On Another Cross-Country Bicycling Trip, We Learned a Lot About Retirement

Karen

We had doubts as we pedaled off from the Pacific Coast cliffs and onto our summer bicycle route across America.

Could we make it beyond even the first mountain pass at our age? If we did, would the 4,800-mile trip to the Atlantic on our tandem bike be worth the precious four months of our lives?

These are variations of queries we’re increasingly posing in retirement. As our time ticks away, we know we will eventually lose the ability to do things we love. Should we start dialing back now? And if we want to invest our time where the payback is greatest, is this how?

---

---

“We did it, Steve!” I said, answering the first question at Washington Pass in the Cascades.

We answered the second question throughout the summer. One hallmark of aging gracefully—and what makes retirement activities worthwhile—is continuous learning, and learning over those four months came strapped to our bike. Among our lessons:

• Don’t act your age. We had biked across the country before, but at a combined age of 135 years when we began our ride, we could have decided we were too old for this.

We still had it in us, we found, thanks to our good health and routines we have set over the past few years. Facing our first major test, climbing 5,800 feet in one day over Washington Pass, we deployed our protocol of starting predawn, riding at a hiking pace, stopping every 15 minutes, and not thinking much about how far we had to go yet. We made it to the top, whizzed down the other side, passed the test—and passed it again and again, all the way across the country, through the agonizingly steep hills of western Maine.

Our mantra now: Keep pressing our limits until we meet our limits. There’s something about achieving a stretch goal that is even more satisfying at our age than when we were younger. It’s a huge “Yes!”

• Slow and steady wins. Some younger and speedier cross-country cyclists occasionally passed us midday, logging a hundred or more miles for the day. A few days later, they would pass us again after taking breaks we didn’t need. At least one team that kept leapfrogging us didn’t reach their Atlantic goal. We have the luxury of spending more time—it’s the currency we have most of right now—to reach our goals on the road or back home.

• Chatting is time well spent. On past bike tours, we often cut discussions short with strangers who approached us at rest stops. We needed to cover miles ahead to get to our campgrounds, we figured.

This time, we deliberately tarried for the scores of curious locals and drivers who wanted to know about our bike, our route, our motivation and “Are you still talking?” A young couple outside Twisp, Wash., made a U-turn in their camper van to pepper us with questions about how to do bike touring. In the Ione, Wash., farmers market, the local Sentinel editor called us over and videoed a description of our bike load. We are constantly mindful that we are cycling ambassadors.

• Americans are generous. We knew this from past cross-country trips, but we felt surprised all over again—perhaps because of the callousness we perceive among people we see in the news.

We camped in parks in small towns across the country that offered free tent camping to long-distance cyclists, often with showers at the town pool. Friendly locals welcomed us, including the retiree in Hebron, N.D., who brought the gift of one of the town’s famous bricks; we accepted it and mailed it home.

We found special welcome in towns like Gackle, N.D., where we stayed in the biker hostel and spent a delightful Fourth of July, and Monroeville, Ind., which put us up in its community center during its annual Thresher Days.

Welcome extended beyond the northern border. A fellow walked into a bike shop in Ontario, carrying a fresh loaf of sourdough bread. He saw us and offered it. A shop employee ran home and returned with a block of fresh butter. “Here, it’s always better with butter.”

Now at home, we’re seeking ways to pay the generosity forward to other travelers.

• Sleep is fuel. We learned that we needed nine hours of sleep after a day’s pedaling. We started out aiming for eight, but that left us still exhausted. So it was to bed well before sundown and up at 4 a.m.—even earlier when daytime temperatures rose into the 90s. We have brought this lesson back home, where a full nine hours helps soothe the aches and anxieties of age.

Steve

We have now ridden our tandem bike across America 3½ times, all in the past four years. Each time, we ended the trip amazed that our country rewarded us along the road with far more than we’d hoped.

This is what we want in retirement, to launch on adventures that we expect will reward us with the unexpected—then come home to a fresh look at the familiar.

One takeaway: We made the right decision five years ago, before I retired, when we decided that we needed to find some big thing we could do together after we left work—something that would keep us fit and happy and learning. So we launched our first cycling cross-country in 2021, and we found that thing.

Along the road this summer, we met other retirees who had found very different big things to pursue—a couple in Idaho whose highlight is skiing all winter, one in Montana who had left California to run a coffee shop, another in Maine who quit work to buy a bicycle shop, a woman who volunteers summers at North Cascades National Park, friends who retreat to an island home for the summer and engage in town duties.

Most of them appeared pretty busy, yet all swore they really were retired. “We retired from the stress,” explained one of the coffee-shop retirees. Another common observation: These retirees are still surprised at how much they are learning.

Here are some additional lessons of my own this summer:

• There are vast areas of America we know little about, despite our extensive travels. We had no idea how stunning North Dakota would be, with its quiet country roads winding among hills and badlands and thousands of lakes in its “pothole” region—not to mention its welcoming small towns and charming historic Fargo.

• Drivers across the Northern states are mostly considerate. We’ve written of our fear of bad drivers, and we launched our trip with that dread. It was unfounded. In 15 states and two provinces, we had no close calls, no one pulling behind and honking angrily, no one passing dangerously close and yelling “Get off the road,” not a single middle finger.

• We still need to slow down even more, a struggle for us in most aspects of retirement. We vowed upfront to average less than 50 miles a day, down from our usual 60. We did pretty well until the Midwest, when we began clocking 70-mile and 80-mile days that brought our average to 57 miles a day. Next time, we’ll really slow down.

• When I’m on the road, I leave many anxieties behind. Life’s worries seem distant when we’re pedaling for hours, watching for traffic, admiring scenery, figuring out where to camp next. Angst about money, home maintenance and the meaning of life tend to recede. We can ignore the news for days at a stretch, something I feel entitled to do after four decades in the news business.

Another surprise is that we pulled it off in good health, perhaps better than when we left. I got home to a reminder that I was past due for my annual physical checkup. I worried, as I do every year, that my doctor would find something new and troubling—excessive blood sugar, knee problems, melanoma, high blood pressure.

There was nothing of concern, my 30-something doctor concluded, adding, “I wish I had your heart rate.”

The Yoders live in San Francisco. They can be reached at reports@wsj.com.