On May 26, Will McMahan left his Everett home to take a bike ride — across the United States.
He’s not riding with a group, nor is he pedaling for a cause. Retired from the real estate business, the 59-year-old set out on his recumbent bicycle with a simple aim.
McMahan’s plan was to cover almost 4,000 miles in 87 days, with 14 days for rest, arriving in North Carolina for his mother’s birthday party. Eva Mae McMahan, who recently moved to a nursing home, will turn 88 on Aug. 18. Her party is Aug. 16. McMahan’s brother, Jim McMahan, lives in Raleigh, N.C.
“I thought initially it was just going to be a trip, going from Everett to Raleigh,” McMahan said Tuesday from Jefferson City, Mo. “Really though, it’s a whole journey of people and events and experiences, all these different things.”
Rain-soaked after a long ride — he travels about 70 miles a day, sometimes more — McMahan talked about the trip’s highlights and low points, and how an effort to become more fit grew into a goal of riding cross-country before he turns 60 on Sept. 9.
In his wonderfully readable blog, at www.willsbicycle adventure.com, McMahan has written about the sting of marble-sized hailstones, about a tense encounter with a Yellowstone National Park buffalo herd, and about meeting kids in a town that time forgot.
The blog entry for June 10, a day of wicked weather in southwest Montana, is titled: “An imperfect day. What the hail!”
From Missouri on Tuesday, he recounted that perilous leg of the long ride. “I was in Montana, about to climb a mountain pass, and two miles down the road I was caught in a hail storm. I’m tough, I can handle hail,” McMahan said. “Then it got to be the size of marbles. This really hurt.”
He hid behind a tree and waited a bit. A motorcyclist told him the pass hadn’t been too bad. “It was three hours to the top. I didn’t mind the snow, I made it fine,” he said. “I had some lunch, looked back behind me, and the whole horizon was solid white. It was a stinking blizzard.”
That ride would have been rough in a car. Imagine it on a bicycle, and multiply that by more than two months of daily riding. Tough, indeed.
McMahan came by his penchant for physical challenges in an unlikely way. “I had a bogus cholesterol report. I needed to start exercising,” he said. That report of dangerously high cholesterol was incorrect, but by the time he learned that he had committed himself to a fitness regime. “I just started bicycling,” he said.
That was about five years ago. He has since shed about 25 pounds, taken up Pilates and lap swimming, and ridden in the Seattle-to-Portland Bicycle Classic.
His wife Karen isn’t a cyclist, but drove near Will over the North Cascades Highway and across most of Washington. Karen McMahan said her husband was lured by wanderlust as a young man. “When I met him, he had hiked to Alaska, and had gone across the United States a couple times and hitchhiked back out here,” she said. Will McMahan grew up in Indiana and attended Indiana University.
He spent months planning his itinerary. Last week, he avoided car traffic as he rode along the 225-mile Katy Trail, a Missouri bike corridor that follows an old railroad bed. A year ago, McMahan trained by riding a conventional bike over Washington Pass on Highway 20. When he saw photos of himself, riding along and looking down, he realized he was missing the scenery.
“I didn’t want to travel the United States and not see it, so I changed bikes. And I don’t have any of the soreness,” he said. The recumbent bike works his legs, but gives his hands and shoulders a break. His bike is made by Volae, a Wisconsin company with recumbent bike models selling for $1,600 to almost $3,000.
At the end of the trip, he’ll ship the bike back to Everett. Karen McMahan will fly to North Carolina for the restful part of his journey.
More than scenery, more than the hardest hills, he’ll remember people.
Last Sunday, he stopped at a church in Harrisonville, Mo., and met a pastor born in Marysville. In one small town, little bike-riding boys wanted to tag along with him to get something to drink, but first had to go home to supper.
For sheer difficulty, nothing has topped Trail Ridge Road in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, elevation 12,183 feet. “I was fine until a hairpin curve. I had the mountain on my right, but I rounded that curve and was on the edge. I was scared and had a hard time breathing,” he said.
With all its rigors, his trip has been remarkably trouble-free. The only flat tire he’s had was during training last year, and it happened in downtown Everett.
“I’m not a bit nervous,” Karen McMahan said. “Knowing him, I just know he’s safe. He’s very spiritual. I know he’s being protected.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Follow bike trip via Web site
Everett’s Will McMahan is spending his summer on a recumbent bicycle ride to North Carolina. Read about his trip and check his progress at: www.willsbicycleadventure.com.
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