A few weeks ago, a Hollister resident began a bicycle adventure across the United States, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Quest Richlife (his real name), is tackling the feat in memory of his friend Lorne, who committed suicide in 2013. Richlife also says that the ride will be “the culmination of a 40-year desire to achieve this goal.”
Richlife, who used to own and operate a glider business at the Hollister Municipal Airport, isn’t biking across the entire country in one trip. He’s breaking the roughly 3,000-mile distance into segments, and plans to finish the ride three to four years from now, in Cape Cod, Mass. At one point, he did consider biking the entire distance in one trip. Richlife first started thinking about longer rides when he was 19, living in Beaverton, Ore.
“I just got it into my head,” he says. “When I was 19 or 20, I set off on my first long-distance tour, which lasted about three weeks, from Beaverton to the Southern Oregon coast. First day was nice, but everything after that was rain and wind—miserable.” But Richlife, who also says that biking is something that is “just a part of [him],” was ready for more.
“I wanted to do the Tour de America, circumnavigating the U.S. on bicycle. I wanted some adventure. Wanted to see the country.“
Now is Richlife’s moment, albeit with some minor adjustments. Richlife, who will be 60 this year, says he didn’t want to be alone on the road for four months. Navigating across the entire nation in one trip, through all the varied terrain, while carrying months worth of gear, may have been too difficult. “I thought that, by myself, it would be too much stress, too much loneliness, and I would maybe burn out,” he said.
Not one to succumb to obstacles, Richlife broke up the distance, planning a first leg of approximately 440 miles over the course of two and a half weeks, to the California/Nevada border. He started his first ride on May 25 near the Cliff House at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. After putting 190 miles on his road bike, and 250 miles on his hybrid/touring bike, he returned to Hollister for a few weeks break. Richlife plans to head out to the California/Nevada border in early September with his bike in his truck to pick up where he left off.
All of this requires careful planning and attention to detail. “The ride itself is going to be an adventure, but the planning is going to be challenging too,” he says. But Richlife is the sort of person that sets a goal, and sees it through. During his first ride, his daily concerns included carrying clothing, water and snacks. He also had to plan where he would sleep each night, and consider using two different bikes for two different types of terrain. And of course, he had to learn the ins and outs of Google Maps, which he used with varying success.
“I was going to Google Maps, and putting in my destination and where I was, and several times I got lost. The second or third day, it lead me to a dead-end.” That turned out to be his longest day on a bike, when he rode 69 miles.
The first leg also taught him important lessons about his limitations. “I tried to go up to Pioneer, 15 miles east of Jackson, and up over Carson Pass. But it’s an 8,500 foot pass and I just didn’t think I had it in me. So I had to change my plan.” Instead, Richlife went over a lower pass in the Sierra —Beckwourth Pass. He finished the first part of his adventure at Hallelujah Junction, near the California/Nevada border on June 11.
Richlife keeps a blog as he rides. It is clear that his friend Lorne, and suicide in general—what Richlife calls “the big S”— is never far from his mind. And the long days of biking give him plenty of time to think. His thought of the day on June 2, more than one week into his first ride, was, “We, as humans, seem to be much happier and with less inclination to self-loathing and self-destruction, if we just focus on our own lives, and what we’re capable of, rather than the lives of others.”
You can follow along as Richlife completes his ride in the next few years by visiting his website. Richlife also asks that people take some time to browse and support organizations that work to prevent suicide, such as the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program, and The Trevor Project for LGBTQ Youth and Young Adults. He is also planning on making regular donations to The Lorne Lawry Memorial Scholarship in memory of his friend.
At the end of a long day of biking, Richlife says it the thought of the positive impact he may be making that keeps him going. “If I help to prevent even one suicide, then I will have been successful.”
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