For several years, I had planned to make a bike trip across the USA, but the trip kept getting postponed by other responsibilities. Finally, in 1988, I was able to make the crossing. What I did was not unique; tens of thousands of other cyclists have made the same journey. Still, many years from now, the trip will probably stand out as one of the highlights of my life.

author’s note, July 2026: it was.

I wanted to leave my mark (and also my address) with people I met along the road, so I compiled “Wisdom for Cyclists,” a pamphlet of proverbs and parables based on the sport of cycling. The sayings were rather cryptic to most people, but I thought they would be well understood by most other riders I met on the road. For weight reasons, I had all eight pages reduced to fit on both sides of a standard letter size sheet of paper. When properly folded, it proved to be a smart and portable little production. The weight penalty for 100 sheets: about a pound.

Although I had been planning the trip for years, and accumulating supplies for months, the actual packing did not begin in earnest until about two days before leaving. Gear for both my fiancée and myself needed to be boxed. I would never have finished were it not for the help of my close friend Clay, who stayed on until about 2 am on Saturday night.

At that point, with my eyes starting to bug out, and my head starting to buzz, I realized that I still had to put away the laundry, take a shower, eat, do the dishes, and finish up instructions for my housemates. (After all, I’d be gone for three months!) I finally got to sleep at 5 am on Sunday morning.

At 6:30 am, my alarm went off. Time to get up! Merrianne met me at about 7, and my housemate, Sandra, drove us to the airport in my truck.

We landed in Eugene, Oregon, about 60 miles away from the Pacific Ocean. Since I was intent on going “coast-to-coast,” we drove to Florence, which was actually on the coast. Once in Florence, we checked into a motel and took a nap. Merrianne had slept five hours the previous night; I had slept closer to one hour.

It was actually a multi-step process getting things set up. We rented a Dodge Caravan at the Eugene airport, then drove with all our gear to Le Chateau Motel in Florence. After unloading, we had lunch at Original Mo’s. Then we drove back to Eugene in the empty Caravan and turned it in. We briefly visited with my old roommate, Bill Frolik, at the Bus Terminal. Then we jumped on the bus to Florence, which was $9.