Father and son wheeling together across America> Bicyclers start coast-to-coast trip

It wouldn’t be summer if a few folks, undertaking adventures about which most of us only dream, didn’t pass through Maine. Many, of course, are hiking the Appalachian Trail which culminates on the peak of Mount Katahdin.

One father-son pair plan to dip their bicycle tires in the Atlantic at Owls Head in August after pedaling a northern route across the country from San Francisco. Dave Stonebraker of Hebron and his son, Austin, 15, have already flown west and set off from Seal Rock Beach in San Francisco on their trek through 15 states over 4,489 miles of pavement in hopes of reaching midcoast Maine by Aug. 13.

Dave Stonebraker has made the trip before, although not by the route he and his son will take. He road alone in 1990 from Puget Sound in Washington to Pemaquid Point.

Stonebraker wrote of his first trek that he didn’t set out in search of America since it has been found and documented by many. Nor did he see it as a rite of passage for a middle-aged man — a test of self or excursion for self-discovery. It was to be a fun thing for an avid bike rider to do.

But he found so much that was unexpected — in the people he met and the places he saw.

Still, Stonebraker never intended to repeat the trek. Then his son, an athlete and junior at Hebron Academy where his father teaches English, started talking about wanting to make some kind of long bike trip and “one thing led to another.”

Father and son will keep journals as they travel across the country. It is through their words that we here in eastern and northern Maine will see the hills and valleys and plains they traverse in the coming weeks.

From their perspective as Mainers, they will tell us about Northern California, about passes in Oregon once traveled by covered wagons, about Mount Rushmore on the Fourth of July, about the Mississippi River, the Midwest, and then what it feels like to be back in the Northeast on their way home.

We can expect to eat with them in diners, flop exhausted under a lone shade tree on a deserted road, ache with each pedal up a steep incline then glide at breakneck speed down the other side.

The Stonebrakers, we hope, will introduce us to the interesting people they meet, people with whom we would feel right at home and others who will leave us in awe.

“We’ll be traveling the blue highways of America and will try to be open to all that the days have in store,” said Dave Stonebraker of his philosophy of travel.