At a point in life when most people are ready to kick back and relax, Robb Myer is doing the opposite. He’s about to spend two months pedaling his bicycle across the continental United States.
Myer, 71, leaves from San Diego on Saturday, March 4, and expects to roll into St. Augustine, Florida, on or about April 24. At a little over 3,000 miles, it’s to be the longest ride Myer has ever attempted.
“I’m excited about starting the tour, but a little anxious as I’m the oldest one in the group and 11 years older than the average,” he acknowledged recently.
That doesn’t mean he’s unprepared.
A researcher who works in crew systems and aviation operations at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Myer has been a bicycling enthusiast for decades.
It’s not unusual for him to ride 9,000 miles over the course of a year. He often rides his bike to work and enjoys weekend or evening rides organized through the Peninsula Bicycling Association.
“I do a lot of week-long bike rides,” Myer said, a veteran of many events such as the popular Bike Virginia tour. “So, this is the equivalent of eight week-long bike rides back to back to back.”
He described his cross-country trek as challenging, but within his grasp. After all, he’s not trying to set a world record.
“It’s not a race,” he said. “It’s anything but a race.”
The company organizing Myer’s ride works to make the experience a good one for participants. The route is chosen to be visually interesting. It will wind past points of interest where members of the group of about 27 bicyclists can stop and take in the sights.
“You see people out there with full-sized cameras, binoculars, notebooks,” Myer said. “People will stop anytime they find something interesting. Riding someplace at 10 miles per hour, you just see a lot more than if zipping by someplace on the interstate.”
In most locations, participants will sleep in tents supplied by organizers. In others, they’ll bed down in public school gymnasiums or National Guard armories. In a few places, they’ll sleep in motels. Organizers build in one day of rest per week. There’s lots of opportunity to socialize with fellow travelers.
“I’m excited,” Myer said. “California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona are all states I haven’t ridden through before. My goal is to do all the states.”
Myer served in the Air Force for 26 years — much of it as a pilot flying C-141 aircraft — before coming to work at NASA almost 20 years ago.
His love affair with bicycles can be traced back to Okinawa, Japan, in the early 1970s. When stationed there in the Air Force, he was primarily a long-distance runner. He’d done that in both high school and college. But in Okinawa, a friend introduced him to the joys of long, sightseeing bike rides.
On weekends, the friends would ride all over the northern part of the island. The seed was planted.
Leaping ahead to 1984, Myer was living near Atlanta. He was still primarily a runner when a friend encouraged him to give triathlons a shot. He was already a strong runner and swimmer, but he wanted to improve his biking. So, he joined a bike club and quickly found he loved the riding and the camaraderie.
He did his first week-long bike ride in 1986 and has averaged about two a year ever since.
Myer said he enjoys his work at NASA Langley almost as much as peddling. He works for Science Applications International Corp. on the LITES II contract. He and his teammates research unmanned aircraft systems in the national air space. They study simulated encounters between unmanned systems and piloted aircraft with the goal of developing ways of helping UAS operators fly drones more safely around commercial aircraft.
Myer likes the work so much he’s not quite ready to embrace a life of leisure.
“This ride is sort of my retirement adventure, although, I think I’ll just take two months off and come back to work,” Myer said, laughing. He plans to shift to working three days a week when he returns from his transcontinental adventure.
“This will be my transition from full time to part time,” Myer said. “The projects we work on are pretty exciting.”