by Andrew Alonzo | aalonzo@claremont-courier.com

Arlo Tanenbaum completed the journey of a lifetime last week: a near 6,000-mile bicycle ride across the country from the beaches of New Jersey to California’s southern border with Mexico, before ending back up in his hometown of Claremont.

Friends and family welcomed the 21-year-old home July 16 with an ice cream social at Memorial Park. As a finishing touch, Tanenbaum rode a four-mile victory lap around local streets to celebrate the occasion.

Claremont resident and recent college grad Arlo Tanenbaum pictured July 16 at Memorial Park following his cross-country 58-day, 6,000-mile bike trip. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

Tanenbaum made the 5,964 mile, 58 day trip with Haverford College friends Matt Katz, 26,  and Miles Colescott, 22.

“The idea, which was originally Miles’s who lives in Montana, he wanted to bike home,” Tanenbaum said. “But then the trip started spiraling into doing all the way from one coast to the other, and also from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.

“Everything started from not such a small idea, but it continually got more ambitious as the planning went on.”

On May 18, the day after Tanenbaum and Colescott graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, they and fellow alumni Katz, prepared with Colescott to ride to Missoula, Montana. The trio undertook no special training ahead of time, Tanenbaum said, adding the friends were in good physical shape at the time. But, just in case, the friends brought Colescott’s car; the trio alternated driving ahead to the day’s designated endpoint, with the other two catching up later.

They rode about 110 miles every day, eventually traversing 15 states, three countries, and touching two oceans. Their days ended with dinner and laughter in camp, or with friends and family along the route.

The idea of a cross-country ride had been on Tanenbaum’s mind for some time. He cited  famed ultra-endurance cyclist Lael Wilcox as inspiration. Now that it’s a reality, “It’s just really nice that we actually made it happen,” he said.

(L-R) On day 27, Matt Katz and Arlo Tanenbaum at the highest point of their cross-country trip, the 9,660-ft elevation Powder River Pass in Wyoming. Photo/courtesy of Arlo Tanenbaum

There were mental and physical challenges, including the temptation to quit. “The most challenging part I guess was just like keeping the momentum going,” Tanenbaum said. “I don’t think there was ever a question of can. But I think because there were three of us, if one person had the motivation to keep going, it helped everybody else feel like, ‘Well, I’m not going to be the one to call it.’ So, we definitely kept each other in check.”

Days like the one they spend pedaling from Custer, South Dakota, to Spearfish, South Dakota helped keep them motivated, Tanenbaum said. Following an intense week of cycling through South Dakota, the group found themselves riding by the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore, before ending the day with a shared meal in Spearfish.

“That was just like a really wonderful day overall,” Tanenbaum said. “We all felt good. We all got to see really beautiful sights and then we had a great dinner and a great host in Spearfish. And that sort of just felt like this is what the trip’s about, seeing things that I didn’t really know existed beforehand and meeting people I’ve never met who were very generous. And just really enjoying riding the bike.”

The trio began the journey in Ocean City, New Jersey, then pedaled on to Pennsylvania to its southern border with Maryland, on to Pittsburgh, and then Geneva, Ohio, where they watched friends compete at the NCAA Division-III Outdoor Track and Field Nationals. From there they went through Cleveland and Bowling Green, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Missoula, Montana, Idaho, Washington, the Canadian border, Oregon, and finally California, where they visited Eureka and San Francisco before detouring through Carmel Valley to avoid landslides on Pacific Coast Highway near Big Sur. They pedaled through Santa Barbara and Santa Monica, then spent their final night in San Clemente before hitting the Mexican border in San Ysidro and heading north to Claremont on July 15.