NEW PALESTINE — Steve Redden has crossed the finish line.
His course? The United States of America.
The 73-year-old New Palestine resident has now ridden a bicycle in every state in the union after a jaunt through the Hawaiian island of Oahu earlier this month.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryIt all began in his home state of Indiana, growing up in Rush County.
“I used to ride a bike a whole lot when I was a kid,” he said. “I had a bike when most people had cars. In high school, I never had a car; I rode back and forth to school.”
Redden first rode in the Ball State University Bike-A-Thon in his 20s. Then he joined the Central Indiana Bicycling Association and started going on rides the group organizes.
He checked a slew of states off the list when he and his brother-in-law went on the cross-country Bikecentennial in 1976 celebrating the nation’s 200th anniversary.
Redden had finished biking in all 48 of the contiguous states about 25 years ago. He said he can’t help but feel slightly guilty about the last couple in that category.
“Two states that I really feel like I half-cheated on were 47 and 48,” he said.
After a 100-mile ride down part of Mississippi’s stretch of the Natchez Trace Parkway, he drove to Louisiana, took his bike off his car and did a quick 5 or 6 miles.
“Then I drove up to Arkansas and did the same thing,” he added.
He finished his feat by putting Alaska and Hawaii under his tires in the past two years.
His 2018 Alaska cruise made stops in Juneau and Ketchikan, and he hopped on a bike in both cities. He even added a new country to his record on that cruise by making a cycling stop in Vancouver.
Taking trips across the country with his wife, Margie, and their children, allowed Redden to ride in even more states.
“I took a bike with me whenever we went on vacation,” he said.
Redden spent his career teaching fifth and sixth grade in the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation.
“That had an effect on me riding a lot of places — because of the fact that we studied United States geography in fifth grade,” he said. “I always had a big map on the wall of the United States.”
When he returned from the Bikecentennial, he covered that map with pins representing his stops. As he completed more and more rides, more and more pins went up on the map.
Some of his most memorable excursions involve funny failures.
“I’ve done that several times on rides — where I end up riding way too much because I wasn’t paying attention,” he said with a laugh.
One of those journeys was a 200-miler that started in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and continued up at Mount Mitchell in North Carolina.
“I followed some guys that were just flying along and I thought, ‘Those guys know what they’re doing, I’ll just follow them,’” Redden recalled. “And they weren’t going on the ride!”
By the time he arrived at the course’s terminus and realized he’d missed a good stretch of the route, he decided to just get on the bus waiting for him and the other cyclists and call it quits.
“But I got 100 miles out of that day, and I got two states,” he said.
Redden has ridden around Florida’s enormous Lake Okeechobee, and he participated in central Indiana’s Hilly Hundred for over 40 years.
Out of all 50 states he’s biked in, the prettiest, he said, was Kentucky.
“Green, green, green,” he said. “Lots of green. Plus, the places we stayed — they treated us like kings. Just really, really green and unbelievably friendly people.”
Someone even drove down the road to return the change pouch he left at a gas station, he recalled.
Redden has seen his preferred mode of transportation evolve significantly over the decades. His current 15-pound carbon fiber bicycle “jumps up the hill” compared to the department store bike he started out with long ago.
“They have invented such unbelievably light stuff,” he said. Then, with a chuckle, he added, “As I’ve gotten older, I had to get better and better bikes so I can keep up.”
And keep up he has.
“It’s a great, healthy life,” he said.
Health hasn’t been the only thing keeping him coming back to handlebars and pedals after all these years.
“The best thing is, you just get out there, and…” he trailed off, unable to convey the reason.
Then it struck him in the form of one word — the founding principle of the country he’s now cycled all over. And for a moment, his face lit up as if he wasn’t in an office building’s conference room answering interview questions, but cruising on two wheels through the green, green, green of Kentucky.
“Freedom,” he said.
Redden added he came upon that realization on his recent ride through Hawaii.
“Man, I’m out here, I’m just me, I’m free.”
