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Duo, in middle of cross-country bicycle trip, stops in Stevens Point
By MIKE KEMMETER of The Gazette
Don't expect to see Bill Tucker and Monty Clish challenging two-time Tour
de France winner Lance Armstrong in a bicycle race. Tucker and Clish, who are
in the midst of a three-month journey across the country and made a stop in
Stevens Point last week, would rather take their time and enjoy the trip.
Tucker, of Greeley, Col., and Clish, of Minneapolis, Minn., are bicycling from
Seattle to Washington D.C. and the journey is not all about speed. They left
Seattle June 3 and about 2,600 miles later, the pair spent an evening in Portage
County Wednesday, July 19.
Tucker, 29, said he's always wanted to ride a bike across the country and talked
his boss, who is also a bicyclist, into giving Tucker three months off. Once
he got the Ok to leave his cubicle at Hewlett Packard, Clish - who works as
a pizza deliveryman, an actor and clown - received a phone call. "He said he's
wasn't sure he could do it alone," Clish, 31, who grew up in the New Richmond
area, said. "Then he asked 'Do you want to come?' "For me, I'm trying to encourage
people to follow their dreams. I've always wanted to explore the country. "When
you're riding a bike, you see things that you'd zip by at 65 miles an hour."
One place the guys visited on their way to Stevens Point was Neillsville, visiting
the replica of the world's largest piece of cheese, the world's largest talking
cow and the Wisconsin Pavilion from the New York's World Fair. "We like to find
our stops. We had to stop in Neillsville. It's that kind of stuff that's great,"
Tucker said. The two also say the people they've met along the way have been
great. They remember many of the faces and refer to people they've met by their
first names. There's plenty of tales from the journey too. About 30 miles east
of Fargo, North Dakota, Bill and Monty saw a rollover accident on the highway.
As the first people on the scene, they helped pull a red-haired girl from the
van. People have opened their arms to them too. Like the people from the Rush
River Bakery in Ellsworth who gave them breakfast. Or the guy they met near
Fargo who stopped them, brought them into his house and gave them cookies and
Cokes. The pair haven't paid for camping since Missoula, Montana - a stretch
of about 1,000 miles. They've camped in backyards - including one in Stevens
Point Wednesday night. They once got lost looking for a campground and a passing
motorist stopped them and said the two could sleep on his land. Then in New
Town, North Dakota, Bill and Monty camped in a city park near the police station.
An officer told them to stop at the station in the morning to take a shower.
Those stories show how spontaneous their journey is. Well, they say they have
to be in Rochester, New York on August 6, Washington D.C. on August 20 and Bill
says he has to be "back in my cubicle" September 5. The stop in the nation's
capitol is an important one for the duo. They'll participate in a bicycle rally
(not of the Harley-Davidson type) to promote the human-powered two-wheelers
in Cycle America 2000. The event's goal is to create awareness for a National
Bicycle Greenway, a bike trail across America. "There's an opportunity to support
bicycling at a national level. The bike is a good means of transportation,"
Clish said. While they know where they will be for those three dates, it's anybody's
guess where they'll be in between, averaging 60-80 miles a day. "At first, we
took a planned route. I was really nervous," Tucker said. "Now, after a month,
who knows where we're going to be in five minutes." With today's increasing
technology, people can keep track of where they've been, though. Tucker's friend
is updating a website telling of their travels at http://www7.50megs.com/degutan/bikeTrip.htm.
Bill writes messages through a pocket computer with e-mail access. Bill and
Monty send pictures of their adventures through the mail and they're posted
on the website too.
