Merrill woman to pedal across country
Feb. 22, 2013 6:31 PM,
MERRILL — Brenda Mamer first heard about the 58-day bike tour that spans the whole country while she was biking the 2011 Great Annual Bicycle Adventure Along the Wisconsin River, or GRABAAWR.
In the year and a half since that biking trip, the cross-country adventure became lodged in her mind.
“I thought, ‘Well, it’s just going to fester, so I better do it sooner rather than later,’” she said.
That is how Mamer, 58, of Merrill decided to participate in the Southern Tier Cross-Country Bike Tour, sponsored by Woman Tours, a tour company that creates bike tours for women.
The trip will begin March 8 in San Diego, where each cyclist — all women, most older than 50 and some of whom are from as far away as Brazil, the Falkland Islands and Australia — will dip her back tire into the Pacific Ocean. They will pedal through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida during the next eight weeks before finishing in St. Augustine, Fla., where each cyclist will dip her front tire into the Atlantic Ocean on May 2.
The better shape Mamer is in, the easier the trip will be, she said, but with all of the snow the area has been getting over the past couple of months, training on a bike has been difficult. She has an indoor bike, but because “that gets boring,” she instead tries to run outside a few times a week and cross-country skis.
“I’m looking forward to being back on my bike, that’s for sure,” she said.
Mamer disassembled her bike and mailed it to California on Thursday, where it will be waiting at the hotel for her to reassemble before embarking. Her work as a piano tuner has given her a mechanical mind, and she said she wants the experience of assembling the machine herself.
Mamer said she hopes to use the trip as a fundraising effort for the River Bend Trail, a 2.5-mile recreational trail along the Wisconsin River that the River District Development Foundation of Merrill hopes to build.
Sharon Anderson, a member of the foundation, said the group doesn’t have a specific amount of money it is trying to raise; foundation members simply thought the cross-country bike trip would be a symbolic way to support a recreational trail that will focus mainly on silent sports. Anderson said she plans to promote the trip and the group’s capital campaign on Facebook and perhaps raise pledges or donations per mile Mamer rides — all 2,400 of them.