SUMMER adventure
Lehigh Valley band director rides her bicycle down entire East Coast in 47 days
As Erin Trautmann cycled down the East Coast, she heard a constant refrain from the women she met along the way: “I never could do something like that.”
Trautmann, the band director at Lower Macungie Middle School, became the 92nd person to travel 3,000 miles down the East Coast Greenway, either on foot or by bike. Trautmann hopes her 47-day solo ride — starting in Calais, Maine, and ending in Key West, Florida — inspires other women to challenge themselves, too.
“I’m really glad I just took the leap and did it,” said Trautmann, 29, of Allentown. “People just sell themselves short on what they’re capable of, especially women.”
Trautmann, a 2011 Emmaus High School graduate, grew up in Macungie, cycling with her parents, Scott and Jenifer Trautmann, who often ride their tandem bike. The two inspired Trautmann’s love for the activity, but her parents were both apprehensive about the trip, they said.
“A solo woman taking a long bike ride starting in a small town on the Canadian border in Maine is a little unnerving. But she spent a lot of effort planning it, and she stuck with it,” Scott Trautmann said. “She had her good days and her bad days, but she
kept on persevering.”
Trautmann spent about six months planning the journey. She rode about 75 miles each day and had four rest days along the way. She spent her weekends leading up to the trip taking longer rides, but all the cycling groups she joined on Facebook said there was no way to prepare for such a long ride — just hop on your bike and go, she said.
The first week was the hardest, but after that, she got used to the long days, Trautmann said.
“It’s more mentally challenging than it is physically because you’re just like, ‘OK, I know I can ride 40 more miles,’ but it’s just getting in that zone to do it,” she said.
Trautmann’s favorite part of the ride was the stretch from Portland, Maine, to Boston. Once she got to the South, more of her routes were along roads with heavy traffic, she said. She biked down Route 1, a highway along the coast, and State Road A1A, which runs through most of Florida.
The East Coast Greenway was conceived as a 3,000mile connected trail route along the East Coast. It is more than a third completed with trails for bikers and pedestrians to safely travel away from traffic. But the rest of the journey consists of routes suggested by the East Coast Greenway Alliance that can sometimes include heavy traffic areas.
The East Coast Greenway Alliance is a nonprofit formed in 1991 that encourages partnerships between engineering firms, trail organizations and all levels of government with the goal of completing the greenway. The alliance also posts signs along the greenway and provides maps and planning resources.
Daniel Paschall, Mid-Atlantic manager of the East Coast Greenway Alliance, said the greenway is “very much a work in progress,” as the nonprofit works with cities, counties and states to invest in creating safe, connected trails. The trails have increased along the coast in the last 15 years, he said.
“We want to take on that challenge of creating a safe and accessible way for people of all ages and all abilities to access linear parks, spaces for recreation [and] to improve public health,” Paschall said.
Trautmann has done week-long cycling trips from Pittsburgh to Washington, and from Scranton to Philadelphia before, but her ride along the greenway is the farthest she’s traveled by bike.
Her favorite part of the journey was the friendliness of the cycling community, she said, and the people she met on her ride, like Deborah Stewart-VanOrden, an engineer and cyclist from Connecticut.
The two met near New Haven when Stewart-VanOrden was cycling with a community group. Trautmann joined the group for the length of their ride, but then carried on with her own plans.
Stewart-VanOrden later drove down to Maryland to join Trautmann for part of her journey through Virginia.
“I have a lot of empathy for people who are self-locomoting, whether it’s hiking or biking, and I enjoy doing it myself, so having company along the road or along the trail is seemingly ... a very welcomed thing,” said Stewart-VanOrden, who was with Trautmann the first time she rode 100 miles in one day.
“I was really impressed with her riding a century,” Stewart-VanOrden said. “She really did work herself up into shape in that manner.”
Trautmann didn’t have a goal for completing her ride, but she booked her flight out of Florida for July 30 before heading out, and finished her journey the day before.
She doesn’t have any plans for multiday rides in the future, she said, but hopes her experience inspires others who want to make the journey, or who have other big goals.
“If I can do this, anyone can do this,” she said. “Not that everyone needs to ride their bike down the East Coast, but just the idea that ‘you are capable of more than you think you are,’ is important.”