Morro Bay man finishes cross-country ride (on esk8) — and the Smithsonian gets his skateboard

lol all I can think about is how much it must have sucked to ride the whole way swapping batteries every 5-7 miles :rofl:

You know what would suck even more? Pushing the entire way. On a short board. In 1976. Then 3 more times later. :exploding_head: We’re so spoiled. Check out the video Jack posted above. That took some serious dedication. Amazing.

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@OldSkateGuy how did you manage to avoid busy highways? Was there any areas that you had to drive due to un-skateable / too dangerous?

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@Irdesigns - I have pushed across America four times, so I’ve gotten fairly good at route planning. The route I used for the e-board crossing was a hybrid of the routes I had used before. Out west I was mainly on secondary highways, there aren’t a lot of choices in states like Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska. I avoided four lane highways as if they were the plague! From eastern Nebraska onward I was able to utilize a lot of county roads, usually these are in decent condition and have very little traffic. I also made use of “rails to trails” bike paths whenever I could. My favorite was the Great Allegheny Passage between McKeesport, Pennsylvania and Cumberland, Maryland, about 130 miles of crushed limestone…and no cars!

There were a few bridges that were too unsafe to ride over, we also hit a seven mile section of dirt road on the very eastern side of Nebraska, with no alternative available we drove that section.

Riding through large cities was my least favorite, unless I could find a bike path such as I did in Des Moines, Iowa and Washington DC. Funny story, I got lost in Des Moines when the bike path ended, and since I don’t like looking at my phone or wearing earbuds while riding, I called my friend and 1984 cross country teammate, Gary Fluitt, who was following me via “location sharing” on Google maps. I held the phone to my ear as he gave me turn by turn instructions until I got back on the bike path.

Every night we would let Gary know our ending location and where we wanted to get to the next day. He would then look at our pre-planned route on Google maps and also Google Earth and send us a link the next morning with any changes he thought were needed.

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