Three trips over 40 years, same Schwinn Voyager
OCEAN CITY — On Sunday, Tim Adams completed a cross-country bicycle trip that took him 3,400 miles from Los Angeles, Calif., to Ocean City, N.J.
It was the same trip his father, Tim Adams, took in 1985 with buddy Tom Oves, and that his cousin, Noah Tolson, made about a dozen years later.
Some things were the same, some similar, others different.
The one constant was a Schwinn Voyager bicycle that Tim, the elder, Noah, and Tim the younger all rode, which provided the latest trekker with more repair trouble given the bike’s 40-year-old vintage. The riders took varying routes on their cross-country journey and all had to put up with lonely stretches.
One thing that changed was a cell phone that allowed Tim to keep in touch with family and friends throughout the journey, rather than the infrequent stops at pay phones.
Just after 10 a.m. Sunday, Tim rode his bike off the Cape May-Lewes Ferry in Lower Township, where Noah’s parents, Mike and Mitzi Tolson, brother Gerard and sister Amy and her husband Bill Holmes welcomed their nephew and cousin with signs and then long hugs.
“It’s surreal to be here right now,” Tim told the Sentinel, not unlike how his dad and Tom Oves were interviewed by the Sentinel on their trip back in 1985. (The two Tims posed with a copy of the newspaper documenting that 1985 ride before the 2026 version.)
“Every day I would think about what it was going to be like to be at the end and to finally be here,” he said, looking around at the ferry terminal. “And getting to Ocean City will be the culmination of everything. It’s going to be wild.”
When Tim reached the outskirts of the island, Ocean City police and fire vehicles escorted him across the 34th Street Bridge on Roosevelt Boulevard and down to 14th Street, where officers on bicycles rode with him down the boardwalk to the Music Pier.
There, a big group of friends and family, along with City Council President Terry Crowley Jr. and Assemblyman Antwan McClellan, greeted him. Mayor Jay Gillian presented him with a key to the city.
A few hours ahead of that, still astride his bike after getting off the ferry, Tim was all smiles.
“I’m very excited, proud, happy to be here,” he said.
So what was it like riding a 40-year old bicycle on this trip?
“It made it harder than it probably would have if I had a new bike. If I ever do something like this again, I’ll buy a new bike,” he said. “It was a lot. It was a challenge every day. Something could and would happen and I had to figure it out.”
Tim documented his trip on Instagram (@coasttocoastwithtim) and would report the troubles, such as flat tires or a broken spoke.
Sunday marked day 59 of the trip. He started on April 3.
Tim, 33, is an ICU nurse in Michigan, but he grew up at the Jersey shore and graduated from Egg Harbor Township High School.
“Before this trip, I hadn’t ridden more than a 25-mile bike ride at any given time. And I just did 3,400.”
The hardest part of the trip, he said, was being alone, “just having days where you didn’t see anybody, even just one car for 10 hours, not one car, just totally by myself in the desert or in the mountains.”
“Just having a companion there would have been nice. The weather sometimes was a factor. I was in a couple tornado warnings, a couple big rainstorms for 10, 11 hours, just complete downpours, but we got through it,” he said.
Tim camped some nights, stayed at hotels other nights and used an app called Warm Showers that hooks up cyclists with people who would host them in their homes.
“I probably did that a dozen times, just got to meet really nice, interesting people who have done bike trips or like cycling and just wanted to meet people who are similar,” he said. “They would host me, I would get a nice dinner, a place to stay for free. They were just gracious.”
Some of his favorite parts of the trip was the scenery — “some of the landscapes in Arizona mountains, the mountains in eastern Tennessee were really awesome.”
Other favorites are the people he met.
“I just got to see real America and just the day-to-day, not what you see on the news, not what you see in Hollywood,” he said. “And you just get to meet real people. It gives you hope that people are actually much nicer than you’re led to believe in this world.”
Tim averaged 75 to 95 miles per day depending on the terrain.
All of the riders over the decades started in Los Angeles and finished in Ocean City, but his father went more north through Nevada and then Colorado and stayed pretty central. His cousin Noah went farther north.
“I went fairly south because when I left in April, I was concerned with weather, that it would affect me if I did the same route (my dad) did,” he said.
“But we all caught this ferry here and then ended in Ocean City. So the tail end is the same,” he said. (As he was getting off the ferry, its horn blew and congratulations to him blared over the loudspeaker.
Tim cited the support he got along the way.
“It was great. I had people call me, text me, send messages to the Instagram page that I made, rooting me on, and I constantly had people in my corner who were cheering for me along the way. It was awesome,” he said.
That communication was a big difference from when his father and cousin took the ride.
“Having my phone made all the difference. My family tracked my location all the time. They always knew where I was. I had wireless headphones so I could call and talk to them while I was riding. My dad would tell these stories and Noah would tell these stories like every couple days you’d catch a payphone and call and say, ‘We’re good. Tell my buddy’s parents that we’re good, too, because he won’t talk to them now for the next three days.’”
Tim said his father didn’t believe he was going to make the trip and was shocked when he found out he tuned up the Schwinn and got saddlebags for it.
“He’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re really going to do it!’ He’s so excited. He’s so proud. It’s been awesome getting to talk to him along the way too. And he got to reminisce on the same trip.”
Would he do it again?
“I might ride this bike again, but I don’t know the next time I’ll cross the country. Could be years. Could be years,” he said, smiling.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
Photos by David Nahan and courtesy of the family of Tim Adams.
