Dad's Cross-Country Bike Journey Set To End At Jersey Shore

NEW JERSEY — Like thousands of others heading to the beach for the Fourth of July weekend, Randy Wussler will be rolling into the Shore for a visit.

Wussler, however, isn’t coming down the Garden State Parkway, the way he and his wife, Tish, did as kids growing up in North Jersey. Wussler is coming in on two tires, finishing a cross-country bicycle journey that started two months ago.

He hopes to end it by dipping his bicycle tires in the Atlantic Ocean in Manasquan, completing a quest that began with his tires in the water of the Pacific Ocean on April 20 in Torrey Pines, California, and that has taken him and Tish through 12 states plus the District of Columbia.

“I’ve seen so many things,” Wussler, 58, said Wednesday from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I’ve met so many wonderful people and I’ve experienced so much.”

The plan to bicycle 3,300 miles is something Wussler said he’d been considering for several years. He’s been an avid bicyclist for decades and an endurance athlete; he’s run in 15 marathons and has competed in triathlons. Last year he participated in an Ironman competition, which involves 112 miles of biking, a 2.4-mile swim and running a marathon, 26.2 miles.

“It’s always been in my head,” Wussler said. “Right after I finished the ironman, within three hours I was sitting in the hotel thinking, ‘OK, what’s next.’ ”

The journey, which he has blogged about along the way, hasn’t simply been about a display of endurance or a chance to see the sights, however. Wussler has been raising funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, because the couple’s daughter, Lexie, has been living with Type 1 diabetes since she was an infant.

“It was real important that we had a purpose other than ‘I retired, hey let’s go do something crazy,’ “ he said.

“I have never done fundraising. It’s not part of my DNA,” said Wussler, who spent his career as a product manager in data, and later was involved in commercial real estate. But the fundraising for the foundation — Wussler has raised $19,474 of his $20,000 goal as of Friday — “was the gel that brought everything together.”

“It was a very natural choice for us to try to support JDRF, because when she was younger they were so supportive of us,” he said.

For those with Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas produces little to no insulin, the hormone necessary for turning food into energy. It requires constant vigilance, Wussler said, monitoring blood glucose levels, taking insulin injections and watching their diets, “and the specter of the long-term impacts of this monster takes an incredible physical and mental toll,” Wussler said.

Lexie created a video to support the fundraising effort (you can see it here).

“It was kind of the unifying force,” he said.

The entire journey has been a family affair, Tish said. Their son, Bailey, created the website where Wussler has been blogging about the journey.

Tish, meanwhile, has been accompanying her husband across the country in their Honda Odyssey, carrying her own bicycle and one of his — Wussler has been using two bikes on the journey — while setting up motel stays in some places, seeing family, and taking the opportunity to do some sightseeing along the way.

Wussler said he rides a Surly Disc bicycle, which is an all-steel touring bike that is designed for hauling things, on the stretches where he was carrying a tent and camping. “It’s very forgiving on bumps and it’s meant for long riding allowing for upright riding which is easier.”

The second bike is a specialized Roubaix Expert, with a light carbon frame and electronic shifting. “ You sacrifice a little in the comfort but you pick up a lot of speed,” he said. “It’s just a nice quick bike, you can cover more miles.”

The couple, who met while they were students at Penn State University — he was from Scotch Plains, she was from Bayonne — have been together since college. They moved to San Diego in 1986 as Tish pursued a job in aerospace engineering, and what they thought would be a few years’ stay turned into building a life on the West Coast. They have been married for nearly 35 years, they said.

“He was trying to sell me on the trip, saying ‘We’re going to all these different places, you can see your family,’ ” Tish said. “There was no way I was not going to be by his side for the two to three months it would take.”

“I don’t like being without him,” Tish said.

Bicycling across the country was something that had to wait until he retired, Wussler said, because of the time it would involve and because of the potential for bumps in the road, literally and figuratively, along the way.

“You have to allow a lot of time for this because you don’t know all the variables,” he said. Wussler anticipated having to deal with rainstorms, flat tires (only one) and potential equipment challenges, but it wasn’t until they got to Lancaster that they encountered a significant disruption: COVID.

Wussler woke up with symptoms on June 19 and was ill for three days before finally starting to feel up to riding again late in the week.

