Bedichek's "Cool" Bike Ride

In 1908, Great-Granddaddy bicycled from Eddy to El Paso. These maps show his route, as best as I can work out.

(**Update: Since this post was originally published, I found in original documents from Great-Granddaddy himself that he actually rode all the way to Deming, NM, over 900 miles. Also, the trip was in spring of 1909.)

Southern Pacific Railroad route (source cprr.org)

I grew up knowing about this bike ride. I don't think it really ever sunk in. Younger Me thought, "Yeah, Bedichek road his bike to El Paso. Cool."

1908 bike from bikeindex.org

Come on, Younger Me, he rode a ONE-SPEED 1908 bike over 800 miles of dirt and rocky trails along railroad tracks -- AND across the US's highest railroad bridge!!! Today, Older Me can hardly imagine. I would think it an exaggeration if it weren't documented by Great-Grandmother Lillian (whom I believe).

Here is an excerpt from Lillian's "The Jumping-off Place."

Pecos River High Bridge -- how it looked when he crossed it.

In the summer of 1908, he rode out of the little central Texas village of Eddy...on the bicycle that was to take him to El Paso eight hundred miles away. Pedaling happily along vast fields of cotton, rank and smelling powerfully of army worms, he sensed a blessed relief. For once he was free from walls and roofs that shut out the sky, from the straitjacket of obligations and decisions. He had only to keep traveling westward to where land was to be had for the asking.

He followed the railroad because the trail paralleled the track. Automobiles and roads with their friendly signs were then and there nonexistent. City streets disappeared a short distance out of town. Rough, rutted country roads turned into a sea of mud under torrential rains. That happened before he was sixty miles from home, and he had to hole up in a country hotel at Bartlett for four days.

...Time made little difference; he was in no particular hurry. A good camping place, plenty of water and shade, a good fishing hole might delay him for a day or two. Once in a while, he stopped to work for a farmer in exchange for a square meal. Still, he felt a strange elation as he led his bicycle over the spidery network of steel spanning the Pecos River canyon, at the time one of the world's highest railroad bridges; and experienced a real triumph as he wheeled into El Paso some six weeks after his start.

I did the math. Eight-hundred-fifty miles in six weeks means an average of one-hundred-forty miles per week -- even with the several-day stops along the way. I wonder how friends and family reacted when he told them his plans! People -- both before and during his trip -- must have thought he was a loon. But he was not deterred -- and he succeeded.

Why did he make this trip? We'll get to that, later...

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