What’s your BHAG?

What’s your BHAG?

Over the years I’ve worked with a variety of mentor – coaches in the fitness industry and in business. I highly appreciate getting to work with a coach who can see things differently from me, so I can learn more from them, and transform that into great results.  <HINT working with a Tennis Pro or a Personal Trainer will bring you great results too>

One of my coaches, Todd Durkin, used to talk about the BHAG – your “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”. This goal should be so bold that it seems almost impossible… but maybe, just maybe, you could accomplish it. The thing about setting a BHAG is that it may take years to come to fruition. I find that when you set a goal and work to align your actions toward the goal, you can make progress! I like to have a BHAG for the club and a BHAG for my personal life.

It's my personal BHAG that I want to share with you now…

I set this goal in about 2010: To Ride my bicycle along with my husband, self-supported, from Bellingham to Key West, Florida.

Self-supported means we carry all of our own camping and cooking gear and spend most nights in a tent. Our bikes weigh around 80+ pounds when fully loaded. This bicycle adventure would take 4 to 5 months, riding 50-75 miles per day, so the how and the when of this journey had to percolate for a long time.

The HOW: Doug and I finally decided to break the journey up into month-long “legs” and ride a chunk each summer.

The WHEN: Since Doug retired from his law practice and now teaches at Whatcom Community College, he had time over the summer that we could ride. And we have such a great team here at the Club that I feel confident to leave for a month.

The PROGRESS & EVOLUTION: 

LEG #1 BEGAN JUNE 18, 2017 - COMPLETED.  Bellingham, WA to Great Falls, MT

We started our journey in 2017 by dipping our tires in Bellingham Bay (pacific ocean) and rode across 5 mountain passes Rainy Pass (4,875 ft), Washington Pass (5,476 ft), Wauconda Pass (4,310 ft), Sherman Pass (5,574 ft), and over the Going to the Sun Road with Logan Pass (6,646 ft) having to end a week early in Great Falls, Montana due to daily temperatures over 100 degrees.

In 2018 we were too busy with the expansion here at BTTC to go anywhere.

LEG #2 started July 28, 2019 – COMPLETED. Jackson, WY to Rapid City, SD

In 2019 we started in Jackson, Wyoming at the Grand Tetons, ascended the longest climb yet over Powder River Pass (9,666 ft) in the Bighorn Mountains, were awestruck at Devil’s Tower and, after touring the Black Hills and waving to the presidents at Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse, ended in Rapid City, South Dakota.

In 2020 – well, it was Covid.

LEG #3…Started June 25, 2021 - COMPLETED. Sioux City, IA to Nashville, TN

In 2021 we started in Sioux City, Iowa and followed the Missouri River through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and ended in Nashville, Tennessee. While there were no big mountain passes, there were umpteen short 9-12% grade hills that humbled and pained us. We don’t know if it was due to covid or that rural America is emptying, but even with our excellent adventure cycling maps, many of the grocery stores and restaurants that were identified - and that we were depending on - were closed, meaning that many days we were short on food and water. This made us rethink our plan to ride through Georgia on the next leg where we had no maps to guide us. So… we revised.

In 2022 we had too many personal loose ends to leave.

NEXT UP>>>>>LEG #4 - June 21, 2023. Louisville, Kentucky to Yorkton, Virginia - then to Washington DC to finish. This will be our final leg in our Coast to Coast Ride Across America. 

And here we are, summer of 2023. We shifted our route from ending in Key West to Yorktown (Virginia) due to routing issues through Georgia and traffic congestion in Florida along the coast (it is NOT fun to ride in tourist traffic).

We depart on June 21st to fly to Louisville, Kentucky where we pick up our bikes and ride due east over the Appalachian Mountains following the “trans-America” adventure cycling route to ultimately dip our tires in the Atlantic at Yorktown, Virginia. We will complete the ride by pedaling up to Washington DC.

WANT TO FOLLOW ALONG?

I keep an online journal so you can follow along with us. If you’d like to receive notices about our travel posts, sign up here: CLICK HERE.

I do my best to make a daily post – but sometimes internet access is unavailable or, frankly, I’m just too tired. If you are on this email list, you’ll be the first to know about our adventures and the email list will ONLY be used for the trip notifications – nothing else!

The other part of my BHAG is to do good in the world – this is where you can help! If you like following our travels, are glad you won’t be riding a bike for four weeks, want to live vicariously through our travels, or simply think we are NUTS for doing this, I invite you to donate to one of our three organizations in whose work we strongly believe:

·     Whatcom Community Foundation (local): CLICK HERE

·     Arthritis Foundation (national): CLICK HERE

·     World Bicycle Relief (international): CLICK HERE

After reading all that, you might be thinking WHY, WHY, WHY? There are 3 main reasons –

1.  Travel by bicycle is amazing and wonderful to power yourself to the next place.

2.  America is a beautiful country and we wanted to see more of it and be in it

3.  The people we meet are inspiring and have given me renewed faith in Americans.

And *BONUS* I get to do all of that with my best friend, my husband Doug.

I’d like to hear about your BHAG! What are you striving for?

~Robin