Kendra Keene

State Hornet

We all have that one trip we want to take &- the one placewe need to see before we die. From before I can remember my dreamtrip has always been to bike across the country.

The idea started because I was looking for a summer trip when Iwas 15 and my Dad jokingly said, “Why don’t you justbike cross-country?” At the time, my longest bike ride was 40miles and I was in no way able to get it together in time. Istarted getting serious about riding and set a goal to do it beforeI turned 20. So three years later I typed, “Bike coast tocoast” into Google and looked into three programs. A companycalled Cycle America ended up looking the best. They carry yourbags for you, feed you, give you a rest day once a week and evenmap out the day’s ride. All I would have to do is pedal the4,500 miles from Seattle to Boston.

Well, then again, 4,500 miles is really a lot to do and thereare definitely shorter ways to go about getting across the country.Sure, I’d been biking seriously for four years and I knew Icould ride the distance, but all in one hot summer and with a groupof people I’ve never even met? But for some reason the summerbefore my first year of college I decided to just go for it. Thisdecision is, to date, the greatest I ever made.

I arrived in Seattle on June 16 with my Celeste-colored Bianchiroad bike and a bag full of biking appeal. The first thing Inoticed about the large group of over 60 people I was walkingtowards was that they were all smiling with excitement and each andeveryone of them had the classic cyclist tan lines on their armsand legs. I was home and this was the group that became my familyfor the rest of the summer.

The first week of riding went by fast, mainly because everyonewas getting to know each other. The one question that kept oncirculating was, “Why are you riding?” The answersvaried but my favorite belonged to an older man named FredBradshaw, who was on the trip as a fund-raiser for breast cancerresearch. He kept a picture taped in the middle of his handlebarsof his mother Jane who died of breast cancer when he was young.

Six days into the trip we had already ridden across Washington.It was then that it hit me … I was making progress andI’d ridden across a whole state already. I was riding well&- usually getting in to camp early in the afternoon.

My first trouble shot came at Day 11 when a group of riders andI were cruising at 27 mph closely together to beat the head wind,somewhere between Ennis and West Yellowstone, Mont. Alan, the manin front of me, suddenly stopped, which sent me over my handlebarsand straight onto the pavement. I had severe road rash on my leftface and shoulder. Alan had waved down a Cycle America van so thatI could clean myself up. We were 15 miles away from camp and it wasso tempting to take the crew’s advice and take the van in butI knew I would be mad with myself for not riding the rest of theday. I picked up my bike and Alan and I rode in together.

Road rash is something that usually looks worse before it getsbetter. The next day I woke up with scrapes all over my face and myshoulder was blue and purple and inflamed &- a pretty scarysight. For the next couple of days I was riding slow, finishinglate in the day. We often stayed in high schools, using itsfootball fields to erect our tents. When my friend Alana and I werewalking out of the locker room in some high school in Idaho I saw asign that read “Pain is just weakness leaving yourbody.” That saying, it became my motto for the rest of thetrip. The next day my friend had taped it to my bicycle so I couldread it while climbing the Teton Mountains, a 8,600-foot pass.

It’s weird that such a cheesy slogan pasted to acheerleading locker in Idaho would give me that extra strength tocontinue riding through my pain, but it did. In fact, my shoulderand face soon healed and I was back to myself again. This allowedme to enjoy the Tetons &- the most beautiful sight I have everseen. I remember standing at the top of the summit when my friendGary, from the United Kingdom, said, “We sure do live likeKings, don’t we?” He then got back on his bike and speddown the hill at what looked like 50 miles an hour and probablywas.

I used to think that the most boring place in the world wasLodi. That was before I went to South Dakota. I knew that in orderto see great places like the Tetons, I needed to go past some ofthe bad ones like South Dakota. Being from Sacramento, I can handleheat. What I can’t take is 100 plus degrees, head wind, notrees, and worst of all, red necks with huge pickup trucks. Peoplein Middle America hated us bicyclists &- in bright colors andtight spandex shorts, forced to ride on the road with the cars.They honked and screamed at us to get off the road. As a man in agas station in Philip told me, “It’s one thing for youladies to wear tight shorts but you tell your boys out thereI’ll run ’em off the road.” We got it &- notwelcomed in South Dakota &- and biked as fast as could.

For the most part the people we ran into were extremely nice andfriendly. Shirley, from “Bud and Shirley’s,” asmall-town family restaurant, thought we were all getting tooskinny and fed us her homemade pies from the back of her pickuptruck. At home I wouldn’t go near a lady giving away piesfrom the back of her pickup, but in this small town there was ahuge sense of safety that I don’t get at home.

A horrible realization came when I was in upstate New Yorkriding with my friend Erika from the Bay Area &- we werealmost there. We had one week left and we’d be in Boston.That Atlantic Ocean was a week away and I didn’t want it toend. The people I met had become my family and I knew it wasall almost over.

The last day was a 65-mile ride to Gloucester, Mass., a smallcoastal town. The entire group rode together and it was abittersweet end to our long journey. I had ridden the entirething and we had gone through every mile together. We had goodreason to celebrate in Boston for one last night out. The nextmorning I said goodbye to the great people I’d met, boxed mybike and took a shuttle to the airport.

My 62-day bike ride was erased in the four hours it took me toget back home. Then next morning I woke up at 6 a.m. with asense of panic. For the first day in all of summer, I hadnowhere I needed to be. I had zero miles to ride and eventhough I knew my body needed a rest, my heart wanted to be outthere on my bike pedaling as fast as I could.