Steve Bales understands this well as a friend, who was supposed to make a cross-country cycling trip with him at the beginning of October was forced to back out for health reasons.
But Bales remains undeterred.
The Aledo man and avid cyclist began completing an annual cross-country trip after retiring as a purchasing agent back in 2020, but said his interest in cross-country cycling actually started before then.
“I had done a few of them before I retired, but being that they take months, finding the time to do it is kind of difficult,” Bales said. “But I’ve been a cyclist since I was a teenager, and it has always been a fun thing to do. I had the opportunity to do it years and years ago, and I knew immediately that I would like to do more of it.”
Bales’ passion for cycling started back in 1976 at the age of 21, when an organization called Bike Centennial came to Fort Worth.
“They gave a presentation of a ride that they were dreaming up,” Bales said. “They were a new organization and hadn’t really done anything at all yet. But they decided they wanted to make a route across the United States for cyclists.”
Bales, 70, said when he heard the organization’s presentation he was fascinated.
Every day, a couple of groups of 12 or so riders would leave from both coasts and follow a certain route and as the groups reached Kansas they would start to meet up with each other.
Bales and his wife, Peggy Badlato, did one trip together on a tandem bike by themselves when they were in their 30’s, and Bales said he wanted it to eventually become an annual tradition.
“I just knew that when I retired, if I was capable, I was going to do it until I wasn’t capable any more,” Bales said.
The Aledo man has decided to complete a half-country ride this year starting down Fredericksburg in the Hill Country and riding to Florida early next month.
The routes are already mapped out for him, and the trip will take approximately six weeks.
Bales first ride as a retiree happened just as the COVID-19 pandemic started to ramp up, and the Parker County man said his first trip was a bit surreal at times.
“I kept my nose in the news and tried to figure everything out about COVID that I could, just like everybody else,” Bales said. “I made the decision at the time that a bicycle rider, riding by himself across Montana, is not much of a COVID risk.”
Bales said he did encounter restaurants where he would have to order his food and have it brought outside to eat, and a lot depended on the state he was in and how cautious it was.
The Aledo man said prefers traveling by bike because he gets to really interact with more locals.
“Typically when you drive your car you are on the interstate,” Bales said. “So most of the people are just like you. They are traveling. They’re not local people…so you’re not really going to see a cross-section of America. When you’re on a bicycle, you are on a much smaller and safer highway, and you go through these little towns that are nowhere near the highway and you stop in cafes and have dinner. The people in those cafes live in those towns. I enjoy that immensely — meeting the people and talking to them.”
Bales also enjoys seeing the countryside, listening to retired farmers talking about the problems they are having and one encounter his first year of retirement on a trip that started in Astoria, Oregon was especially revealing for him.
Bales completed the ride and was headed back home with Badlato and the two stopped at a cafe, where a political show was on the television and two people from opposing parties were arguing.
“I looked over at Peggy and said, ‘You know, I just rode my bicycle from the Pacific Ocean all the way across the United States to the Atlantic Ocean, and I didn’t see one person like that,’” Bales said. “Not one person in the country was like that. I told her we need to go home and throw the television set out the window, because there was nobody like that.”
Bales said the people he encounters are almost always friendly, and many have bought him meals along the way.
“That’s the people I see in America,” Bales said.
The Aledo man, who said the only way to be old is to be healthy, said the effect on his body varies throughout the trip.
“It’s interesting, because I have been a cyclist my whole life,” Bales said. “I’ve been in various levels of fitness. I used to race a little bit and I used to think I was pretty fit. But this kind of thing will change you physically completely. The first week, it hurts a little bit more every day. Then the second week, it hurts a little less every day. By the third week, you are a completely different person. There’s really not any pain at all any more. You’re not even tired.”
Bales typically rides about 75 miles a day on the cross-country ventures, and his training mainly involves riding in a bike club.
The Aledo man has ridden in France and Switzerland in the past, but said his main goal at this point is to continue to ride across the United States yearly until he is no longer physically able.
“In my opinion, walking is too slow and cars are too fast,” Bales said. “Cycling is 10 to 15 miles an hour, and at that speed you typically stop at every restaurant and every place you want. I think it is the perfect speed. It’s not so slow that you’re counting rocks, but it is not so fast that your passing every thing you see. It’s just right.”
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