It’s not quite true that my life as a touring cyclist began when Rachael and I met in 1987 (we’ll celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary next month!); but it’s pretty close. I didn’t really bike much before I was an adult, though I did ride a memorable two day overnight from Seattle to a resort in Northeast Washington to join my family for summer vacation, at the age of 15. I spent the night wild camping, sleeping on a blown over billboard above the Columbia River at Vantage.
Going back though, my first wheeled experience was much earlier: on Christmas Day just weeks after my third birthday:
My first wheels, on Christmas Day 1949 when I’ve just turned three. My first outing goes poorly when I immediately steer my new trike into the Christmas tree.
After that though I didn’t really tour or even bike at all until I got out of the army in 1971. Things picked up a bit then though: a ride from Bellingham to Salem in 1972, then the most ambitious ride of my younger life came in 1974 when I biked solo from Indiana to Montana, carrying nothing but a small rucksack riding on my brand new Motobecane. Getting by on a budget of $8/day, I covered about 1,500 miles in two weeks and kept costs down with two nights crashing in college dormitories and two others in city jails. Not long before I set out west I was honored by a feature article in the local newspaper in West Lafayette, where we lived a few blocks from Purdue University:
May, 1974: West Lafayette, Indiana.
And then two years later my son Shawn and I made the front page of another local paper, the OregonStatesman-Journal. We were even above the fold! Obviously, seeing adults riding on bikes was a pretty unusual op and noteworthy occurrence fifty years ago.
State Street, Salem, sometime in spring, 1975. Some interesting details to note here: toe clips, a rubber band around my right leg to keep clearance from the chain, a handlebar bag, blue jeans, and likely a Pendleton because mom started keeping me supplied in them long ago. No helmet or kid’s bike seat fifty years ago, of course.
After that my bike outings were mostly brief getaways of a week or two - a ride from Salem to The Bay Area, another from Salem too LA, a loop of the North Cascades the month after Mount Saint Helens erupted - I had to cut the tour short because there was still so much ash blowing on the roads east of the mountains.
Then, everything changed. In 1987 I took a solo tour I’d long dreamed of, a ride from Cedar Breaks to Flagstaff by way of Cedar Breaks, Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon.
Overlooking Cedar Breaks, after the ten mile long climb up from Cedar City - at that time, the longest climb of my life.
I returned to the office, and a few days later the new programmer that hired on in my absence sat down at the table for our lunchtime bridge game: Rachael. I bought her her first adult bicycle that spring (an entry level Bridgestone touring bike), we went for a fifty mile ride that weekend, and on the following one we took a three day overnight loop in central Oregon, tenting it in Prineville and Cove Palisades. We got married about a month later, and Team Anderson was born.
To say it’s been an incredible journey is a great understatement. As of this writing (January, 2025) we’ve taken at least 60 significant (10 days or longer) bike tours together, dipping our wheels in 24 countries and 26 states. Nearly every year for 20 years we hounded our time off and took a longer tour of 4-6 weeks, mostly in Europe but also Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and America. For the last five years of our working years we both went halftime and started doubling up, fitting a second trip into most years.
Even that wasn’t enough though. For the last seven years we’ve shaken up the model significantly. After we both fully retired we sold our home, jettisoned all of our possessions except the car and whatever we couldn’t cram into a 5x10 storage unit, and went vagabond. We’re sort of in a rut now, with most years broken into three month blocks - three in Europe, three in America, repeat. Not a bad life, and one we intend to continue as long as it keeps working for us.
Some highlights of the journey:
June, 1989: Lake Champlain, Vermont. For our first anniversary we took a six week tour beginning and ending in Montreal, picking up parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Hampshire, New Brunswick and Quebec on the way. On Lake Champlain, working on the blog the old fashioned way.June 22, 1989, at the summit of Going to the Sun Road. We crossed on the first weekend the pass was open, and snow banks at the summit were roughly forty feet high (I’ve got the photograph as proof). We started biking at Saint Mary’s campground before daylight, so stuffed from an Indian fry bread and huckleberry cobbler blowout the night before that we could barely waddle.September 9th, 2001: in Radicofani, Tuscany, showing off my tshirt souvenir from my solo ride through the Tetons and Yellowstone six years earlier. Two nights later we’d be in Orvieto, puzzling over why a tour group of cyclists seemed so agitated across the restaurant from us. It wouldn’t be until we saw the horrendous headlines the next morning that we understood why.On the calanques south of Porto, Corsica, June 2003. On a month-long trip that ended in Provence during a historic heat wave.South of Cordoba on our first tour of Andalusia, September 2004. We’re too hot but still happy here, because we haven’t ruined the tour by losing our passports yet.On the Isle of Skye, May 2005. On a loop that began and ended in Edinborough and dropped into Northern England along the way. It looks beautiful here, but we saw rain almost daily for the preceding two weeks.October, 2007: In Kusatsu, Japan, on a five week ride from Narita (the Tokyo airport) to Fukuoaka.May, 2009: Climbing from the Gulf of Corinth into Northern Arcadia on our first tour of Greece.May, 2012: in Pirgi on the island of Chios, on our second tour of Greece. Rachael’s not checking her phone for messages here - she’s looking to see if the photos of the amazing painted walls came out.May, 2013: In the fog again on Skyline Drive, on our ride from Blowing Rock to NYC.October, 2013: Approaching Cazala de la Frontera in Andalucia, on our ride from Faro to Granada.November, 2013: on the Rock of Gibraltar. Bike Fridays go anywhere!May, 2014: on the Hourquette d’Ancizan in the French Pyrenees, on our ride from Girona to Bilbao.November, 2014: in Lukang, Taiwan. I’ve just been drafted to briefly pose as a palanquin bearer for the Matsu festival that was about to begin.May, 2015: descending the Col de Galibier, in our tour of the French Alps - probably the pass I’d most like to revisit some day.November, 2016. The week after we watched the election returns in stunned silence in Silver City, we found solace on our first climb of Mount Lemmon.May, 2017: Brian’s Head, Utah at the start of our ride across Utah from Saint George to Grand Junction, Colorado.September 2017: in the Spanish Pyrenees, on our ride from Bilbao to Sete.September, 2018: on the Island of Pag, Croatia. This was near the start of our four month tour from Dubrovnik to Barcelona, our first long tour after selling our home.April, 2020: Staring at the Strawberry Mountains, in one of our months hiding out in small, isolated places during the Covid Year.September, 2020: Hiking on the Island of Rab, Croatia - the only European country at the time that permitted entry by Americans.January, 2022: on Bitterwater Road east of Paso Robles, on our way north from our winter stay in Tucson.July, 2022: in the North York Moors, at about the midpoint of our nine month tour from Barcelona to Nice, by way of England. Likely the longest single tour we’ll ever do.Well, that was a lie. Here we are two years later on a slightly longer 9 month tour. It’s July 8th, and we’re celebrating our 36th anniversary back on Blakey Ridge in the North York Moors again.
