About our trip

Why are we doing this?

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After a roller-coaster first year of teaching, new friends Seth and Jack talked about doing something memorable to take advantage of their first summer as teachers. A lifelong dream of Jack's has always been to ride cross country, and from the first day he had a partner-in-crime, Seth, who was looking for a good adventure as well. The two have talked, planned, bought gear and trained like crazy over the past eight months in preparation for their maiden voyage.

Seth and Jack decided on a route and will be taking two bike routes cross country. Mixing the vast openness, solitude and sweeping mountains of the west with the rolling hills and green farms of the east, the duo will bike from San Francisco, CA to Yorktown, VA starting June 11, 2013.

We will take the Western Express Route from San Francisco to Pueblo, and the TransAmerica Trail from Pueblo, CO to Yorktown, VA

Who are we?

Jack Rodenfels

As a native of Columbus, OH, Jack has proudly adopted North Carolina as his home over the last 5+ years. Jack has been seriously biking since he left Ohio and went to college at Elon University, and has always dreamed of the day he could take a summer and ride cross country... a perk of having his current job as a middle school English teacher in Henderson, NC. An eternal lover of small market sports franchises, he looks forward to his beloved Pittsburgh Pirates breaking their 20 year sub .500 streak with text updates from the road this summer. Some of his favorite things include a good microbrew, arguing with his Michigan roommate about Ohio State athletic dominance and cultivating his dream of becoming a semi-professional whiffle ball player.

Seth Saeugling

Seth was born and raised in the Midwest college town of Iowa City, Iowa and then ventured north to Minnesota for college and then onto rural Warren County, North Carolina to teach high school. The heartland raised him. His dreams are to live in a renovated shipping container in the woods, play basketball overseas, be a great teacher, spend time learning from Assatta Shakur in Cuba, and to be a great dad. He’s most at peace when on the pickup basketball court, playing chess, reading, surrounded by the family, and spending time outside in pretty nature. Ball is life. He met Jack in Houston last summer while training to be a teacher. When Jack told him about the bike trip and when he asked if he’d be up for joining he responded, in the words of Tupac, “Let’s ride.”