was there in 2002, that a police escort delivered our rain soaked riders to our very first Mayors’ Ride reception. It was then, that on its steps former Mayor Tom Murphy stood with his senior aide and one of our biggest believers, Ro Fischer (podcast with NBG), as well as two other strong NBG supporters, Michael Sobkoviak of Venture Outdoors and David Hoffman, founder of Bike Pittsburgh (who now does bike work in Marin County, near San Francisco 3000 miles away), to welcome our riders. Many others were also there to receive Gil Gilmore and Dave Rabinowtiz who had spent the last week riding up the C&O canal trail from their send off in DC.

As we pedaled to the festival, I remembered how excited Ro and the rest of her office had been to be getting bicycle visitors from far away Washington, DC. She even had a map up in her office that tracked the daily progress of our riders, as they were part of a relay that then pedaled the rest of the way across the USA.

I also remembered how enthused Ro had been about the building she worked in. She had said that it was built all the way back in 1917. I knew it had to look out of place surrounded by all those mighty skyscrapers and other modern looking office buildings.

From the pictures taken when we used to hold NBG Day there, I remembered the three large arches where everyone had congregated to get out of the rain. They looked to be several stories tall. A stone building, it was square in shape, and had to be nine or ten floors from bottom to top.

Soon Troy Bogdan, a local organic farmer, and veteran DC to Pittsburgh NBG rider called. “If we want to get a picture of all of us with the skyline in the background, this would be a great place!”

“This is where we stopped in 2008,” Nick Hein, a tall, wiry man who never missed a Pittsburgh NBG Day called from his low down recumbent bicycle.

“Photo op!” I shouted. “Let’s all take a quick break.”

Once every one had stopped, I could see that we weren’t going to get everyone in a photo unless I started doing choreography.

“Can some one hold my bike?” I said as I started my organizing. “OK team let’s get over here on this part of the path. Recumbents in the front, tall people with regular bikes in the back. Let’s make like four rows....”

Finally after another five minutes of walking people into position and other forms of cajoling, we had everyone in place! At which point I grabbed one of the many curious bystanders who had interrupted their walk to watch us and gave her a camera. It wasn’t long before others from our group were handing her their picture taking devices.

Once all the five or six cameras had been used, we all thanked our volunteer photographer and got back on our bikes. Soon, we were on our way to the fun we could see ahead.

By the time we reached what was called the Venture Outdoors Festival, kids and young adults were occupied with a wide variety of activities. While some scrambled up and down artificial rock climbing walls, others could be seen trying their hand at yoga or capoeira in the outdoor tents that had been set up. A bike rodeo seemed to be keeping a lot of young kids busy and there were long lines of people standing next to the river getting ready to try their hand at kayaking. We also heard that some were there to learn how to paddle in unison to the beat of a drum. On a dragon boat.

We hadn’t been there long when a voice on a loudspeaker could be heard directing everyone to the main tent. It was telling them that the Mayor of their city would be welcoming the National Bicycle Greenway and our ride from San Francisco. Surprised to hear this, we all looked at each other.

“Guess da Mayor got here early,” Skot surmised.

“Well 2’s better than 2:30,” I said, “let’s head on over!”

No sooner had I said that than one of the Venture Outdoors people was running up to me and saying, “we saw your big wheel off in the distance, Mayor Ravensthal got here early....”

“Let’s do it!! We’ll follow you,” I answered.

Four or five hundred people watched as Mayor Luke Ravensthal welcomed us to his city with the Pittsburgh NBG Day proclamation. He said a few words. We said a few words.

A lot of photos were snapped and yet another NBG Day was complete!

For the next week, we would disappear from public view, as we pedaled down the remote Great Alleghany Passage and C&O canal towpath, on our way to Washington, DC.

The end was near....