News

Local rider completes coast-to-coast bicycle journey

Kim Curran

By Bill Moss, Published: May 5, 2017

When she turned 50 in December, Kim Curran decided the gift she’d give herself would be a long bicycle ride.

She knew of the group Woman Tours, which specializes in supported rides catered to women.
“I had done a couple of tours with them in 2000 and 2001. Then I moved from Florida to North Carolina.” She got away from long-distance riding for a while. “But it was always on my bucket list. I wanted to do this cross-country thing.”
She signed up but was too late to make the list immediately.
“I was No. 7 on the waiting list and in all honesty I didn’t think it was going to happen,” she said. She got a call two months before the start of the ride and accepted. On March 10, the riders dipped their back tires into the Pacific Ocean and started pedaling east.
“WOW! It’s hard to believe this adventure is finally getting started,” she wrote on her blog, livinthebus.com, which contains a well-written account of her adventures and dozens of photos. “I am overwhelmed with emotion! On one hand I am so excited to have this opportunity and on the other, I am nervous, hoping that the 1,500 miles I have ridden over the last couple of months was enough to prepare me for the next 58 days and 3,114 miles from San Diego, CA to St. Augustine, FL.”
Turned out her training was enough.
She’s ridden Stella, her 16-year-old Cannondale P-2000, through cold, heat, rain and hail, on greenways and (mostly) highways, sometimes with shoulders, sometimes not.
There are 26 women in all. Four women volunteered to drive the SAG wagon (support and gear), getting off their bikes once every four days. A van and a trailer carry the riders’ gear and sets up nightly as the chuck wagon. The cook prepares meals on the back of the trailer on a two-burner camp stove and three Dutch ovens. They’ve stayed in hotels, motels and lodges, bunking two to a room and rotating roommates every night.
Curran has had four flat tires. The first one was when she woke up to a flat tire in her hotel room. “That’s the best scenario for a flat tire,” she said. “My other three have been on the road. If you have one you just change it on the side of the road and you continue on.”
She had only one fall, when she failed to see a rain grate on a bridge over the Pascagoula River in Mississippi.
“We’re all spread out throughout the day but everybody has kind of a group they stay at least within visual range of,” she said.

Brutal heat
What about heat?
“I tell you what, to start out I think we were all just so surprised,” she said. “The first part of the ride is all climbing. You’re climbing, climbing, climbing and the heat was just brutal. We had a couple of days when it was 102 degrees, so it was a shock to all of us. Considering how long we’ve been on the road we haven’t had much bad weather.”
On March 26, Curran posted an account of the ride from Mesa, Ariz., to Silver City, N.M.
“We navigated our way out of Mesa and began a 20-mile ascent on Highway 87,” she said. “We then began a 7-mile downhill on a 7% grade leading us closer to Tonto Basin, AZ. The debris on the shoulder made it difficult and sometimes dangerous to navigate the descent. We are making our way to another border crossing on some of the worst roads yet! I am becoming one with the white line and the rumble strip!”
Approaching Silver City, the riders encountered several unexpected challenges.
“Finally some cooler weather! The excitement about the cooler temperatures and a short 46-mile day leading us to a rest day in Silver City, NM soon faded on a 12 mile false flat,” she wrote. “You know that sensation when you’re on a stretch of road cycling, walking or running and it looks flat but you’re huffing and puffing to maintain momentum? This is a false flat. A long 2% grade. False flats are deceptive and can be soul crushing; unlike discernible hills, there is no victorious summit creating a sense of accomplishment. Even our strongest riders were struggling. With the false flat behind us we soon began a discernible climb and began to see some discernible dark cloud cover as well as some discernible winds. No worries though, the rain forecast was only 20 percent and we hadn’t seen a drop of rain so far. Before we had a chance to take cover (under a small shrub) we were being pounded by pea size hail. The temperature seemed to drop dramatically and the pounding hail soon turned into a blinding downpour. We were freezing! It wasn’t too long before we were swooped up by a full SAG and headed to a warm shower and dry clothes. The weather forced all but four in our group to end the day within 2 miles of the Continental Divide. For me it was a lesson learned. When there is the slightest chance of rain, carry your rain gear.”

A diverse group of riders
Eastward on, Curran and her friends pushed.
“Seeing my family” is what she most looks forward to when she hops off the bike for the last time. “This has been just a remarkable journey. Around a couple of weeks ago I really stated to get homesick and now I’m at that point in the ride where I very excited about the end.”
At a low point, the group checked into a hotel. “I had gotten probably 15 or 20 letters,” she said. Her partner and friends and a bunch of fellow volunteers at Blue Ridge Humane Society had all written letters and cards encouraging her. “They could not have come at a better time,” she said.
“I think it’s been an interesting dynamic when you get this many middle-aged women that have never met each other,” she said. “They’re from all over the U.S., there are two from New Zealand, one from Canada and there’s a lady from Switzerland. They’re from all different backgrounds, for the most part they are retired. One’s a commercial fisherman. As a whole for us to have been together for two months it’s amazing how intimate you get with what two months ago were complete strangers.”
On Thursday morning, the riders will get up early and head east on the last leg.
“We have a 42-mile day that day, but the last six of it will be with a police escort,” she said. They’re scheduled to reach the beach at 11 a.m.
“We dipped our rear tires into the Pacific and we’ll dip our front tires into the Atlantic,” she said. The riders will then celebrate over a lunch with friends and family.
On Sunday, with the hills and struggles and 51 bicycling days behind her, the achievement of her bucket list goal was starting to sink in.
“The Deep South. It’s hot! It’s humid! Even worse, it’s hot and humid! But we seem to be dodging the storms,” she wrote. “It’s hard to believe this journey will soon be over. It’s even harder to believe that I have pedaled over 2,500 miles so far! I am feeling a real sense of accomplishment and exhaustion.”