March 11, 2010: The Advance Crew

It’s a big deal to organize a bike trip like this: 35 cyclists riding an average of 90 miles a day for two weeks straight, forging a new route for the Heartcycle archives and one that is point to point rather than a big loop. The riders can’t buy roundtrip tickets or leave cars and bike boxes at a hotel that they’ll return to at the end of the trip. The leaders can’t depend on archives of known routes or local knowledge of shoulder widths, traffic, and hotels to house everyone.

With these factors, the vans have to either transport 35 bike boxes or 35 bikes to and from the beginning and end points of the ride, and our tour leaders Jerry Bakke and Steve Parker (accompanied by wives and sometimes one of our sag queens Carol Nies) have had to scout a total of about 3,000 miles of roads to maximize rider safety and locate hotels (often in some pretty small towns) that can house all of us. 

Plus, there’s the two weeks of shoveling food into the pie-holes of the roughly 5,500 pounds of humans spinning their legs 22,000 revolutions around the axles of their pedals day after day. 

So the way this has worked is: all the Colorado riders deliver their bikes to Jerry’s garage (which, by the way, means we all have his security code now and might be available to sell it to the highest bidder), then Jerry, Steve, Bill Stone, and this year Chris Matthews carefully squish about 30 expensive bicycles into a van without damaging any of them, along with all the coolers, spare tires, some tools, plastic drawers, and normal Heartcycle stuff, and drive for three days to the starting point, whereupon they meet up with our sag queens Carol and Kathleen who spend the next 24 hours at the nearest Costco buying loads of fruit, soda, juices, energy bars and piles of food for lunches and snacks.

Somehow, amazingly, 2,000 miles into this ride across the country, Jerry and Steve, assisted by Bill and Chris, and Carol and Kathleen, have organized, prepared, and arrived once again in the small far eastern Texas town of Kountze once again ready to meet the riders for our final leg.  

Jerry Bakke, Chris Matthews, Steve Parker, and Bill Stone at the Super 8 Hotel in Kountze, Texas.

Heartcycle vans lined up and ready.