Cycling America Virtually: NY, PA, OH, IL, MN

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[Updated 03/16/2023] Three months into the pandemic of 2020, I realized that my bike rides since Y2K added up to 25,000 miles, the circumference of the earth (see Around the World on a Bike).

So I set a new goal: to ride the distances between places I've known, lived, or loved. Starting virtually at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in New York City, I transferred miles from my local rides to a map of the US, making selfies at each meaningful stop all the way to LA. I'd left out a lot of places important to me, so I started a new tour, from LA to San Francisco, then east to my home in Georgia.  

Having just retired, I continued my rides.  I went up the coast to Maine, I crossed into Canada and the wider world. As of March 16, 2023, I'm close to 14,000 miles into my second virtual bike trip around the world, more than halfway. In 2022 alone, riding on trails around Atlanta, I cycled 4868 miles, average speed 15.4. Use the arrows at the top and bottom of each page to track the entire tour with pictures at each stop and appreciations for what each place has meant in my life's journey. What follows are pieces I wrote when my tour began in 2020:

I first visited New York City in 1974 with Atlanta's Northside School of Performing Arts to see lots of Broadway shows, but not A Little Night Music, alas. Thanks to Northside's pianist Paul Ford, that show by Stephen Sondheim would shape the rest of my life.  No kidding --  see my Sondheim page. My last trip there, made with my friend Suzanne, was to see Night Music starring Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2010. In this photo, I'm at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. My helmet is off to him!

To Pittsburgh PA was another 320 miles, site of my earliest memories. Dad worked in Pittsburgh's triangle. I remember riding the red funicular car down the steep hill towards the three-river area, ca. 1964. I was among the first little kids ever to enjoy Mister Rogers when he was still a local TV personality.  I write about it at "Mister Rogers was my Neighbor." (06/2018)

To Cincinnati OH was another 258, a ride I finished on July 4th. Every summer of my childhood, I visited my grandmother there. Aunt Blanche and Uncle Jack welcomed me and my siblings to their home, and took us to see fireworks. The photo is taken in Covington, the Kentucky side of the Ohio river, where my grandparents Dewey and Harriet Smoot lived as newlyweds 100 years ago.  The round building is the hotel that my uncle Jack built, with the revolving restaurant.  (Read more about Aunt Blanche (09/2009) and more about childhood memories of how wonderful Cincy was for me (09/2015 and 03/2023).

To Chicago is another 253 miles.  I lived in Chicago from 1966-1969, where I learned to read, write, and ride a bike.  My friends Gordon Walton, Neal Brailov, and I would ride a couple miles to Tracy Herzog's neighborhood to coast down the only hill in town.  A Google search for Neal shows him to be director at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I made a pilgrimage in 2004 to see the iconic painting by French artist Georges Seurat, central character in Sondheim's musical Sunday in the Park with George. (Read how that painting is so important to my life: "Sunday, Art, and Forever" 06/2015). I was in town to see Sondheim's Bounce (later revised to Road Show),   It's fitting that I complete this leg of my journey on July 14, Bastille Day, midpoint for the Tour de France bike race in years without a pandemic.  Here's a picture of me re-visiting Seurat's painting of Le Grand Jatte, an islet park in Paris.

On my 61st birthday, July 15th, I rode 61 miles on the Silver Comet Trail outside of Atlanta, a distance that would take me to Wonder Lake, IL, en route to Minneapolis, my next virtual destination. Here's Wonder Lake, with me at the end of 61 miles.  I took a nap afterwards.

On July 25, my bike and I completed 355 more miles, enough to take me to Chanhassen, a suburb of Minneapolis, where I stayed two weeks in 2005 monitoring my Aunt Harriet's health and enjoying her company.  (My article about Aunt Harriet's 4th of July celebration with me is one of my favorites 07/04/2018) Taking me on a bike tour of Chanhassen, my cousin Ken Bloch showed me Paisley Park, where Prince then lived.   For this virtual tour, I wore a shirt that alludes to Prince's music for Tim Burton's original BATMAN movie, and I pause with my Gatorade to toast this man whose music I sometimes play when I ride.  He never fails to get me moving and smiling: "Ain't gonna let the elevator bring us down / Oh, no, let's go / Crazy!"

|| The Tour continues →