I'd started my touring career in '76 with a 1000-miler around Lake Michigan from my home in Chicago. I honestly never heard about the BikeCentennial--I wasn't very plugged into the cycling scene back then, not until I met my wife three years later. She was much more serious about it than I. I was one of the guys in cut-off jeans and T-shirt, riding a Schwinn Continental. My buddy rode a Huffy. We'd never heard the words "pannier" or "chamois." Or Campangolo or Shimano.

I rode what was by then the TA route with my wife in 1996, when we were financially stable enough to leave work. It was the first of many early retirement trips.