Bikers traveling to 48 states stop in West Concord

It isn’t often you come across two women spending the summer riding their bicycles through all the states in the lower 48. Oh yes, and they are traveling with a pet rat riding in a carrier on the back of a bicycle.
Lizzy Trickey and Haley Winkelman are the two women and they stopped in West Concord last week on their way to their next stop in Rochester.
The two women started their trip on May 8 in their hometown of McMinnville, Oregon. Between then and December when they hope to arrive back in McMinnville they will visit every state with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii.
They described that route as a zig-zag pattern. They have biked across northern states from Oregon but also took one of their zigzags and went from South Dakota to Nebraska before heading north again to reach North Dakota. They crossed into Minnesota at Breckenridge, Winkelman said.
Both women are experienced cyclists, Trickey said, and they just decided they would like to make a cross country trip.
Winkelman said her father is also a cyclist; and the two of them had taken trips into Canada and also did an Oregon to New York City trip. The two women had gone on several smaller bike trips together, Trickey said, and decided to try this extensive one which is planned for about seven months.
They have been averaging about 55 miles a day, Winkelman said, more when they are traveling across a flatter terrain or when they get a tailwind
They camp in parks and church parking lots, they said, sometimes staying at Y’s or at homes of fellow cyclists that they know. The night before they arrived in West Concord they camped out in a park in New Prague and said they had to spend about four hours at a McDonald’s because of the heavy rains passing through the area.
They travel light with everything they need strapped to their bicycles, including a small tent, a camp stove such as a backpacker would carry and food and clothing. When they left West Concord they were planning on a shorter travel day heading to Rochester where they hoped to find a place to stay where they could shower and perhaps do some laundry.
“We try to be safe,” Trickey said of where they camp, adding the people they have met along their journey have been friendly.
The two decided before they left that since they also wanted to use their trip as a way to help others and so began checking out potential charities to fundraise for as part of their effort. Trickey said they began checking charities out on the internet and became interested in a small one called Watsi, a nonprofit healthcare outsourcing platform that enables individual donors to directly fund medical care for individuals in developing countries such as Kenya and Nepal.
They took a trip to the organization’s headquarters in San Francisco and were impressed by what the organization does and its transparency of operations.
“They are really transparent,” Trickey said. “If you look at a patient (on their website) and decide to donate you get an email when the treatment is funded and notified again when the treatment is completed.”
Trickey said that during their trip, she is blogging and updating their Facebook page, and there is a link where people can contact Watsi if they choose. Any donations, she pointed out, are made directly to Watsi.
There are some folks who are pledging to make donations per mile that the two travel, Trickey said, and others who make a donation from the link on their website.
From Rochester, the two plan to travel into Iowa and then into Wisconsin and continue their zig-zagging travel towards the East Coast. The goal is to get through the more northern states during the summer months and head back west through the southern states during the fall. Plans are for the late fall and early winter portion of the trip to see them heading up the California coast where the trek will be somewhat easier because of family living in the area.
With luck, they said, they will be back in Oregon by the first week of December “or as soon as possible.”
And about the rat. His name is Denali and he is traveling in a mail box that has been converted into convenient traveling accommodations and attached to the back of Trickey’s bicycle.
She explained she originally had two pet rats and when one of them died she spent more time with the remaining pet. Not wanting to leave him back in Oregon for half a year or more she decided to take him along.