'LOVE YOUR COUNTRY ... GET A BIKE' A.V. COUPLE, 69 AND 72, CYCLE FROM OREGON TO VIRGINIA.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO

Staff Writer

PALMDALE -- Linda Pluss has had many labels: Girl Scout leader, gourmet cook, teacher of the year, bound buttonhole-making seamstress and senior fitness instructor.

Now she can add "cross-country adventure cyclist" to her resume. She and her husband, Bob, ages 69 and 72 respectively, rode their Trek mountain bikes across the United States over 2 1/2 years, completing the epic journey last spring.

"I thought it was a very bonding experience. There was a lot of 24/7 together under not the greatest of circumstances," said Pluss, who has two daughters and five grandchildren. "Many people have said, 'Was it you or Bob that wanted to do it?' Really and truly it was both of us. We liked the feeling it gave us of accomplishment, and I loved the feeling of power that it gave me as a woman."

The couple -- she a retired Palmdale School District teacher, he a gravel company executive -- bicycled 4,277 miles from Florence, Ore., to Newport News, Va., generally following the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail developed to celebrate the bicentennial.

They did the trip in six one- to two-week segments, making a trip every fall and spring beginning in fall 2003.

Loaded with 30- and 40-pound packs, they rode for 76 days, averaging 57.6 miles a day, and passed through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky.

They crossed the Continental Divide half a dozen times in the Rockies; encountered snow, hail and rain; and toughed out steep mountain passes, including 11,500-foot Hoosier Pass in Colorado.

Except for the first leg in Oregon, when they drove to the starting point, the couple flew to the point of embarkation and shipped their bikes back and forth. Instead of camping they stayed in motels, making reservations ahead of time.

"We stayed in some real classy dumps. You would be just amazed that there are these little motels run by 100-year-old people," Pluss said. "We twice made reservations and they said they didn't have any room for us. We had to beg."

Since she and her sister moved out, daughter Nikki Williams said, almost all of their parents' vacations have been biking trips in places like New Zealand, France and Glacier National Park.

"I think it's pretty amazing, but they are pretty amazing people. They like outdoor activities," said Williams, a school nurse in the Westside Union School District. "I thought it was adventurous and brave of them. I have to say it didn't surprise me that much."

Williams said she was worried a few times but remained confident.

"I just knew they could do it because that's the way they are," Williams said. "My dad is really strong and smart. He did a spectacular job planning the trips."

Linda Pluss' sister, Antelope Valley Hospital board member June Snow, said she offered to drive the "sag wagon" -- a vehicle carrying their luggage -- but they refused.

Pluss said the trip started out as a joke, kind of. When she was younger she had set four goals -- see the Mississippi River, hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, climb to the top of Mount Whitney and bike across the U.S.

She did the first three while in her 40s, hiking the Grand Canyon twice and celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary atop Whitney by drinking champagne from a garbage bag. The couple will celebrate their 50th anniversary in August.

As she was nearing retirement from Mesquite School in June 2003, people kept asking her what she was going to do. She would joke that she was going to bike across the country.

"I had kind of a life dream to do that. I read a book that inspired me about a family that did that. I thought I was too old," Pluss said.

One day, coming home from a party about a month before retirement, her husband told her if they were going to do the ride, they should start planning it.

"I was dumbfounded. I was really frightened of bad guys, road conditions and weather. He said if we were going to do it before we died, we would have to ride 60 miles a day," Pluss said.

They began training, riding their bikes 20 miles every morning across the Antelope Valley.

The trip offered lifetime memories, Pluss said. They saw kayakers in Idaho river country, young cows and horses that ran alongside them in farm country, a hunter cleaning a deer in Kentucky and an osprey with a fish in its talons overhead in Virginia.

"We stopped and read every sign. We met all kinds of people and really experienced the U.S.," Pluss said. "The silence we often experienced as we rode along -- we could hear bird songs and animal calls. I'm not used to that. That was very impressive to me."

Every meal tasted wonderful because they got so hungry, and they made a lot of pie stops. The best was marionberry pie in Oregon.

"We ate 36 pounds of trail mix, which occasionally we had to have for dinner because we couldn't find a place to eat," Pluss said.

On those long, flat stretches in Kansas, Pluss and her husband entertained themselves by guessing how far away the next silo was. The prize for the winner was a kiss.

They stopped every hour or 10 miles to do a choreographed stretch routine that ended with a hug, back rub and a kiss.

Once a man who had been watching them began to call 911, thinking something was amiss. "He asked where we were from. We said California. He said that explains it," Pluss said.

The most difficult day was making the ascent over 9,000-foot Togwatee Pass in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming during a severe rainstorm that sent water cascading down the road like a river.

"We rode 14 hours that day. I had called the place we were going to stay at -- a hunting lodge and it was the last night of the season -- and said, 'Would you notify our relatives if we don't arrive or come and get us?' But they didn't. By the time we got there it was snowing," Pluss said.

Pluss has written an as-yet-unpublished book about the experience and thought about naming it "Pie Guide to America," but she settled on "Peddling into the Sunrise."

The book says: "If you don't love your country beyond all reason, I suggest you get a bike and ride across it."

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(color) Linda and Bob Pluss rode their mountain bikes across the United States in six segments that took 2 1/2 years. Linda Pluss, 69, says the challenge for herself and her 72-year-old husband began as kind of a joke.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer