Wheels keep on turning for cycling-happy couple

“A cross-country bike trip is something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long time,” Williams explains.

It won’t be the first long bicycle trip for either of them. Williams has done bike tours in England, Scotland, Ireland and New England. Vigoren has toured the maritime provinces of Canada and done several “double century” rides — that’s 200 miles in one day. Together they did a tour of Alaska and the Yukon.

In fact, bicycling has been part of Williams’ and Vigoren’s relationship from day one, when they met at a bicycle club meeting. Or it would probably be more accurate to say non-meeting. Both showed up for a meeting of the Redmond Bicycle club to learn about a trip the club was sponsoring, only to find the meeting had been cancelled.

But no matter. The two ran into each other shortly thereafter in the cafeteria of the UW Medical Center, where both were working at the time. Each reported to the other a pending bicycle tour. Soon they were having coffee regularly, and last year they got married.

Five months into their relationship Williams was lured along on one of Vigoren’s double century rides, this time in Death Valley. “I’m not really interested in doing that again,” she says.

But traveling cross-country is different. The couple plans to average 50 to 60 miles per day and make a number of stops along the way. They plan to start at Rockport State Park on the North Cascades Highway, traveling through eastern Washington to Montana, where they’ll visit a friend. From there they head to northern Minnesota, where Vigoren’s ancestors settled after emigrating from Norway.

“My grandparents are having a 90th birthday celebration in July, so we’ll drop in for that,” Vigoren says. Williams, who has never met her husband’s grandparents, is particularly looking forward to the occasion.

Next they’ll head across the upper peninsula of Michigan, crossing into Ontario and then dropping back down to Niagara Falls. They’ll go through the Catskills in New York and then head to Connecticut.

“Then we’re supposed to dip our bike wheels in the Atlantic Ocean,” Williams says, explaining that custom calls for a photo of the bicyclist standing next to the ocean and holding the bike aloft.

For both, the trip will be a chance to see parts of the country they haven’t visited before. A native of Everett, Williams has seen little between Montana and New England. For Vigoren, the country between Chicago and New York is largely a blank. And both say that traveling by bicycle allows the maximum amount of sightseeing — not just of landscape but of wildlife.

“You’re quiet when you’re on a bike so you don’t scare them away,” Vigoren says. “I noticed that when we were in Alaska.”

“You tend to attract a lot of attention from people too,” Williams adds. “When I was in England I would roll into a village and park my bike at the local shop and invariably someone would come and speak to me.”

Williams and Vigoren are devoted bicyclists even when they’re home. They commute to their respective UW jobs — Williams as an editor for the Collaborative Health Studies Coordinating Center and Vigoren as a research analyst for the medical center’s Obstetrics/Gynecology Department — by bicycle, even though they live six miles outside Bremerton. In fact, in her single days, Williams lived for seven years without a vehicle when she sold hers to buy a better bike.

Still, bicycling is a little different when your bike and gear together weigh 70 to 80 pounds and you’re moving it all day almost every day for weeks. “It becomes your job,” Williams says.

The couple will probably be calling a friend every few days, who will in turn send out e-mail about their adventures to a list of interested friends and relatives. And after spending this year in Educational Outreach’s certificate program in photography, Williams plans to take a lot of photographs.

The two are taking leaves of absence from their jobs to do the trip, but plan to be back at their desks the day after Labor Day — after biking in from Bremerton, of course. But they’ll take a week’s break from pedaling in Connecticut.

As for getting home, “We’re taking a plane,” Williams says.