Windsor cyclist, 72, sets off for Seattle

<p>At 6 a.m. last Saturday, 72-year-old Bill Harrison set off on a bike ride. Yes, how nice for him.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>But the retired Santa Rosa Junior College drama instructor did not pedal from his Windsor home to the Town Green for coffee and a scone, or loop Spring Lake.</p><p>Saddling up in front of The Press Democrat building in downtown Santa Rosa, Harrison aimed for Seattle on a tribute ride that will trace the course, more or less, of the great cycle adventure mounted 100 years earlier by two new Santa Rosa High School grads with summertime to burn and $5.65 in their pockets.</p><p>The 1909 ride by pals Ray Francisco and Victor McDaniel began, too, in front of the PD. The newspaper’s late editor and publisher, Ernest Finley, told the teens he’d gladly chronicle their journey if they’d write regularly from the road. As additional incentive, Finley promised them $25 upon their completion of the 1,000-mile ride to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle.</p><p>Theirs was a genuine, arduous, thrilling, two-wheeled Wild West adventure. The Santa Rosa pair’s discoveries, labors, mishaps, run-ins and brushes with doom were a book begging to be written until 2000, when the late Ray McDaniel’s daughter, Evelyn McDaniel Gibb, published, “Two Wheels North.”</p><p>Seasoned cyclist Harrison loves the book and its accounts of Ray and Vic camping in the wilds, pushing their secondhand bikes over railroad trestles and roadless expanses, meeting fleeting sweethearts, falling prey to cheats and encountering critters that bite.</p><p>Harrison put foot to pedal expecting a more comfortable, civilized ride.</p><p>“At 72, my camping days are over,” said the lean and easy-going former runner, boxer and rock climber. He’s sleeping in motels, pedaling on smooth roads and highways that parallel Interstate 5 and stopping every 20 miles or so for a snack and hydration.</p><p>He’s carrying his copy of “Two Wheels North” and looking to see what remains of the landmarks, scenery and settlements that Ray and Vic took in a century ago.</p><p>Hoping also to raise some money for the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, Harrison is dedicating the ride to Windsor neighbor Annabel Kubicka, who struggles against the dementia. He invites donations to the Alzheimer’s Association, 1211-A N. Dutton Ave., Santa Rosa 95401.</p><p>Harrison isn’t riding alone. His wife, Maisie McCarty, wouldn’t allow it, not after what happened on his last long-distance ride.</p><p>Harrison was confident as he set out to pedal across America on an east-to-west benefit ride in 2004 because he’d already ridden cross-country once before. In 1998, he cycled every inch from Anacortes, Wash., to Portsmouth, N.H.</p><p>He was doing fine on the ’04 trans-continental, too, until something went wrong in his chest and caused him to veer off the road.</p><p>“I ended up in a drainage ditch in Peru, Indiana,” he said. “It turned out I needed a pacemaker.”</p><p>His wife consented to the Seattle ride after some cycling buddies — Gordon Burns, Tom Reed, Larry Wendt, Gordon Stewart and Ted Sullivan — said they’d take turns riding with him. “Basically, wherever I go I’ll have a friend nearby,” he said.</p><p>Harrison expects the ride to take him 15 or 16 days. A century ago, Vic and Ray planned to reach Seattle in about 45 days, but the journey took 57.</p><p>They told in their letters home of being felled by heat exhaustion, beaten up and robbed — and of growing up, and being utterly awed.</p><p>After coasting into the Shasta Valley at dusk, they wrote: “And as we dropped, Shasta Mountain’s great white-orange eye did slowly close. Pines on either side hummed to themselves, and the air smelled of hot grass and leaves and life.”</p><p>They pedaled triumphantly into Seattle early in October of 1909 and stayed two weeks at the great Exposition, then they rode a train home. Both served in World War I. Both died back in Washington State after long careers, Ray Francisco as a minister and Vic McDaniel as an employee of PG&E.</p><p>As it happens, Harrison isn’t alone in marking the 100th anniversary of the pair’s journey with a benefit ride.</p><p>On July 4, more than a dozen cyclists, most of them Californians, will set out on a 14-day Santa Rosa to Seattle tribute ride (www.wheelsnorth.org) to raise money to combat histiocytosis, a rare blood disease that most often strikes children.</p><p>Both that ride and Harrison’s will end — as Ray and Vic’s did — at the University of Washington’s Frosh Pond, which was dubbed Geyser Basin when it was created as the focal point of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909.</p><p>Harrison set off intending to savor every moment and mile. He said his wife will cheer him along on this big ride, but then she’s putting on the brakes.</p>