The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal this morning has a article on local bicyclist Steve Farrah, who rode from the Pacific to the Atlantic with friend Joe Peko of Lewisberry.
After dipping their tires in the Pacific in June, they crossed the desert, the Continental Divide, the Great Plains and the Appalachian Mountains as they journeyed east. They survived New Jersey traffic to dip their wheels in the Atlantic on Aug.2.
The two, who chronicled their adventure on 2geezers2oceans.blogspot.com.
“All you need is time and ambition to take a bike trip cross-country. If your heart is in it, you can do it. Most anybody can,” he said.
The full articles is here ….
After Steve Farrah finished the five-mile Red Rose Run in May,he hung up his running shoes for bicycle shoes.
The 62-year-old Lancaster Township resident and his friend 61-year-old Joe Peko of Lewisberry dipped their back wheels in the Pacific Ocean at Oceanside, Calif., on June 5 and began a coast-to-coastbike adventure.
“Joe’s wanted to do this for years and years,” Farrah said. “I was just along for the ride.”
Last year, the two rode in the Bicycle Tour of Colorado and had such a great time they thought they would try a longer course. Farrah said he kept an article he had read about a year ago about Thomas Talbot and his four daughters who bicycled across the country.
When he and Peko decided to make their own cross-country trek, Farrah contacted Talbot. “He was very enthusiastic. He gave me many pointers and said I’ve just got to do this,” Farrah said. Farrah did a lot of searching on the Internet and read up on what they would need for the trip.
He had ridden bikes for years but found that to complete a ride of this magnitude, he would need a different type of bike. He bought a Surly Longhaul Trucker — a steel bike that wouldn’t break and has a smoother, more comfortable ride. Farrah said about a quarter of the bikes they encountered on the trip were the same brand and model as his.
Farrah plotted their course on nine maps from Adventure Cycling.
“The maps started at San Diego, but we changed course to start at Oceanside because there was a (bicycle) race, Race Across America, starting in Oceanside,” he said.
Farrah and Peko began their journey a few days before the race began.
Although there were several racers from Lancaster, Farrah and Peko never met up with them as they followed the RAAM course to Durango, Colo. They did, however, ride with some of the racers along the course.
As they traveled, Farrah wrote a blog at 2geezers2oceans.blogspot.com, which many people from Lancaster Roadrunners Club, of which Farrah is president, read and gave them encouragement, he said.
They rode through the Mojave Desert in 110-degree heat. In the Rocky Mountains, they saw snow. When they hit Durango, they joined 2,000 other riders for their second ride in the Bicycle Tour of Colorado.
“It’s a one-week tour of 400 miles over the Continental Divide,” he said. “The terrain in Colorado is most breathtaking and exciting.”
Most of the trip was dry. “We only had one day of rain, but we woke up to frost on the tent a couple of times,” he said. “Kansas was surprisingly nice. We were expecting it to be very windy.”
Once finished with this tour, Farrah and Peko picked up the Adventure Cycling Tour into Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia. From there, they rode up the Skyline Drive through West Virginia, Maryland to York, Lancaster and Philadelphia and finally dipped their front wheels into the Atlantic Ocean at Atlantic City, N.J., on Aug. 2.
Farrah and Peko averaged about 90 miles a day and spent from four to 11 hours on the road.
“The most challenging (part of the trip) was Camden, N.J., with its disaster of a culture — the reality of the East Coast with a lot of people, busy traffic. There’s nothing like that out West (where we rode) where it’s peaceful and serene,” he said.
Aside from Camden, the most challenging part of the trip was the Missouri hills. “They are short, steep and relentless,” Farrah said.
Farrah said the people they met on the trip were the best part. They were always friendly, asking about their bikes or where they were going. Several times a day, they would tell their stories to people who were curious.
They met newlyweds of three weeks, bikers from Berks County and they even ran into TV’s The Biggest Loser, Jerry Lisenby, who was riding his bike across the country in the other direction.
“We had breakfast with him and his wife in Kansas. He was a very dynamic person,” Farrah said.
Farrah said of the trip that “all you need is time and ambition to take a bike trip cross-country. If your heart is in it, you can do it. Most anybody can.”
