Trans Am Bike Nonstop – A way forward, for now

TRANS AM BIKE NONSTOP - A WAY FORWARD, FOR NOW

Greetings Trans Am and Bike Nonstop friends and fans,

Hi, it's me Nathan, the person that's been running the Trans Am Bike Race, Bike Nonstop US, and a whole pile of other events for over 10 years now. I'm here to tell you a bit about myself and why we have a new format for this race that so many hold close to their hearts.

So back to the current day. For 20 years now I've lived in Portland, Oregon and have ridden or driven many miles of the Trans Am and Bike Nonstop routes across the state, and then even further across the country. I raced the entirety of the Trans Am in 2014 and proceeded to go back in 2016 and 2018 for photos for the entire route. It's safe to say I know quite a bit about these roads and their history. However, I proclaim to be no expert and I would argue no one person can truly claim to be the definitive expert on all it's aspects, while many may functionally pass as said expert, the history is so deep, it's definitely a bit aside the point to argue who knows the most about it.

Now back to myself for a bit. I had a lot of fun the first three years of the TABR, I'll say I had all the fun. It had it's stressful moments for sure, but the good outweighed the bad by a long shot and I was very hopeful for the future of the event. In 2017 I worked out a plan to race solo around the world. No one knows what is going to happen when they race an event like the Trans Am or BNS, but to say no one knows what can happen in the time it takes to ride a bike 18,000 miles around the planet, well that's an understatement.

The ride around the world was honestly mostly easy in the grand scheme of things, I was hungry to ride my bike and it's very easy to keep going when you want to so much. For some context, two huge endurance events were sandwiched in between my round the world ride. First was the Inaugural Indian Pacific Wheel Race (IndyPac) which I would ride and the second being the 4th edition of the Trans Am which I would launch in person from Astoria.

As you ought to know by now inaugural Trans Am winner, star of Inspired to Ride, Tour Divide Record Holder, Transcontinental Race creator, and all around hero Mike Hall perished from a collision just shy of the finish of the IndyPac. It was a dark day for the sport and clouds have never really cleared since then. Personally, I was 600 miles behind in the race, but nearly half way around the world in my ride, it was devastating and for a moment I did announce that I was quitting entirely. Could you blame me? After a dismal 24 hours at a hotel in Robe, South Australia I realized the only way out was to keep riding. Not only that, I was literally carrying the same pump Mike had taken on his round the world ride and it was a huge motivator in making me want to complete the task at hand. I could go on about trying to #BeMoreMike but mostly I was trying to figure out how to be myself again, whatever that meant. I functionally quit the IndyPac and chose a different route to the finish in Sydney. I did this not out of fear of dangerous roads or the emotional trouble associated with riding by Mike's crash site, but because my new routing was flat and more direct, and I was racing around the world, not just across Australia.

I met up with former Trans Am racers Sarah Hammond and IndyPac instigator Jesse Carlsson somewhere heading across, it was a brief moment of catharsis to talk to the both of them. We were all in a very similar dark space, I don't think any of us wanted to really show it in the moment, but without a doubt we all felt as if something had been taken from us. And it wasn't just something, it was a person we all knew and loved. Days past, I made it to Sydney and shared some stories with more fellow TABR and IndyPac vets, I pushed on to New Zealand and began the initial stages of grief processing.

Fast forward a few months to June for the launch of the 4th TABR, I was about 3/4 of the way done with my around the world journey and had to press pause in Texas to fly back to Oregon to launch the year's race. 138 racers took part in the 4th edition, it was the biggest field we would ever have and I had a knot in my stomach to say the least. The ride had tripled in since since the inaugural year, and to say I was worried would be an understatement. Nonetheless, the show must go on, and go on we did. Things proceeded smoothly until a few weeks in. In mid June, Trans Am racer Eric Fishbein was taken from us in a collision in Kansas. It was to say the least, emotionally devastating. After losing Mike only a few months earlier, to have to process this, amidst my own continuing ride around the world, well, we'll say it was a dark. I still had about two weeks to finish my journey and I'll tell you those last two weeks, the riding wasn't hard, but it was by no means fun. I was just going through the motions at that point and each day started to feel the same, kind of dull. Dark got darker, I'm a pretty even keel person, so you probably couldn't tell if you didn't actually know me.

