By Betty Lundgren

It all started innocently enough in 1969. Dave Perry had just finished a semester as a student at the University of Colorado. Since his home was in St. Louis, Missouri, he thought it would be fun to bicycle from school in Boulder, Colorado to his home.

“At the time, I was inspired by two songs,” Perry said. “Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Homeward Bound’ and Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land.’ So I thought this would be a great way to see the scenery and experience our country’s bounty.”

This decision to bicycle about 900 miles between the two cities became the foundation leg for what turned into a 40 year expedition to bicycle across the U.S.

After a bicycle trip around Canada, down the U.S. coast and down to San Francisco in 1971, Perry chose to ride from Colorado Springs to Taos, New Mexico.

“It wasn’t really a big formal goal to start with,” Perry said. “It just sort of dawned on me as I made shorter, segmented bicycle trips over the years that I could ‘connect the dots’ on the map and bicycle across the country.”

By doing small portions of the trip each year, he realized that he could accomplish that goal without a huge expenditure of time or energy all at once.

“Small pieces can lead to bigger things,” Perry said. “That’s a philosophy of mine and it served me well as I began to focus on this trip as a personal goal.”

Most years, depending upon what time he had available for vacation, Perry would plan a trip of about three to seven days across various sections of the U.S. starting in regions around the west. He didn’t take a linear path on the map either. Trips were planned along what he called the “least traveled” roads, or what appeared as the grey ones on the map. Sometimes he would bicycle west to east to a location and follow that with a trip east to west the following year.

“That happened when I rode from the Grand Canyon to Mexican Hat, Utah one year followed by a trip between Monticello and Mexican Hat, Utah the next year,” Perry said.

Among the most amazing things he enjoyed was having the chance to slow down and enjoy the beautiful countryside and the wonderful people he met around the U.S.

“I loved it when people would see me riding and wave me over to give me some homemade bread or offer shelter and advice,” Perry said. “It brightened my days to realize how caring people are in general and that most really wanted to know about me and my bicycle trip.”

As Perry searched the 40 plus years of memories from his many adventures, one special recollection came to mind from one of his last trip segments in Kentucky. He was starting from Madison, Kentucky and had dropped in a café for breakfast. A gentleman came over to him and warned him to be careful on the narrow road because there were a lot of coal trucks traveling the same route.

“This fellow told me he would be praying for me and I later learned that he had gone back to his business and had one of his staff members put out a CB radio announcement to all the coal truckers to watch out for me on the road,” Perry said. “I will never forget that. Though he didn’t know me, he cared that much about me and my safety.”

Although he had made the goal of biking the entire country coast to coast, there were some stretches of time (including almost one entire decade) where his work schedule or personal commitments didn’t allow him to make a bicycle trip segment. But accomplishing the formidable goal was always on his mind.

Over the years, he did some of the bike trips alone and sometimes with various groups of friends. His lodging varied between camping out under the stars with only a space blanket to staying in motels.

“I tried not to plan each day according to how many miles I had to cover or where I had to end up,” he said. “I just wanted to enjoy the day, and follow where the road took me. Generally, I found that it ended up better than anything I could have planned in advance.”

Perry thinks of himself as strolling on his bicycle, going at a comfortable pace and rhythm so the miles fly by.

He and his wife sold the Country Lodge in Montrose in 2005, and with more free time in retirement, he decided to get more serious about finishing his bicycle trek across the U.S. He biked his last segment between Roanoke and Yorktown, Virginia during October of 2010. His son, Patrick, joined him for the occasion, which made it especially memorable.

Now that his original goal has been met, does Perry plan to stop riding his bike?

“No. In fact, I’m working right now on plans to bike the ‘Rails to Trails’ route along the Great Allegheny Passage this fall,” he said.

Perhaps that will be the first 335-mile segment between Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh, PA that he can add to his bike trip back across America.