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Date: 8/2/2023
WESTFIELD — Dr. Brian Sutton has made it more than halfway across the country on his bicycle, and he’s more than halfway to his fundraising goal to support Westfield’s rail trail.
The Westfield resident and local physician is bicycling from Washington state to Washington, D.C., to raise funds for the Friends of Columbia Greenway Rail Trail, a nonprofit organization of volunteers with a mission to blaze new trails for a pedestrian and bike-friendly Westfield. By the end of the trip, his goal is to reach $10,000. In late July, he had raised $5,485.
Sutton began the ride in early June in La Push, Washington, on the Pacific coast. He biked to Seattle and across the state in 10½ days, then through Idaho, Montana and Yellowstone National Park, crossing the Rocky Mountains.
“When I set out to do this, the question was will I be able to ride six days a week,” Sutton said in July. “So far, I’ve been able to do 50-plus miles a day and stay healthy, apart from some muscle pulls and generalized soreness.”
When reached in late July, Sutton reported he was in Nebraska, and the scenery certainly had changed. The mountainscapes are gone, replaced at first by low rolling hills. As he took the southern route along the Lincoln Highway, the path became flat with nothing but cornfields, soybean fields, railroad tracks and trains going by all day long. In southeastern Nebraska, he started to see some more trees and got onto a bike path which had some woods and shade.
“It was good to see some wildlife again,” Sutton said. “It was very pleasant compared to riding across the plains.”
One of the most interesting people he’s met out there along the way was a teenager who was working at Walmart in Montana, bringing groceries out for pickup orders. He spotted the Patriots decals on the side of Sutton’s camper and ran over and started into a long conversation about the New England Patriots, their championship dynasty and their current roster. He couldn’t have been more than 17 years old, but it seemed like he was born and raised in New England with his categorical knowledge of the Pats and the AFC East.
During the afternoon part of his ride. Sutton found himself on some dirt and gravel roads surrounded by farmland. He heard some grunts of an animal and he turned around to see a big goat chasing him up the road, gaining on him. Sutton started pedaling harder trying to put some distance between the goat and him, but this goat was unrelenting and actually ran through a field to try to cut him off when he took a corner. Sutton said he was fortunate the goat got waylaid in the fields, because he doesn’t know what he would have done had this goat caught up to him.
The most dangerous part of the trip was on a road called Bear Canyon Road, which turned into a narrow, rocky trail that was a mountain climb where it had gotten washed out by rains and was not ridable because of all the mud. Sutton ended up hiking and carrying his bike through 5 miles of this trail, alone deep in bear country. He had to go into survival mode. The trail was muddy, he had a flat tire and didn’t feel it was a good place to stop to fix a flat. As he rolled the bike beside him, the wheels would get caked with so much mud that they would stop spinning, and he had to stop four or five times to wipe them off. It took him a while to get out of that wilderness and back onto the main road.
Sutton’s wife has joined the trip, along with his pets, bringing comforts of home. His wife has been the driver of the camper where he stays overnight and navigator of his cycling route for this last two-thirds of the trip. In mid-July, they arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, and headed for Greater Omaha, area taking the Mo-Pac Trail and crossing over into Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Once he reaches D.C., Sutton will extend the ride to Annapolis, Maryland. He’ll ride around the U.S. Naval Academy and Chesapeake Bay, making this not only a Washington-to-Washington trip but a Pacific-to-Atlantic crossing of the continent. Depending on weather and other factors, Sutton said he might be able to get home before Labor Day.
He is taking donations and sharing updates on the progress of “Doc’s Long Ride Home” at www.facebook.com/donate/1291013448159389. Donors can also give to the Friends of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail at columbiagreenway.org.