I talked to a few people about how to move forward during the aftermath. I had the briefest exchange with Jesse Carlsson, he kindly advised me that nothing says I have to keep doing this. I valued his input greatly and think frequently back to this same advice.

To make matters worse, just a month after we lost Eric Fishbein in the TABR, our "sister" event, Mike Hall's Transcontinental Race, lost rider Frank Simons in yet another collision, mind you the TCR was now functioning without Mike, backed up by his amazing partner Anna Haslock and the Lost Dot crew. While I in no way knew Frank, his loss resonated deeply with me as he was the third endurance rider lost in almost as many months.

I didn't handle any of this well, I pretty much shut down, I was already in a dark place and all I could really muster was going through the motions working in bike shops. As you may know, unsurprisingly the race went on. You can thank Thomas Camero for getting me to realize that the 5th edition of the TABR had to happen. It's not possible to quantify the good this race brings with the bad, but indirectly the race and more importantly the greater community, does a lot of good.

The 2018 TABR launched with an only slightly smaller field than the year before. 114 riders took part and I went back at it with a renewed enthusiasm to document the event to the best of my ability. Worth noting we would be the first self supported endurance race of it's kind to launch and implement a full scale safety checklist and inspection, riders left Astoria functionally visible from space.

2018 would be my second time photographing the route with friend, inaugural TABR vet, and fellow photographer Anthony Dryer. Taking photos of this race is not easy or casual, it's a days on end blitz that might actually be harder than just racing the event. I would argue if you had to have a crew do it year after year, you would start to see DNF's just from the media crew, it really is that large of ordeal. It has amazing moments of fun and inspiration without a doubt, but providing end to end coverage year after year, 100% not sustainable from multiple vantage points.

If you've not heard, we had the worst year ever, specifically in Kansas where we lost John Egbers, a widely known and loved veteran from the previous year. That summer took too much from me emotionally and I'm not looking to dredge it all up. It's rare that I make it a full day without thinking about these riders we've lost. Sometimes I might make it a week if I've fully disconnected from cycling. I don't wish to forget any of these individuals, but the often daily (hourly) reminders of their loss, to say it's triggering, well yes, it is.

Therapy is cheap, medication is too, but none of it really changes what's been lost. Nothing will bring back those we've lost, or the initial joy I had the first few years of this difficult to encapsulate race.

In the aftermath I took the efforts to make a renewed push to support the Adventure Cycling Association and get directly involved to try to increase visibility on the route. That said, I recognized that all the best preventative efforts we could make from signage, to rider visibility, to general driver awareness of the route, improving all of these things is not a guarantee. To do the same thing over and over and expect different results, well you know what they say.

I can't move the Adventure Cycling Association, local governments, and the US Bicycle Route System by myself. One person who has though is Susie Egbers and for that all future Trans Am riders are indebted. Her efforts, amongst many others including the ACA, were essential to bringing signage to Kansas. It's still my hope we can eventually see the full route signed, but the momentum for such a project is daunting and reliant on variables that are too many too list in this post.

2017 was an emotional nightmare, 2018 was pure hell. What to do? Clearly something different. I stared at the heat maps for a few hours and said "There's a way to do this without as much risk" Sure, life is about calculating the risks and eventually leaving things up to chance. It was pretty obvious if you've been doing this long enough. I'm not going to say it's a better way, but it's infinitely more logical and more importantly emotionally sustainable for myself and the greater community to do everything to lower the risk factors.

2019, the inaugural Bike Nonstop US was born and the 6th edition of the TABR commenced. Bike Nonstop US was built from numerous scouting runs and previous rides across the US. The plan was to come up with something that would be low traffic and utilize as much cycling infrastructure was possible. As someone who runs this sort of thing every year and ultimately receives the bulk of public email, you could probably see why I wanted a safer option.

And so this takes me on a bit of a tangent, I receive all sorts of harassment throughout the year about the Trans Am Bike Race and it peaks every June with the same people telling me I am somehow in the wrong for various reasons. Literally all of these emails come from outside the community, those who know this race get it for the most part, though I would argue no one truly understands the whole thing, not even myself. These races are as complex as life is, and if anyone tells you that they understand it to completion, well I'd be skeptical.

