Cross-country Wheels
BRUCE Kimball '73, Dave Hyde '75, and I have a lot in common - we belonged to the same fraternity, we keep ourselves in good physical shape, and we love to bicycle. So it's not surprising that we began to think about a cross-country bike trip during one of our biking forays last year into the New Hampshire countryside.
Our major obstacle, however, was that we were members of different graduating classes and thus shared little free time. Summer vacations, of course, seemed ideal, but none of us could forego the earnings of a summer job. And our careers would surely take us in different directions after graduation.
We continued our bicycling and our friendship and, with a little bit of planning and a healthy dose of luck, we were able to embark on our journey this past summer. Bruce, then an assistant dean at the College, had the summer off before returning to graduate work at Harvard, Dave had joined the Naval OCS program and had an October induction date, and I had persuaded my employers to let me begin work in September.
With my superb Tuck School analytical skills and two hours on Dartmouth's computer, I determined the trip would take about 50 days — if we could average about 60 miles a day. July and August seemed to be enough time, and though we knew we could travel more than 60 miles a day, we expected some rain and breakdowns might lower the average.
Our bikes were 10-speeders which we rebuilt with the best moderately-priced parts we could find. We did a considerable amount of bicycle research, and our bikes became hybrids of many different brands. Our work paid dividends, for we had no unexpected surprises from our equipment.
We read as much as we could about crosscountry bike trips and decided to begin on the West Coast to take advantage of the prevailing winds. We knew we could expect the weather to be consistently hot throughout our journey and we minimized the amount of clothing we carried.
We began our physicial conditioning as soon as the snow melted in the spring and were that thankful the New Hampshire and Vermont mountains were there to test us. Our longest continuous bike trip before our departure, however, was only between Hanover and Boston - about 300 miles roundtrip.
We flew to Seattle and began our Odyssey with a swim in Puget Sound. We attached a "Dartmouth or Bust" sign to my bicycle which drew the attention of only one alumnus throughout our trip - and were on our way. We crossed the Cascade Mountains on our first day and hoped to camp at a town called Scenic, Washington. But ail we found was scenic Washington when we reached the appropriate spot on the map. The town apparently does not exist. After passing through Wenatchee the next day, we discovered that even scenic Washington disappeared. We found ourselves in desert, and the temperature remained above 100° for five days. The candles we were carrying did not survive but we did, thanks to salt tablets and watching our water consumption.
We finally reached Spokane and the desert gave way to lush, green vegetation. We crossed northern Idaho and entered Montana, the most beautiful area we traversed, and were surrounded by thickly forested mountains and crossed many fresh, clear and wide rivers. Wild horses and range cattle occasionally contested our right to the road.
We took a short detour to bike across the Rockies in Glacier National Park, where deer wandered through our campsite. We crossed the Continental Divide and took on the Hudson Divide, which separates the waters flowing to Hudson Bay from those going to the Gulf of Mexico, and there viewed the most dramatic natural contrast of the trip - the snow-capped Rockies and the Great Plains.
As we headed east across Montana, we caught our first continuous tail wind and biked over 170 miles one day. We were able to average well over 100 miles a day for the rest of the trip:
For us, the Great Plains ended near the North Dakota-Minnesota border, where the hills once again began to challenge us. And the traffic increased, forcing us to concentrate more on the road than on the scenery. About 10 miles west of Marquette, Michigan, a trucker tried to run me off the road. I noted the license plate number, contacted the police, and 45 minutes later received a promise from the president of the trucking firm that disciplinary action against the trucker would be taken.
Surprisingly, we didn't find the trip through Vermont's Green Mountains too challenging. We sped into Hanover, and rode around the Green twice singing Men of Dartmouth before continuing our trip. We finally reached the Atlantic Ocean on August 12 and swam at Singing Beach in Manchester, Massachusetts, 31 bike days, 6 rest days, and 3,275 miles after our Pacific Ocean swim.
At Dartmouth, unbusted: Dave Hyde '75 (l), Bruce Kimball '73, and Mark Thomas '74.
