The Long Way Home: At 66, Dan Cronin Is Chasing the Freedom He Found in 1980
In the early fall of 1980, a twenty-year-old college kid from Foxboro, Massachusetts pointed his bike south and rode all the way to Orlando, Florida. He'd just finished his sophomore year and wasn't sure what he wanted to do next, so he and his best friend did what made sense at the time: they pedaled until the questions got quieter. He didn't know it yet, but that ride would stay with him for the next four and a half decades as a single, stubborn feeling — pure joy, total freedom.
This summer, Dan Cronin is going looking for that feeling again. Only this time the ride is roughly 3,800 miles long.
We could not be prouder to introduce Dan as the newest member of the Pike Trail family.
One bike, one rider, one continent
On Monday, June 9th, Dan rolled out from a bike shop in Eugene, Oregon to begin a solo, fully self-supported journey across the United States. He's following the TransAmerica Trail, the legendary route mapped by Adventure Cycling out of Missoula, Montana — the gold standard for touring cyclists the world over. Oregon. Idaho. Montana. Wyoming, with a stretch through Yellowstone. The Continental Divide through Colorado. The trail officially ends in Yorktown, Virginia, but Dan lives in southeastern North Carolina, so he's plotting his own ad-libbed finale south through his home state. Call it the long way home.
He expects the trip to take about 60 days. There's no mileage goal, no support van, no pressure. "The decisions of how the trip goes are all on me," he told us. If he wants to take a day in a hotel, he'll take a day in a hotel. That's the whole point.
A lifelong cyclist, not a late bloomer
Make no mistake — this isn't a bucket-list whim. Dan has been a cyclist his entire life. As a kid in the early '70s he said goodbye to his Sting-Ray and saved up for a real bike. His father, who could see this was more than a phase, helped him buy a French Motobecane Mirage 10-speed. It cost $140. He never looked back.
Since 2012 alone, Dan has logged more than 27,000 miles. His lifetime total sits somewhere around 50,000 — "but who's counting," as he puts it. To get ready for this ride he's put in 2,000 miles of aggressive training since January. At 66, retired from a career in marketing communications, with his kids grown and the road wide open, he finally has the one thing the twenty-year-old version of him didn't: the freedom from money and time to explore this country entirely on his own terms.
That combination — a lifetime of preparation meeting a moment of total freedom — is exactly the kind of adventure we built Pike Trail to support.
The gear that earns its place
When you're carrying everything you own on two wheels for two months, every ounce and every cubic inch has to justify itself. Dan's packing list is a masterclass in disciplined minimalism: an ultralight tent, a synthetic bag that packs small, an inflatable sleeping pad, a Jetboil, waterproof panniers, and a meticulous kit of tools, patches, and spares laid out across a hotel bed like a surgeon's tray.
And somewhere in that carefully curated load, there's a Pike Trail Ultralight Compact Chair in Chartreuse.
For a self-supported rider counting grams, a camp chair is a luxury. Dan knew that, and chose it anyway — because comfort at the end of a 60-mile day isn't nothing when you're 66 and doing this for joy. Here's what he wrote us the afternoon it arrived:
"Very impressed with the pack size, comfort and light weight. The instructions helped me get it together and it is very comfortable. This is a great value! I will be sure to browse your catalogue to complete my equipment list for my transcontinental self-supported bicycle trip this summer."
In his own gear notes he summed it up even more simply: packs small, weighs under three pounds, goes together in seconds, great price-to-value. That's the chair doing exactly what we designed it to do — disappearing into a pannier all day, then showing up the moment you need to sit down and watch the sun go behind the Rockies.
We didn't ask Dan to carry our chair across the country. He chose it. That means more to us than any review ever could.
Meet Dan at the halfway mark
Here's where you come in. Sometime in mid-to-late July, Dan's route will bring him through the middle of the country — and we're hoping to pull him a little off-course and into Columbia, Missouri for a "Halfway There" celebration at our local brewery.
The idea is simple: gather the local cycling community, raise a glass, and send Dan off into the second half of his ride with a tailwind of encouragement. If you ride, if you've ever dreamed of a trip like this, or if you just want to shake the hand of a guy chasing a feeling across an entire continent, keep an eye on our social channels. We'll share the date as Dan's progress comes into focus.
Why this story matters to us
Pike Trail started as a small idea and grew, one customer at a time, into something real. We make gear with local artisan seamstresses and we obsess over the details because we believe the equipment should never be the thing that stops you. The adventure should.
Dan Cronin is everything we make this stuff for. He's proof that the road doesn't close at 66 — that the freedom you felt as a kid is still out there, waiting, exactly where you left it. All you have to do is go get it.
Ride safe, Dan. We'll have a cold one waiting for you in Missouri.
Follow Dan's journey through our social updates all summer long. And if his packing list has you eyeing your own adventure — the catalogue is right this way.
