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| Stephen Kosacz on the shore of Lake Superior, Marquette, Wisconsin (courtesy photo) |
ELIOT & CAPE NEDDICK -
The idea to bicycle across the United States started in May
2011 at Ceres Bakery in Portsmouth when Peter Billipp of Eliot ran into Stephen
Kosacz of Cape Neddick.
Billipp, a commercial real estate broker at Kane Company,
and Kosacz, owner of Autoworks in Kittery and vice chairman of the Seacoast
Energy Initiative, have known each other, off and on, for thirty years. But a
coast-to-coast trip, covering more than 3,600 miles, was something they had
never imagined before.
While both may be considered senior citizens (Kosacz is 63
and Billipp is 59), they had been keeping in shape all their lives. Billipp is
an avid hiker, bicyclist, and Nordic skier of the White Mountains while Kosacz
races Lasers, an Olympic class single handed dinghy, cycles, works out at the
gym, and cross country ski raced with Peter decades ago.
“For me, the toughest part was the mental aspect” said
Kosacz. “Preparation, online research of what to leave behind, wondering if we
could climb all those snow covered peaks in the Cascades right at the beginning
of the trip, and then a few days later get over the Continental Divide in the
Rockies at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park produced a fair amount of
anxiety.”
The epic journey is a great example of what Kosacz espouses
though his work with the Seacoast Energy Initiative, and is a living testament
to energy conservation.
SEI works with residents in Kittery, Eliot, York, South
Berwick, North Berwick and Ogunquit to improve the energy efficiency of their
homes.
“We worked with Efficiency Maine to reduce energy
consumption of residential homes through a revolving loan program they set up,”
Kosacz said. “If people pay down the loans to weatherize their homes, those
funds became available to other homeowners.”
The group set up a half million dollar revolving loan fund.
Homeowners could borrow up to $10,000 with zero percent interest if they paid
the loan off in three years, and if loan went to improvements. The idea for SEI
came to him during another journey.
“I was inspired while on a trip to New Zealand in winter of
2009,” he said. “I was amazed by what other countries were doing to reduce
energy consumption.”
The bike trip with Billipp called upon all of their energy
reserves, as they traveled through five mountain passes as high as 5,600 feet
in the first week. Fifty-seven days later, they pedaled back to Maine.
“I like to do physically demanding trips,” Kosacz said. “I’m
not a cruise type of person”
The trip began on July 5 when the two flew to Seattle, took
a bus up to Anacortes in the San Juan Islands, and the following morning
started pedaling home.
They had shipped their bicycles ahead of time and picked
them up from the bike shop on the morning of July 6, loaded them with their
panniers filled with spare tires, tubes, camping and sleeping gear, clothing,
food, and headed out to the Cascades. They biked all but two days, on which
they rested, they were welcomed by friends and family on August 31 as they road
into the Atlantic Ocean at York Harbor Beach.
“Once we had the mountains behind us, we gained confidence,”
they said.
“For me the most spectacular part was Logan Pass on the Road
to the Sun where the highway had been cleared of a rock and mud slide the night
before. As we wound our way up we
could see clouds, backlit by the sun, cascading over the ridges. At the summit I hiked in the snowfields
to see mountain goats with the kids,” Kosacz said. “Until you witness it
firsthand it is hard to comprehend how much moves by rail in this country:
freight trains are carrying containers filled with goods from the Far East,
coal from Montana, grain from the Midwest.”
It seemed to take forever to cross eastern Montana and North
Dakota where every day was basically a grind as they rode through hundreds of
miles of corn, wheat, soybean, or hay fields in the scorching record heat. With temperatures in the high 90s and
low 100s, the water bottles were quickly emptied but the evaporation that comes
from riding at 15 – 20 miles per hour cooled them off.
“We were relieved to get to Minnesota where it was green
again from the thousands of ponds and lakes,” they said. “ After crossing
Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (Duluth is a great city to visit
with all of its activity of grain, coal, and iron ore being transferred to
boats to cross the Great Lakes), we entered Ontario Canada at Sault Ste Marie
re-entering the US at Niagara Falls.”
Returning to New England brought familiar sights and welcome
relief from the heat and western mountains.
“Aside from the last 100 feet of our journey, the happiest
day for me was descending the Adirondacks into Ticonderoga NY, seeing the Green
Mountains of Vermont, crossing the lower end of Lake Champlain on a cable
barge, and making our lunch on the village green of Orwell, Vermont. After the mountains of the West we knew
could go over anything.”
In addition to many memorable scenic vistas, they saw some
less attractive sights as well.
“It’s sad to see some towns pretty empty. Imagine a town the
size of South Berwick but less prosperous. On Indian land, we spoke with people
who said gambling had sucked the lifeblood out this town,” Kosacz said.
“The most dangerous part of the trip was riding on the
Trans-Canada highway across Ontario – a two-lane highway with no paved
shoulders. We cringed every time a
tractor trailer or giant RV passed us in the rain wondering if this was ‘it,’”
said Kosacz, who talked with Canadians about their health care system, marveled
at the wind turbine blades being transported from factories in South Dakota
heading to Montana, Oregon, and Canada, and was impressed by an electrician
they met in a public campground in Shelby Montana. “He was wiring the wind
turbine generators but was terrified of heights. He said ‘I’m 300 feet up inside the tower, I
don’t dare look down, I just focus completely on what’s directly in front of
me.’”
What’s directly in front of Kosacz and Billipp now? Miles of
memories, lots of time to rest and recover, and plans for the next trip.
