Virtual bike touring from a self-professed geek

As much as I enjoy biking to work every day, it can still feel like a grind sometimes. After all, I’m biking to work day after day, not the beach.

One year, to shake things up for myself, I called the good people at the Automobile Association of America (AAA) and asked for one of their “Triptiks,” with a route entirely mapped out from my home in Beverly, Mass., to San Francisco, Calif.

My daily commute to work, back then, was a 12-mile round trip, so every day, I used the Triptik to see where I’d be if I was riding my bike across the country, a dozen miles every weekday.

Not only did I want to see how long it would take me (I think I reached the Golden Gate Bridge in about 10 months), every time I reached a new city or landmark on my way west, I did a little online research to “Websitesee” and learn a little bit about where I was.

Pretty dorky, huh? OK, guilty as charged.

But I had a lot more fun taking an imaginary bike ride across the country over the span of almost a year, than biking to my cubicle farm one town over, day after day. Maybe next year I’ll head for Alaska!

--Wordsmith 1953