East Bay Dinner

"Bicycling Across America: 3,300 Miles Coast-to-Coast in 59 Days; . . . and 56 Nights in a Tent"

Thursday, March 22, no-host cocktails/social hour - 6 pm, dinner - 7:00, program - 8:00, Berkeley Yacht Club on the Berkeley Marina, one block north of the west end of University Avenue (ample free parking is available in the Marina parking lots).

In the summer of 1979 Tim Loughman, then residing in New York City, phoned his brother Bill, residing in Berkeley and said, "You doing anything over the next month or two? I'm going to ride my bike to Atlanta. I was thinking of then packaging the bike and taking the train to California and then the two of us could ride bikes back to New York. We could avoid the worst of the summer heat by taking a northern route. What do you think?" Bill, with little experience (one ride along the coast from Berkeley to Morro Bay) and no equipment for such a trip, reflected for a moment and said, "Sure."

Join us as we travel with the Loughman brothers from Vancouver, WA, to the Statue of Liberty, via the Columbia River Gorge, portions of the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Rocky Mountains, vast open stretches of the Great Plains, the Great Lakes region, and over the Appalachians to the East Coast, a total of 3,300 miles. Along the way we will see farms, ranches, dogs, ducks, cattle, horses, and also prairies, deserts, and mountains; then Hutterites, hootenany reunions, drought and other extreme weather, crazed bicyclists trying to go east-to-west, locusts, the country's smallest town (population five) with its own post office, hot springs, ghost towns, one-room schoolhouses, abandoned train tunnels, and ferry boats. Bill and Tim encountered numerous flat tires, a few assaults, cycling crashes, many memorable persons, and countless beautiful scenes of nature and Americana.

Tim Loughman is a writer, copy editor, and book-seller now residing in Morro Bay. He has bicycled from New York City to Toledo, from Toledo to Atlanta via Appalachia, and from Paris to Milan, as well as through Bavaria, Austria, and the Italian Alps. His brother Bill is an attorney and amateur photographer (and former program chair for the East Bay Dinners) residing in El Cerrito. He has never again bicycled long-distance.

Cost of dinner and program is $23, including tax and tip. For a reservation, please send your check, payable to "Sierra Club", with your name, your telephone number, date of program you are reserving for, and the names of your guests, to:

Evelyn Randolph
938 Galvin Drive
El Cerrito, CA 94530
(510)526-2494.

Attendance is limited to the first 115 reservations received. Reserve early, as these programs do fill up. Reservation deadline is March 12. There is no admittance for program only.