They were ahead of schedule for arriving in Manasquan until that point.

“We’re hoping to get in before the Fourth of July,” Wussler said, acknowledging the traffic that the holiday weekend brings to the Shore. On Thursday he rode to New Holland, about 10 miles from Lancaster, to see how it felt, and was hoping to get back on the road to his next main stop in Furlong, Pennsylvania, where his brother lives, by the weekend. The stretch from Lancaster to Furlong is about 90 miles, he said, and the final stretch from there to Manasquan is about 70 miles.

Wussler said he was fully prepared for the possibility that it will take longer as he continues to recover from COVID.

“I’ve probably made tens of hundreds of adjustments to the course during this trip,” he said. “This is just one of those adjustments.”

That’s because the trip for Wussler has been far less about the exact timing and far more about the journey itself. After spending most of the last 40-plus years in libraries during graduate school and then in offices in the corporate world, getting out in the open air was a huge draw for him to make the trip.

“I really like wide open spaces,” Wussler said. “I just feel so free and so alive when I’m outside.”

What surprised him, however, was how each part of the journey would bring that experience in such different ways. The trip he mapped out was a combination of long-distance bicycle routes created through the Adventure Cycling Association, he said.

Wussler didn’t ride every day; cycling groups recommend taking breaks along the way, and that’s when he and Tish would take sightseeing trips. They stopped at the Grand Canyon, spent time in St. Louis, visited Mammoth Cave, and toured Washington, D.C., among others.

Wussler said the biggest surprise to him was how safe he felt riding. In areas where the journey was along roads, it avoided main streets, favoring the routes less traveled.

“In New Mexico I was passed by one car in two days,” he said. Northern Virginia was the most heavily traveled piece of the trip, because of the sheer population density, he said.

The trip from there into southern Pennsylvania, where he entered at New Freedom, PA, was a stark contrast.

“You’re on this 50-mile bike trail, and you’re in the woods so you have this canopy over your head,” Wussler said.

The daily rides were about 8 hours long, with Wussler getting up early and on the road by 7 a.m. after packing up his gear, which was more involved in areas where he camped out, pitching a tent in a town square or behind a firehouse.

In Kentucky, Tish said, there was a church whose ministry is dedicated to serving the bicyclists who come through, and allows them to sleep in the church, provides a place to shower and more.

“I thought that was so cool,” she said.

Wussler averaged 70 miles a day most of the trip, with a 102-mile ride from Oklahoma City to Tulsa his longest stretch.

“I thought Oklahoma was going to be a dust bowl,” he said. “It was beautiful, with green hills and farmland.”

On nights where they were staying in a motel, Randy and Tish would get everything set up for the next day’s trip, grab a quick meal in the room, and he would blog before going to sleep by 8:30 or 9 p.m.

“It was those logistics that were more than we were expecting,” he said, “the setting up and taking down every day.”

Though the completion of his journey has been a bit delayed, Wussler said if he had to deal with COVID, this was likely the best point in the journey because he is so close to the end.

“If this had happened in Illinois with 1,200 miles to go, I don’t know what I would have done,” he said. “I know for a fact that I can do 170 miles between now and July 12,” which is the date the couple is heading back west.

But the trip has been far more about the journey than the destination, he said.

“When you have the road to yourself you can appreciate everything – you get a different perspective,” he said. “Every day I am grateful.”

UPDATE: On Monday, Wussler wrote on his blog that he will be finishing his ride formally on Saturday in Manasquan:

"No pedaling today. A nice relaxing day binging Stranger Things and watching the rain.

A bit of a change of plans for the finish based on a very nice surprise.

My brother Don decided to fly in from CA for the completion of the trek but can’t get here until Friday. Additionally, my brother Joel is out of town until Friday. As a result, I’ve decided to wait until Saturday to finish the ride. I’m going to ride most of the way to Manasquan tomorrow (Tuesday) but hold off on the last mile or so until more of my family can be with us to celebrate. We’re planning on a very early finish on Saturday to hopefully help family from Central NJ avoid as much Parkway traffic as possible on a July 4th weekend. The current plan is to get to the beach at 8 a.m. on Saturday the 2nd. We’re still figuring out what we’re going to do afterwards. More details as they become available.