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1 bike, 1 gear, 1 big country
Durango teenager (18) cycles across country on makeshift single speed
Herald Outdoors Editor
Noah Leggett stands atop his trusty single-speed bicycle shortly after his arrival in Durango earlier this week. Leggett started his sojourn in Washington, D.C.
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The plains of South Dakota frame part of Leggett’s bicycle odyssey.
The plains of South Dakota frame part of Leggett’s bicycle odyssey.
The turnoff to Freedom beckons from a Pennsylvania highway.
Four months and 3,000 miles later, he's back - with mom and dad's blessings.
Leggett, an 18-year-old cyclist with a minimalist nature, an open mind and a single speed, pedaled back into Durango this week after a cross-country odyssey that was one part cycling and 10 parts American life.
He started in Washington, D.C., on a single-speed bicycle he assembled himself, based on a 1970s vintage Fuji frame.
The rest of the bike is vintage Noah Leggett - parts and pieces from hither and yon. Mostly yon.
With a minimum of camping gear in a pair of rear saddlebags, Leggett pedaled the long and winding roads from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains.
He camped, and he used the contemporary social networking of "couch surfing" for his nightly accommodations.
And he ate a lot of rice and beans. A lot of rice and beans.
Along the way, he pedaled to New York. He pedaled up the Hudson River.
He spent time with his 21-year-old brother Jack at a sustainable farming homestead.
He pedaled back down to New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.
He stayed in Philadelphia, seeking out bicycle shops and a bevy of top cycle frame-builders and specialty metallurgists there.
He pedaled over the mountains to Pittsburgh.
He learned to weld frames.
He pedaled across Ohio.
"Straight across Ohio and straight across Indiana - there's one hill there," Leggett said.
He learned the best bike lanes are along roads in Amish communities ... "because everyone there rides a bike."
Then it was up to Chicago.
On to Wisconsin.
Over to Minneapolis.
Across South Dakota.
Down through Nebraska.
And back into Colorado; back to the Colorado Rockies.
From Fort Collins down to Denver.
And down the ever-familiar U.S. Highway 285 to 160. Up and over Wolf Creek Pass.
From Pagosa Springs home to Durango.
He slept in his own bed Monday night for the first time since he graduated from Durango High School last spring.
"America is just a beautiful country," the enthusiastic Leggett said this week in Durango. "And from a bicycle, it's an amazing perspective."
For one thing, he said, simply, "You meet people."
Lots and lots of interesting people. Like an art-show exhibitor in Chicago, who specializes in saving street art before it is banished from the public domain - an exhibitor who told Leggett to check out a bizarre concrete sculpture garden in Wisconsin that was filled with unusual 1930s statues.
Leggett, of course, checked it out.
"This whole trip was tangents like that," Leggett said.
"I would look at a map and say I want to be in that next city in a week. Then I'd pick the most direct (or interesting) roads," he said.
Eating, cycling, eating, looking for shelter, looking for food, looking for the next Internet café, eating, cycling and sleeping.
"Every day is a complete cycle," he said.
"The whole thing started as what I would do for my summer (before starting art/design school in Denver). I joked that I was going to ride my bike across the country.
"Then I said, 'I could do that.'
"Then I said, 'I should do that,'" Leggett said.
And he did.
Almost immediately, he was asked why.
"At first, I was asking that, too. People would ask what I was riding for. Who was my sponsor? Who was I raising money for?"
But Leggett had no big underlying "cause." He had no philanthropic ideal.
Yet when he explained his trip along the way, people would understand, he said.
"They'd listen ... and they'd say, 'That's cool.'"
In a way, he said it was his individual effort at bicycle advocacy.
"I wanted to get the most out of it for myself," he said, revealing an unquenchable thirst for life.
"I wanted to become as much a part of it as I could."
Then, he shared his journey with others.
"It became a sharing process," Leggett said.
"Learn and share ... in a cycle," he said with accidental irony.
And he solved the daily problems of the road as he rolled along.
The biking and the bike maintenance were second nature to a lifelong cyclist like Leggett, who's been riding as long as he can remember.
"Since I could hold a wrench, I've been breaking bikes," he said.
Born in Vermont with a mobile childhood, he moved to Albuquerque with his family.
"Then we found our way up here (Durango). Been here for ... eight years," he said, mentioning his supportive parents, mom, Jess, and dad, Craig.
He rode on all sorts of roads, except interstates. He pedaled on one-lane county roads and six-lane urban freeways.
His repair kit consisted of a versatile bicycle multi-tool, a combination knife, a crescent wrench and bunch of zip ties.
He went through "nine or 10 tubes" and only one extra tire along the 3,000 miles to Durango.
And when the mechanical problem stopped him?
"I definitely hitch-hiked a few times," Leggett said.
He carried a rudimentary cell phone. He left the phone charger in Minneapolis but still made it to Denver before the phone batteries failed.
He did carry a copy of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, featuring works by beat poets and modern beats like Hunter S. Thompson.
"The trip was totally low key," he said, although he did have mountain biking shoes and clip-in pedals.
Otherwise, no spandex. No fancy gear.
He picked up a used cycling jersey at a yard sale.
But he rode, generally, in nylon gym shorts.
"I think padded bike shorts are next," he said, considering an extension of the trip to California before his fall classes start in Denver.
And he's planning a tandem bike ride along the California coast with his father, if they can work out the logistics of getting the tandem to the West Coast.
Again, he said, he hopes to make the most of opportunities along the way.
"I want to engage in life more. I want to take my education into my own hands," said Leggett, adding that he has renewed "faith in the universal harmony of things."
He also understands and appreciates the single-speed simplicity of cycling and life, he said.
"It worked out pretty well."
The trip also reinforced one of cycling's universal truths, he said.
"Headwind. Oh, the headwind," he said, recalling specific stretches in Indiana, South Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado.
"The headwind ... it tries to break your soul."
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