I live in Seattle, WA. I was 67 when I rode from the west coast (WA) to east coast (MA) in August and September 2025. I have been a roadie (riding primarily road bikes as opposed to mountain or gravel bikes) for many years. When I lived in Miami, FL, I rode with my cycling buddies every weekend for 60+ miles. Occasionally I jointed fast groups, sprinting (hammering) to see how fast we could go. I rode countless centuries (100 miles a day) in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Washington. I enjoyed multiple-day road bike tours (Vuelta Puerto Rico, Rocky Mountain Bike Tour, Redrock Canyons Tour, one-day and two-day STP [Seattle to Portland], RSVP [Ride from Seattle to Vancouver and Party]). But I had never rode a gravel bike until 2022 when I got a new Marin Headlands 2, which is a gravel bike. I had never done bike camping until I started to train for this coast-to-coast ride.
In contrast, my tour buddy, Peter Sousounis, has been a seasoned bike camper since his teens. We knew each other when we were graduate students in the Department of Meteorology at Penn State. We played volleyball together, and our team won the championship of a regional tournament one year. But we never rode bikes together before this trip.
Riding from a coast to another of the America is on the bucket lists of many cyclists. At a professional conference in 2024, Peter and I chatted, and we realized we both wanted to do a coast-to-coast ride. We decided to ride it together in the summer of 2025.
Chidong Zhang's WA2MA Bike Trip 