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Camilla Buchanan and Debra Hill
Camilla Buchanan and Debra Hill are already planning their next tour in September from Vancouver, British Columbia to San Diego, California.
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Visiting the Adventure Cycling Association Headquarters in Missoula, Montana.
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Arriving in Bar Harbor, Maine after their 46-day trip from Key West, Florida.
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Silverthorne, Colorado landscape.
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Arriving in Oregon.
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Crossing the Delaware River on the Appalachian Trail next to I-80.
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Saratoga Lake campgrounds in Wyoming.
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Entire TransAmerica touring group in Florence, Oregon.
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Celebration at Bar Harbor, where they were greeted by friends with welcome signs.
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Camilla kissing the biggest trout in Ennis, Montana.
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Leaving Yorktown for the TransAmerica Tour.
“It does not get any better than this.” Over and over again, Camilla Buchanan wrote these very words in her blog to describe the experiences she and her wife, Debra Hill, had cycling across the country.
And you can tell each time Buchanan typed these words out, exhausted from pedaling for fifty-five miles each day, she truly believed it—that is, until the next time she was awestruck by another breathtaking view, another chance encounter, another incredible soul.
And again, she thought and wrote, “It does not get any better than this.”
Bar none, Buchanan, aged seventy-one, and Hill, aged sixty-three, agree the best way to see a country is on a tandem bike. The Williamsburg couple believe that so profoundly that they’ve done it three times.
The couple’s home, not far from the Virginia Capital Trail in James City County, overlooks the sprawling James River. It has a big, red front door, expansive windows, and a swing in the front yard.
When I meet them, they’re both lounging on the couch, watching the basketball game, exhausted from their recent travels to Kenya, where they work to promote education and community health (www.maokenyaorg.org).
Hill is sporting a cough; Buchanan looks as if she could fall asleep at any moment.
To keep them awake for the next two hours, I ask them to share their story: their tales of cycling across the country, how their relationship strengthened after being together twenty-four hours a day, the incredible people they met, the losses, the homesickness, and the longing for the next adventure.
They start at the beginning.
It was 1976. Buchanan had just finished medical school and was starting her gynecology residency when she heard about the Bicentennial TransAmerica Trail or TransAm, a classic cycling route that runs from Yorktown, Virginia, to Florence, Oregon, and celebrates the two-hundredth anniversary of America’s birth.
Although she didn’t have time to go in 1976, she told herself, “One day.”
Years went by, and at thirty-eight years of age she became a competitive amateur cyclist, winning dozens of national championships in her age group and two world championships. Near the beginning of her professional racing career in 1984, at a volleyball clinic in Williamsburg, she met Hill, one of the College of William & Mary’s most successful volleyball coaches.
The two fell in love and started cycling together through the streets of Williamsburg, Hill helping and supporting Buchanan in all of her cycling endeavors.
Knowing her wife desperately wanted to cycle across the USA, Hill signed them up for the TransAm in 2012, the year Buchanan retired from her ob-gyn practice.
They decided they would do it on a tandem bike, with a guided group from the Adventure Cycling Association (www.adventurecycling.org/) and a van carrying all the necessities: camping gear, biking equipment, clothes, food, and more. Buchanan would blog about their experiences every night, not just how many miles they did and what the weather was like but also what they learned about America.
After a few months of rigorous training, the two set off on May 19, 2012, dipping their back wheel in the York River and heading west.
“It’s Okay to Take Pictures.”
They averaged sixty miles a day, covering 4,180 miles through ten states. They climbed the Appalachian, Ozark, Rocky, and Cascade mountain ranges. They slept in tents, at church halls, or cycling hostels. They saw Yellowstone National Park, crossed the Continental Divide nine times, and rode on the Oregon, Pony Express, California, and Mormon trails.
They got lost twice, got caught in dozens of rainstorms, saw old friends, and made new friends. They dreamed about reaching the Pacific Ocean, yearned for their warm, comfortable bed back home, played “who can spot the water tower first?” in Kansas, went hot-springs hopping in Idaho, and toured an old prison in Wyoming.
Buchanan learned to turn off her competitive, racer spirit, to let herself be okay with other riders reaching the top of the hill, or the campsite, before her.
“The whole point of touring is to see things,” she says. “You want to stop. It’s okay to take pictures. You want to stop and talk to people, you want to stop and see historical markers. It’s just a completely different psychology.”
“She didn’t get it the first whole 4,800 miles,” Hill, the taller of the two and therefore the captain on the tandem, adds.
They call those eighty-one days on the TransAm the toughest mental and physical challenge they’ve ever done.
“There were certainly days,” Buchanan says, “when we were about two-thirds of the way through, and we didn’t really verbalize it to each other, but we both felt it, we were like, ‘This trip is never going to be over. I’m never going to be home again. I’m so tired of sleeping on the ground and eating bad food.’”But before they had even dipped their front wheel in the Pacific Ocean, they knew they’d be doing it again, somewhere new. And next time, they’d be doing it self-supported, carrying everything they needed on their tandem.
On the Road Again
It didn’t take them long to find the next adventure. By the next spring, they were packing their bags again, intending to bike from Key West, Florida, to Bar Harbor, Maine, along the East Coast. It took forty-six days.
