Childhood Cross-Country Biking Dream Has Wheels

By Matt Poms Friday, June 25, 2010

It wasn’t until midway through the Sierra Nevada Mountains that Andy French really started to feel it. Climbing 8,500 feet by bicycle from sea level to Carson Pass in the span of three days, French hit a wall, every pedal stroke feeling as heavy as the granite outcroppings that surrounded him on the sides of U.S. Route 50 in Eastern California. But then, looking out over rolling green forests just south of Lake Tahoe, came breathtaking view after view, panoramas that instantly made the afternoon worth the pain.

A rising senior at the College of William and Mary, French is spending his final collegiate summer biking across the United States, departing San Francisco on May 21 and expecting to finish at Yorktown in late July. Roughly halfway through his journey, it’s a route that has already seen him traverse soaring mountain ranges, scorching, empty desert and a steady stream of small towns straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

“I’m a little over three weeks in, and so far so good. I can’t complain,” French said while taking a rest day in Pueblo, Colorado last week. “It’s kind of like the further I go, the better I feel, so I guess I’m getting used to it.”

The Farmville resident rises each morning at 6, cooking oatmeal for breakfast on a small backpacking stove before hitting the road around 7. For the next 12 hours, he’ll ride about 75-80 miles, taking breaks at 10-15 mile intervals to down tortillas spread with peanut butter. As night falls, he’ll look for a place to set up the small tent he carries in one of four panniers strapped to the front and back of his bike. Dinner is hot ramen noodles, and French will head to sleep around 10:30 p.m. After a full day of cycling, sleep comes nearly instantly.

A biology major, French first got the idea for his trip as a child, at an age much too young to embark across the continent by himself. In January, he decided to undertake the trip over the summer, reasoning that, in the future, he might have difficulty finding a stretch where he would have two months free.

His first obstacle was his parents.

“I told them and they weren’t crazy about the idea,” French said. “It wasn’t until a couple weeks before I was going to leave that they started jumping on the support train. I think they realized that I was definitely going to do this.”

With them on board, French’s next step was to upgrade to a new bike and start planning his route. After some research, he found the Adventure Cycling Association, a network of touring cyclists that has mapped routes all over the country.

Combining several different ACA trails, French settled on a path that would take him from San Francisco east across the mountains of eastern California, before descending into the sparse deserts of Nevada and Utah. The route climbs back into the Colorado Rockies, before switching to a different trail at Pueblo. From there, he’ll traverse the flat prairie of Kansas and Missouri, then enter foothills of Kentucky. French will cross into his home state deep in southwestern Virginia, dipping down to the North Carolina border before heading north past Blacksburg, then east to Richmond. Finally, he’ll parallel route 64 past Williamsburg, ending with a trip down the Colonial Parkway into Yorktown. It’s a demanding trip, crossing over 3,600 miles of road.

To prepare, French embarked on a series of 20-mile rides in Virginia to acclimate himself to his bike. An avid gym-rat, he reasoned that he would build up to full distances slowly, starting out with 30- or 50-mile days, before ramping up to 80-mile days after a week of cycling.

With his family seeing him off, French flew out of Richmond International Airport on May 19, touching down in San Francisco six hours later. On May 21, he made his way to the Golden Gate Bridge, and set off for Yorktown.

“The first couple days were pretty short, I was mostly getting used to riding all day,” French said. “I felt pretty good after them; I felt tired at the end of the day, but not sore.”

Since then, French has kept a steady routine, rising at 6, hitting the road all day, then repeating the cycle the next. He keeps in touch with friends and family by occasional cell phone conversations in the evenings, while maintaining a blog documenting his trip. A global positioning device links to another website, providing worried parents and friends live updates of his current position.

So far, the trip has been an eye-opener.

“Seeing the landscape change has been really amazing, going from one state to another,” French said. “You also meet a lot of different people along the way, see other bikers. It’s pretty cool just to get so many different perspectives from people.”

Carrying about 30 pounds of gear, including his tent, clothes, food and bike repair equipment, French goes through over 6 liters of water a day, stored in water bottles and a large camelback.

While cycling interminably for two months is difficult, the mental aspect of the journey can often be as tough as the physical.

“Certain days have been really discouraging, days when I’ve had to fight the wind all day and feel like I’m going nowhere,” he said. “But then you’ve just got to get back up and go back out the next day.”

There have been a few mishaps along the way — an ATM shredded French’s debit card in Nevada, and he’s had to fight through flat tires — but more often there have been unexpected surprises. French frequently stops at churches for the night, and members have provided him with motel rooms and meals, refusing to accept any payment.

Mostly, French has worked at building a rhythm, keeping his mind from the rigors of cycling and on the more pleasant aspects of the trip.

“Most of the time I’m just enjoying the landscape,” he said. “And a lot of the time I’m just focused on when my next turn is going to be. I’ve always got songs playing in my head, too.”

After emerging from the Rockies last weekend, French is currently in central Kansas — just over the midway point of his journey — with mostly smooth roads for the next several states. He’ll briefly stop and visit family in Kentucky, before resuming his journey.

Initially, French planned eight weeks for his trip, an estimate he’s since revised to about nine. That puts him on pace to roll into Yorktown somewhere around the third week in July.

He says the trip has been an incredible experience, but that he’ll be happy to see his friends and family when it’s over.

“I’ll be glad to be done and glad to be home,” he said.