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Well, howdy there!  We’re the Eddington’s, Janice and Terry, and we’ll be your hosts on this adventure.  We’re gonna ride our bikes across the United State or, at least, that’s the plan.  We’re not the most unlikely choice when picking somebody to ride that far but we’re not the most obvious either.  We started riding about 5 years ago.  I was still working and I was looking for something to do after retirement to stay active.  Honestly, I expected to be riding alone since neither of us had been on a bike in over 40 years and Janice really never liked riding a bike.  She found a place locally we could rent an ebike and, much to my surprise, within a couple of blocks she yells out, “I gotta have one of these things!”  Less than 12 hours later, she’d ordered her bike from Electric Bike Company and my order followed shortly.

While waiting for our bikes to be built and shipped, Janice read about people doing short rides of 10 or 15 miles, then 20 miles, and then they got even longer, finally including all types of people riding across the country! And every night she went to bed dreaming of bicycle rides we could do. 

The ebike allowed us to start with rides of 5-10 miles and we quickly built up the distance.  It wasn’t very long till we looked at each other and said, “How cool would it be to ride to our friends house about 52 miles away?”

Our first bike tour was a 3-day ride in the San Juan Islands and along the Olympic Peninsula Trail. Next we rode the George Mikelson Trail in segments, out and back.  The whole trail is 109 miles end to end.  Now we needed to test out a longer ride so we did the Ohio to Erie Trail from Cincinnati to Cleveland and then we turned around and rode back to Cincinnati.  It took us 12 days to ride 768 miles.  I was not completely on board for a really big ride when Janice first mentioned it but I warmed up to it eventually after these ‘shorter’ tours.  And now, it's time for the big ride across the United States. 

But where does the ‘heroes’ thing in the subtitle come from?  A little over a year ago a friend (yes, the one 52 miles away) asked if Janice wanted to be a beekeeper and she said yes. They started with four hives last year and are up to 12 now. Janice went to the Texas Beekeepers Association convention in Austin, Texas last fall where she first became aware of Hives for Heroes. Hives for Heroes is a non-profit organization that works with our heroes, military and first responders, to provide training, mentoring, and setting them up with their first beehive.  And it just seemed right to make our bike ride about something more important than us, so let's make it about the heroes. We have heroes in our families including Janice’s father and two older brothers, our brother-in-law, Janice’s nephew, along with a sister and brother from another mother.  We're so proud of them all. 

Our goal is to put a new hive for a hero in every state. We will be riding across 14 states, over 3,900 miles, and 80 plus days starting on May 28th.  If you live near an area that we are traveling through we welcome you to ride along with us for a bit. We’re also hoping to meet some beekeepers along the way.  Most importantly, we’re asking you to leave a donation for Hives for Heroes. A donation link will go up in a few days.  Donations will go directly to Hives for Heroes. We suggest a donation of a penny per mile. That's just $39, but all donations large and small are welcome. We have heroes waiting for their hive so let's get them started!

We hope you come along for the ride.  We’ll be documenting our adventure here so come on back!