Bike Trip

1975

I made tuition money for graduate school by spending summers unloading tuna boats in Astoria, Oregon. I worked side by side with my two friends and we would often talk about a cross country bicycle trip. We contacted “Bikecentennial 76”, in Missoula, Montana, and they were willing to give us their cross country bike maps in exchange for riding their route and phoning back information along the way, so, we decided to do the trip.

On June 12, 1975 we started from Astoria and completed the trip in Williamsburg, Virginia 4,250 miles later. We were on the road for 87 days, managing around 60 miles per day in the western states but closer to 40 in the eastern states.

My bike was a 10 speed Motobecane with SunTour components, Weinmann rims, and a “cherry” leather seat. The camera was a circa 1960 Widelux 35mm. It had a wind-up spring-loaded mechanism that rotated the lens across the film plane at various shutter speeds. The lens was a fix focus with a slit behind it and a full range of aperture settings with an angle of 140 degrees. I used the camera for the sweeping panoramas I encountered and as a paintbrush to convey the feeling of motion that is always a part of riding a bike.—JPD