Pat Clements is finding his own bicycle route across country.
Not content to stick to the main bicycling byways, Clements is seeking out the routes that tell the story of the westward expansion of the nation.
Clements, a teacher at Peddie School, a private boarding school in Hightstown, NJ, is currently on leave to take the bicycle tour. He says he wants to “travel the backroads of America at a pace that allows observation, reflection and conversation,” according to his website.
A bicycle tour is the best way to do that.
So far, he's some 750 miles into his journey. He rode from Hightstown to Philadelphia on the colonial-era Old York Road, then picked up the Old Wagon Road that took settlers into Virginia and beyond. Now he's on the Old Wilderness Road, which Daniel Boone and his like followed over the Appalachians in the rich Kentucky farmland.
Once he gets to Nashville, he picks up roads that show a darker side of the American experience. He'll bicycle on the Trail of Tears, named for the route taken by uprooted Cherokees into Oklahoma. Then he picks up Route 66, the subject of a happy melody “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” but also the sad road for John Steinbeck's fictional Joad Family.
The Middlesboro (KY) Daily News talked with Clements recently. You have to like this description of his perseverance when he reached the Cumberland Gap in eastern Kentucky:
… when he got to the Cumberland Gap tunnel, they would not let him ride through the tunnel but he explained to the park ranger that it was important to him to move himself physically over the gap. The ranger took his bicycle to the visitor's center while he walked up to the pinnacle overlook.
“When I got to the top, I was just thinking of what a personal accomplishment it was but when I was walking down the other side, I thought of all the miles I still had ahead of me,” he said. “But that was the thing for the pioneers, they still had miles to go and metaphorically, that's everyone's life. I felt good but I have to keep going – I have more things to do.”
Fortunately for the rest of us, Clements is keeping a blog “Trailing Dreams of America” that he files occasionally from the road. He tells about the usual problems with weather, hunger and broken stuff, but he also recounts some conversations he has with people on the road.
Check on other bicycle tourists who have been featured in Biking Bis at the On the Road Bicycle Tour Blog page.
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