This time, they found comfort in Warm Showers (www.warmshowers.org/). The cycling equivalent of couch surfing, hosts invite cyclists into their home—which is usually close to a popular touring route—for a night, offering them a warm bed, a delicious meal, and great conversation. Naturally, Buchanan and Hill became Warm Showers hosts upon their return to Williamsburg.
Their Atlantic coast trip left them hungry for more, so in June 2015, Buchanan and Hill hopped on their tandem again, this time to link Washington, DC, to Seattle—in seventy-three days.
On their seventy-second day on the road, after they had encountered rural farm towns, bad Midwestern food, a close encounter with a couple of logging trucks, shivering nights, feverish days, and more than 4,000 miles, Buchanan reflected in her blog, “When people would ask me at the beginning of the trip why we were doing such a loony thing as riding our tandem bicycle alone across the country, I really did not have a cogent answer. Now that it is almost over,
I am still not completely sure that I can provide a reasonable answer to a reasonable question.”
She chalks up their “looniness” to a few things: first, the sheer adventure that comes with cycling across the country and the indescribable beauty they witnessed; second, the unforgettable people they met along the way; and third, the tough physical, mental, and emotional challenge and the sense of accomplishment.
Coming Home to Williamsburg
Each time they came home after a cross-country trip, they were hit with reverse culture shock.
“You miss it,” says Buchanan simply, a faraway look in her eyes. “You miss the adventure; you miss the sense of accomplishment.”
Hill echoes her wife’s feelings.
“I miss feeling like I’m doing something unique, something special. Anybody can sit at home on the couch and watch a basketball game, cook dinner, live in a nice, beautiful place. You’re torn between wishing you were home, missing your kids and your friends and your house, and yet wanting to see what that next day is going to bring, the adventure of it.”
But they are also happy being home, finding comfort in the familiar roads of Williamsburg, at least while they plan their next adventure. Here, they still ride the tandem around town, taking it out to do errands and to get their cycling fix.
They’ve seen and felt the changes in the last few years that have allowed the League of American Cyclists to dub Williamsburg a bronze-level, bicycle-friendly community: the additional bike lanes, new bike racks popping up around shops, efforts at local parks that appeal to the mountain bikers and, most notably, the Virginia Capital Trail.
A Cycling Destination
“There were times when I wondered, ‘How are we ever going to get this thing done?’”
That’s Beth Weinbrod, director of the Capital Trail Foundation. Through herculean efforts, she has helped bring to life to what is quickly becoming one of Virginia’s best multiuse trails and turn Williamsburg into a cycling destination.
Spanning four localities from Richmond to Williamsburg, the paved trail, fifty-two miles long, that runs along Route 5 has been the go-to spot for people from all walks of life, drawing in more than 112,000 patrons since its official opening in October 2015, including people such as Buchanan and Hill.
“It’s incredible to see the types of people that are using [the trail]. It truly is all ages, all abilities, all interests. That is the true power of a paved, multiuse trail like this,” Weinbrod says.
That power has also seeped into the local economy, allowing businesses near the Capital Trail to reap the benefits of the growing new tourism niche.
Restaurants near the trail are suddenly full again. Ronnie’s BBQ (www.ronniesbbq.com) set up shop in Varina to be close to it. Business owners are reporting large growths, attributing their newfound success to it.
All the cyclists agree Williamsburg is getting better, bikewise, thanks to the Capital Trail, but there’s always room for improvement. And that’s where people like Reed Nester come in.
As the city planner for thirty years, and as a life-long cyclist, Nester—who, coincidentally, sold Buchanan and Hill the tandem they rode to Oregon in 2013—has been instrumental in getting the area as close to cycling heaven as possible.
He helped develop the first regional bikeway plan that was adopted by Williamsburg, James City County, and York County, and has continued to expand and update it through the years. He’s credited with helping to bring bike lanes on Rochambeau Drive, a shared-use path around Waller Mill, and bike lanes on the Monticello Avenue extension from Ironbound Road, on Centerville Road, and on Jamestown Road. He is constantly applying for grants, making sure shops have adequate bike racks, and finding gaps in bike lanes. He’s currently working on a proposal to add bike lanes on Richmond Road from College Corner to Brook Street and wants to build a shared-use path along Jamestown Road from Treyburn Drive to Ironbound Road.
“I think we’ve done a good job of laying the basic spines of the system down that connect to the rural roads,” Nester says, explaining the need to add bike lanes in the center of the city, the more congested areas that lead out to rural areas with low-traffic roads that don’t necessarily need bike lanes.
Along with the local governments, William & Mary has also devoted time and energy to the bike initiative, providing online resources, group rides, fix-it stations, bicycle-specific campus maps and even a one-credit course on cycling.
“[The local governments and William & Mary] truly were devoted to the idea that Greater Williamsburg would be a better place for everybody if we were cycle friendly,” says Buchanan, a graduate of the college.
As she and Hill plan their next tour—from Vancouver, British Columbia, to San Diego, California, in September—they remain in Williamsburg, grateful for more than seventy miles of routes to explore, and of course, the view from two wheels.