I'm all for feedback, but telling me how to run my own event, well that's a bit over the line. Most of the riders I talk to, they tell me it's my event and I'm free to run it as I see fit. I'm not going to sit here and say I won't listen to criticism or feedback, but I'll tell you I value it more from those who've actually done this thing than those who've never tried. This should not be surprising.

This takes me back to one of the points I'm trying to make. No future edition of these events is a guarantee. These rides are ran ONE YEAR AT A TIME and talking about the next edition before the previous has transpired is a faulty line of thinking. We made it to 10 years of the TABR, but there is no guarantee it will continue past that. I truly don't want to relive the years of 2017 and 2018 ever again and if something were to happen, I don't really know if I'd even want to attempt to continue running something that drags another family, an entire community, and myself through such trauma.

Now back to the 2019 inaugural Bike Nonstop US. We had 25 riders for this first year event put together in just a few months time. While I spent years preparing the TABR launch, I had a very small window to design, scout, and promote such a massive event. 25 riders was an amazing turn out and I had done everything I could to lighten the load on the TABR route. In the TABR we were down to 74 riders, an almost sustainable number. Myself and Anthony did photos for the first few days of both events, it was a mellow year relatively speaking. It was great to see the fruits of my labor now in two successful cross country races.

Bike Nonstop US was an obvious way for me to keep moving forward with these events, something I could emotionally handle for the month or so that people are out on the route. Not only was it sustainable, but it had a higher success rate, the first year had 16 finishers of 25 starters and the ride has maintain it's nearly 70% finish rate ever since. What more proof could this route need to prove it's sustainability? Not much, a few tweaks here or there to the route, and hey maybe even the options for more routes.

In March of 2020 the world began to shutdown from COVID and the TABR/BNSUS was one of the very first events to acknowledge the situation and shutdown until it was tenable. This was frustrating to me no surprise, but there was a sense of relief in having one summer off where I didn't have to worry so much. I wouldn't say I was happy about the shutdown, but crisis breeds opportunity.

I spent that year still working in bike shops, but simultaneously developing the Ride Yr Bike app, basically trying to design something that would work as a cell phone tracker in the event that a rider's satellite tracker became problematic. It was the perfect COVID project, something I could work on in my free time at my own pace. The app has since been used for 3 years now and has removed the stress of rider's tracking issues, not only that, riders have their own dedicated chat to relay route conditions to in real time. While the past years have not had combined mobile/satellite tracking, the next edition will absolutely feature a new high powered version of the app with more capability for charts and tracking than you could hope for.

While COVID was great for building new things, it was terrible for trying to maintain the stoke for both events. Whatever momentum Bike Nonstop US had was completely lost, not only that global travel has become increasingly more expensive in the years since, more costs, less riders.

In late 2020 the COVID vaccine was approved and we IMMEDIATELY relaunched both the TABR and BNSUS. And as such, so began a conundrum. The 2021 TABR and BNSUS were only available to racers in the US, at the time travel to the country was still not available but it was more than obvious that half of the field was ready to go. This put me in a difficult situation. Now I was essentially forced to promise at least two more years of the race, just to give everyone who missed their 2020 chance another shot.

2021 brought 42 US based riders to the TABR and 12 riders to the BNSUS, one of these riders was myself and I was forced to quit early due to a previous exposure to giardia. I put my name in the hat to try and bring exposure to the race I'd worked so hard to build and it was immensely frustrating to not finish it. All that and 12 riders is barely a bike race, it was safe to say I was getting diminishing returns on my efforts.

2022 brought 53 mostly international riders to the TABR and again 12 riders to the BNSUS. While it looked like things were starting to recover, it was clear that BNSUS was on life support. I don't blame myself for this situation, the entire sport took a hit from Covid, several rides shut down though many more have been created, balancing attendance is tough.

2023 came and there were still a few riders from the 2020 shutdown still looking to come back. 3 years of these events that I ran out of an obligation to give these riders their dream. What was technically the 10th year of Ride Yr Bike was now the 9th year of the TABR and 4th of BNSUS. These past three years of the TABR were ran not to bring new riders, they were ran to help those fulfill an old dream. We made it through these past couple years virtually incident free, a few riders suffered from dangerously close passes, but the TABR has been noticeably calmer in this way. There are multiple factors here, but I'd argue a main one is having a field a third the size of the 2017/2018 fields is a large part of it. Sadly Bike Nonstop only had 6 starters, it's obvious that it had run out of promotional mojo.

