In April, longtime Ann Arbor resident Al Newman rode a bike in Providence, Rhode Island. With that ride Newman, seventy, completed his goal of cycling in all fifty states.
The achievement is more impressive when you learn that the serial entrepreneur was over sixty when he started working on it in earnest. In 2009, he joined a group ride from Los Angeles to Boston that traversed fourteen states. “I was not a serious cyclist when I decided to ride cross-country,” Newman says. “I was when I finished.”
Subsequent trips took him from Maine to Florida and the length of the Mississippi River, and he’s since been chipping away at the states he had yet to ride in. “The goal has led to absolutely inappropriate behavior,” he admits, relating how, while hiking in Sedona, Arizona, he noticed on a map that he could get Utah and Colorado checked off his list. He rented a bike, woke up at five the next morning, loaded his bike into his car, drove six hours, and got the ride in along a desolate road that ran between the states.
Newman has forged strong friendships on long-distance rides and had indelible experiences like being raced by a thoroughbred in horse country on a back road in Kentucky. And now that he’s completed his list of states, Newman is turning his attention to another cycling goal: riding on all seven continents. He’s missing just Africa and Antarctica–and has booked a trip to Africa for next spring, where he plans to bike from Zambia to Cape Town, South Africa.
Is it really possible to ride in Antarctica? “I YouTubed it, and there are videos of riders,” Newman says. “I don’t know how they did it, but it is possible, and I will figure it out.”
