#ryansacrossamerica

Finding a balance between ordinary days and big adventure while reminiscing about the first big adventure of our married life: biking across the country on a tandem bike

As you may already know, I’m working to savor and celebrate the ordinary moments in my life, to settle in and find contentment with the little things that ultimately make up my days. Moments make a life, after all. Isn’t that what they say? 

But I also want to have a BIG life full of exciting adventures and extraordinary feats. And I think those two goals can coexist – in fact, I think they must. For me, at least. 

After a big adventure, whatever it is that you define as an adventure – a family trip, a day in the mountains, an introspective and intentional morning retreat – we need time to pause, absorb, and recover. I don’t believe we get the full payoff from big adventures without some time afterward to process and reflect. 

If I go straight into the next big thing then all the big things start to blur together and we’re just skipping from big adventure to big adventure without much thought for the gaps. That’s where the goodness of the ordinary in-between time and space gets lost. 

So we’re doing both. I’m finding love notes on the sidewalk as I walk my dog on the same loop we do every day while also dreaming about the next big adventure. 

Which brings me to #ryansacrossamerica.

For the first few years after moving to Seattle, David and I had a really great “fun fact” to share with new people we met: 

When we moved to Seattle, my husband and I rode a tandem bicycle from Washington DC to Seattle in 68 days.

The response was usually any combination of blank stare, overwhelmed head nod, and lots of follow-up questions. 

But after some time, all of that petered out and now, when we meet new people, it hardly comes up. I always chuckle when they later find out that we did this. For a few years, it truly defined us in the eyes of new friends and in many ways, it also shaped the early years of our marriage. But now, almost 9 years later, it’s something we fondly think back on as a memorable adventure and an outstanding marital accomplishment. 

To be clear, this was an outlandish adventure – in no way was it ordinary. And it took us a while to recalibrate our existence to regular life. Finding joy in doing ordinary, day-to-day things helped us with that recalibrating; a lovely example of ordinary and big adventure beneficially coexisting in a single life. 

With that, enjoy this nostalgic introduction to our cross-country bike adventure, and stay tuned for future reminiscences from points along the journey. We learned a lot about each other, the world, and our place in it and I’ve loved revisiting that time in our life while settling into today and dreaming up what’s next. 

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#ryansacrossamerica

Originally posted on 17 June 2015

race across america (raam) started today. the participants of “the world’s toughest endurance bicycle race” have a maximum of 12 days to complete their 3000-mile journey from oceanside, california to annapolis, maryland. that math works out to riding 250 miles a day (without any breaks to eat or sleep) — and that’s the slowest possible speed to make it before the deadline.  

THAT’S INSANE.

some people think we’re insane. but we’re not that insane.

in 15 days, i’ll be the stoker on the back of a tandem bike bound for seattle. don’t know what those words mean or anything about tandem biking? we didn’t either until about march. since the hatching of this plan almost 10 months ago, it has slowly come to fruition. we’ve been doing tons of research (mostly david does the research and gives me the skimmed version) and gathering so so many things we didn’t know we needed.

the crucial step one in our plan was getting a tandem bike. thanks to dave and rhona in keyser, west virginia (and a very rainy drive there on a tuesday night), we’ll be riding a 1998 cannondale los dos tandem (we’ve named her nina). nina will be hauling two panniers and a trailer– we’re not exactly traveling in the most streamlined, aerodynamic fashion. we’ve gone on group rides and practice solo rides and lots of kids stare at us and point when we pass. with the trailer, our set-up is probably 20 feet long so it’s incredibly comical to see us biking down the streets of DC. 

our full set-up - from one of our practice rides

instead of trying to make it across the country in 12 days like raam, we’re choosing to be homeless and jobless for 2 and a half months while we bike from washington, dc to seattle, washington. we’re just biking there because we thought that’d be the most exciting way to get there. when moving from one coast to the other, why not go by bike?!  better yet, why not go by tandem bike?

are we insane? maybe a tiny bit…..

here is our route (for the most part). do you know anyone who lives on or near it? do they want to let us shower at their house or bring us lunch/dinner/a beer? we would love to meet them.

we’ve already met so many interesting and inspiring people on this journey and we haven’t even left dc yet. we’re excited to spend time in parts of the country we’ve never seen and learn how to be comfortable with strangers in unfamiliar places. we’re excited to be very much outside of our comfort zones (mentally and physically) and reliant on the generosity and compassion of others.

we (mostly me) will be updating as much as possible along the way — keep tabs on us and our progress!

xx