It's true, a smaller field is a lot easier for me to deal with and be able to sleep reasonably. That said it's difficult for me to sleep a full night when the TABR is running. Every day there is some new drama to deal with, for being a self supported race, you'd be surprised at the amount of email that comes in from around the world.

So that's kind of that, the 2024 race will exist as Trans Am Bike Nonstop and I'm here to tell you the reason is I can't live every day like it's groundhog day for the rest of my life stressing out about the riders in the TABR. I don't expect those who haven't been paying much attention to understand these changes, but everyone who knows me or at least has been paying attention to the 10 years of these rides should probably get it. It's not unreasonable at all. The TABNS will be ran as the TABR has been for 4 years, by application, entry is not guarantee but those looking to go to D.C. stand a far better chance of approval than those going to Yorktown. I'm not declaring a cap on entries but I'll tell you that more than 50 going to Yorktown is too much.

Furthermore, I must reiterate there is no guarantee of a future edition of the race. It's one year at a time and while you can fantasize about a future edition, it is merely that, a fantasy until the time comes. I am not shopping for advice on this event, I am not looking to walk away from it, nor am I looking to dump it on someone else. I've had discussions with some of the most high profile riders in this sport, and all universally agree, if you're not having fun with it, nothing says you have to continue. It's fine to walk away at some point and the event can either continue in some way or not.

This is not a call for help, it's a request for understanding, I'm asking that folks understand that all of this doesn't just miraculously happen and that there are no emotional repercussions. Most folks understand this but we continue to draw new people to the community that don't always have an immediate grasp on what has transpired.

I personally went out a scouted nearly an entire new route across the United States. It was designed from the ground up to use the lowest traffic route possible to get across the country while still balancing access to services. For better or worse, no one has made a movie about it and it's a bit intimidating for those who are strictly roadies. I'm telling you this after I grew up directly on the TABR route and have lived near it's start for the past 20 years. I love the TransAmerica trail, hell the Oregon and Wyoming sections also overlap with the BNSUS route. I don't mind that folks still want to do the TABR in numbers but to just outright ignore my advice despite years of pleading is frustrating. The TABR is there, and I've kept it there for those who have a score to settle, but I'm also literally begging people to try playing a different game and if the reason you won't is skinny tires, it's the wrong reason.

To further drive home my point, if the TABR was managed in the style of Mike Hall's Transcontinental, you would almost certainly see a long list of banned roads. This is me telling you I'm going above and beyond to continue to offer the choice to put your wheels on the Trans Am in the name of of my brand and event.

To continue to further drive home my point, I was in a fairly crazy auto collision just last summer in Orlando visiting for a wedding. I could describe the event, but long story short my partner, her sister, and brand new baby were with us and it was lucky that we made it through with no injuries. To go even further, this summer two of my best friends were involved in crashes both a week before the TABR and a few weeks after. Seriously, my life feels like a low intensity war zone sometimes the rate people I know end up getting hit by cars.

I get it, the TABR has more history and people than you can shake a stick at. That doesn't mean the BNSUS route doesn't have this exact some potential. At one point in time I had plans to grow the TABR to a grand scale, I'll tell you those plans don't exist any more and after reading this I hope everyone understands why. Trans Am Bike Nonstop is the way forward, and I say that it's the way forward, ONE YEAR AT A TIME.

I'm offering up yet another year of this, virtually unchanged from years before albeit with a different name and a few thousand miles of different route options. The Trans Am route is still there, you can still apply to race, just like in years past, very little has actually changed in terms of the way this race has been ran for 10 years and anyone who is sad about this new change is missing the point and probably not actually putting the entire thing into perspective. Be happy the race is continuing this year, please don't be sad that I've made a deeper plea for those to consider a different option. I may sound cranky, exhaustion is what's actually coming through, I've said this every year to everyone who has applied for the past 5 years, this year that message is going to an even bigger audience.

I do thank everyone for taking the time to read this rather long and personal statement, but it had to be said.

2024 launch will happen shortly, stay tuned.

Nathan @ Ride Yr Bike