(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
New Day Cafe: World Bicycle Day, and my own biking tales [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-05
On June 3, 1971, my brother and I began a bicycle trip that would span 40 days and cover much of the continent. Ever since then, June 3 has been a special day for me. From the very beginning, I was more proud of the day that I began the trek, rather than the day I finished.
Little did I know how much of a trailblazer I was. It turns out that June 3 is now celebrated as World Bicycle Day. The date was first celebrated in 2018, but this is the first year that I’ve heard of it.
I’ve been planning to do a diary series on that 1971 trip. It looks like I’ll have some free time over the next two or three weeks...note to self: get busy with those diaries.
Links to World Bicycle Day:
United Nations website
World Health Organization website
Prelude
“If that’s what you boys want to do, go ahead and do it.” Mom might have regretted saying those words, but she never admitted it. She had just given my brother and I permission to plan a cross-country bicycle trip, at a time when few people were doing such a thing.
It was the Chrismas holiday, 1970. I was home from college where I was studying forestry at the University of Missouri. My brother Patrick hadn’t even turned 14, but he had recently picked up my passion for bike riding.
I myself had become a cycling fanatic at a similar age. As an eighth grader, I abruptly decided that I would try to ride at least ten miles every day. There were no role models; I just decided it was something I wanted to do. My bike was a red single-geared bike with wide tires and a big wire basket on the front. I’d ride on residential streets and country roads. Sometimes I pedaled 4 miles each way to school. Each evening I recorded my day’s activity on a chart that, one day in the distant future, I’d come to know as a “spreadsheet.”
Before long, I asked a classmate to go an a 50 mile ride with me. Eighth graders, riding 50 miles back in 1965? Why not? Each time I successfully completed a long ride, I’d plan another that was even longer.
My love of biking fit nicely with my love of maps. I purchased large county road maps, the kind that government officials and surveyors displayed on their walls. They showed every public road, and I was determined to explore as many of those roads as I could possibly could. After each bike ride into new territory, I’d mark the roads with a colored pencil. When a new year rolled around, I used a different color. No, I wasn’t obsessed, not at all!
When I wore out the first bike, I replaced it with a three-speed model with gears in the rear hub. Those extra gears helped in the hilly land of southeast Missouri. When I was 15, I did my first 100-miler. A few months later, 125 miles. Then I got my driver’s licence and bought a motorcycle. But my love of old fashioned pedal power never went away.
A few years afterwards, as a college sophomore, I began planning the adventure of a lifetime. I should probably point out that I had no money to speak of. My parents were paying my tuition and dorm fees. What little spending money I had came from part time work. This trip had to happen on the cheap.
I scoured the campus library and the city library, looking for books about bike touring. The city library supposedly had two books on the subject, but they had gone missing. I was on my own. I relied on a Rand McNally road atlas, plus what I knew from three family trips to the western states. I made educated guesses about roads that would be safe to ride on. A campground guide helped me plan the overnight stops. I bought a composition book, the kind students use for taking notes, and bravely titled it Forty Days to Vancouver, An Experiment in Travel.
Patrick on the left, yours truly on the right.
At the end of the school year, I bought a new ten-speed Peugeot. It was the best bike I could afford with the money I had. My brother bought a Raleigh that was slightly less expensive. We took an 80 mile trip together, to get familiar with the bikes and to be sure they worked properly.
As the departure date loomed, the bikes were packed, repacked, and packed again until we were down to the essential items for the trip and the loads were properly balanced. Each bike had rear panniers, but we had to make do elsewhere. Gym bags slung over the handlebars were good substitutes for more expensive gear. Our sleeping bags were slipped into waterproof bags and secured to the rear racks. At long last there was nothing left to do but get a good night’s sleep.
Day dawned on June 3, 1971. We were ready to roll.
New Day Cafe is a daily community diary. We have a regular core group that shows up nearly every day, plus a few stragglers. Everyone is welcome; we’re always happy to have new folks show up. But please leave your attitude at the door. Personal attacks will be countered with scorn, and repeat violators will be flagged into oblivion. Remember too: By group consensus, no pictures of Dear Leader are allowed here.
Note: Just like last week, I will be late to my own diary. I had the opportunity to move up a dental appointment that was scheduled for next week. Nothing serious, routine maintenance. I want to see lots of good comments when I get here!
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/5/2325854/-New-Day-Cafe-World-Bicycle-Day-and-my-own-biking-tales?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
