Jim McMullen and Art McMurdie's 3,000-mile bicycle trek across the United States started as a later-in-life adventure to break up the monotony of retirement and prove that the two men and their three friends could still accomplish something even their younger selves might have found grueling.
But along the way, the group also found enlightenment, discovering people and places in the country they never knew existed.
Like the time an attorney in Marathon, Texas, population 455, had them to her home for dinner, or the time they signed a visitor book at a shop in Big Cane, La., and saw signatures from Norwegian cyclists who had completed the same trip.
McMurdie, 65, of Takoma Park, and McMullen took the trip with three friends McMullen met in the Peace Corps in the 1960s while stationed in the Philippines. In a small, ragged town in California the group happened across a Philippines-style restaurant. The restaurant owners reminded them of the Filipinos they helped in the Peace Corps more than 40 years ago.
"We said, ‘Jesus, the Peace Corps should be here!'" McMullen said, recalling rural, undeveloped towns along the Florida panhandle.
Most nights they stayed in motels but some nights, depending on where they ended up, they would camp out in places such as the front lawn of a historical society building in Louisiana and at a community center in Texas.
The route, which McMullen found in a popular cycling magazine, took them across the southeast and southwest United States, through poor agricultural communities and barren desert towns along the Mexican border.
On a rotating schedule, four of the men would bike between 50 and 75 miles per day, while the fifth would drive a large van they bought to carry luggage and take them home. The van still sits outside McMullen's house, the odor of sweat still evident. The only amenity, a cardboard box of travel guides and books they call their "library," was still sitting near the front seat.
The trip was about 3,100 miles with each cyclist pedaling about 2,500 miles. The group completed the trip April 27 with a dip in the Pacific Ocean.
McMurdie and McMullen, friends of more than 30 years, trained all winter, cycling about 120 miles a week, often along Beach Drive in Silver Spring.
"I thought he was nuts," said McMurdie's wife, Ellen, of Art's decision to go on the trip.
Their wives followed their progress on GoogleEarth, getting an up-close glimpse of their travels in real time thanks to a Global Positioning System McMullen wore on his arm. McMullen's wife, Betty Scott, liked keeping tabs on her husband but enjoyed the two months of freedom as well.
"I sort of equated it to when you go away to college," Scott joked. "It was very liberating in some respects but I was happy to see him home safe and sound."
McMurdie, a less avid cyclist than McMullen, did worry he wouldn't make it, but once the group neared the California border, theirspirits definitely improved.
"The tone changed in Arizona when we realized we were going to make it; the energy really went up," said McMurdie, a former historic preservationist and photographer.
Appreciation of the physical accomplishment of the trip may have come late for the men – preceded by photographs of different towns and beautiful scenery, the most recent photograph on the trip's Web site shows the men flexing with their shirts off – but it wasn't totally lost.
Even for active seniors, there was pride in feeling young again — just not too young.
"[At the beginning of the trip] we said, ‘Hey let's see if we can get the body of a teenager.' It doesn't quite work out like that," he said.
"We ended up just getting good bodies for 65-year-olds," McMurdie interjected with a laugh.
