My Adventures Around the World: Transamerica

Summer 2025

By: Derek Rich

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Having completed as much of the Western Express cycling route last summer in 2024 as I could before encountering the closed roadway across Colorado, I finished the rest of this summer and continued to the Atlantic Ocean on my own, better version of the Transamerica Bicycling Route. I began in Grand Junction with my Canyon Grizl loaded with panniers and rode solo the remaining approximately 2,100 miles across middle America.

From Grand Junction, I conquered the high passes of the Rocky Mountains with a slight detour due to a snowstorm west of Salida. When I reached Pueblo, I altered the Transamerica route to make it much safer going across the thunderstorm prone section of Kansa and Missouri. My route had numerous hotels spaced perfectly apart to make it much safer than the traditional route. I did the same thing going through southern Missouri as the normal route was idiotic taking riders on a very inefficient and dangerous route with no shelter, roads with no shoulders and no services.

Once into the beautiful greenery of Kentucky and Virginia, I deviated from the official Transamerica again as it took back roads with no help or services to be found. Why risk failure when there were far better options to ride through to the border of Virginia by Pikeville!!? I also found a beautiful route through central Virginia over to Norfolk and ended my Transamerica where it should have ended, Virginia Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. If you followed the official route, congratulations, you went from San Francisco Bay to the Chesapeake Bay and did not truly cross the country completely. My Western Express and Transamerica traversed the entire length of the middle of the United States from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. It was safer and far more efficient.