Story by Alex Hanson

Photographs by James M. Patterson

Nancy Wright's 22-year career as a physical education teacher at Lebanon's Hanover Street School has coincided with her passion for long-distance bicycle treks.

Seven times, Wright and her husband Ken have ridden across the country, from Seattle to Maine.

“If you sent me to Seattle right now, I could find my way home without a map,” Wright said.

On the first day of school last week, Wright ended one journey and began another. She's taking a year off from Hanover Street School, which is being reorganized under the Lebanon School District's school consolidation plan. And on the first day of school last week, she pedaled off on a solo ride around the perimeter of the United States.

True to form, Wright, 55, started her approximately 11,000-mile ride at Hanover Street School. She led a pack of 10 of her former students on a ride to Lebanon Junior High School, where they had their first day of classes. Wright was greeted by thunderous applause from an assembly in the school gym.

Wright has taught a unit on bike safety for the fifth- and sixth-graders at Hanover Street for the past 13 years, using 25 bicycles obtained with grant money.

“They want kids doing lifetime sports,” Wright said in an interview the day before her departure. “We've got people who are 76 years old biking across the country with us, so it's a lifetime sport.” The unit culminated in a school-wide 28-mile ride on the Northern Rail Trail to Canaan Elementary School and back.

“She's a fun teacher,” said Max Moorhead, 12, before riding with Wright to his first day of junior high. “She has a whole unit on bike riding, which is fun. People always look forward to it.” Moorhead completed the 28-mile ride last year.

This year, the bicycles will gather dust as Wright takes an unpaid year off to complete her trip. Although it declined to pay her during her sabbatical, the school district will continue to pay for Wright's health care coverage.

Wright estimates the trip will take 9½ months. The first leg runs down the East Coast on side roads and trails to Key West, Fla., then back up the West coast of Florida and along the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. Wright plans to halt her trip there at the end of November and fly home for two months, both to rest and to sit out the worst of the winter. She rides on through the southern tier to California in the spring and north to Seattle. Her husband will join her there for the ride back to their home in Sharon.

Many people set out on long distance rides packing a tent and with few planned stops. Not so Wright, who has set up places to stay along her entire route. The first nine days of the route, Wright plans to stay with people she knows. From then on, she'll rely on hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and a network of family and fellow bicyclists.

“I like to get a shower every night,” she said. Her route is so well planned that when asked whether she would spend her next birthday alone on the road, she knew the exact town she'd be staying in that night, Jacumba, Calif. She's also set the end date of the ride: Aug. 21, 2010.

The origins of Wright's ride -- which she's calling the “Blue Bicycle Perimeter Ride,” after the color of her recumbent bike -- are numerous. While crossing the country last summer, she thought she might like to make a solo trip. At the end of that same trip, a 38-year-old man, Paul Lacaillade of Meredith, N.H., who was riding along the last stretch of the route to the Maine coast, was killed in a traffic accident.

“I thought, geez, I really should do something to honor his memory,” Wright said.

Along the way, Wright will stop at five schools to talk to children about bicycle safety: in Brattleboro, Vt.; at Laurel Ledge School in Beacon Falls, Conn., where she accepted her first teaching job 33 years ago; in Cape May, N.J., where citizens are trying to create a more bike-friendly community; and in Severna Park, Md., and Richmond, Va.

Students in Lebanon plan to follow Wright's progress through a pair of Web sites, and through the library and physical education classes.

The ride is also an effort to raise awareness of organizations that promote bicycling in general and long-haul biking in particular. Two Web sites tracking Wright's progress encourage visitors to join or donate to the Adventure Cycling Association, which promotes bicycle travel in the U.S., the Rails to Trails Conservancy, the League of American Bicyclists and the East Coast Greenway Alliance, which is working to establish a safe bike route from the tip of Maine to the tip of Florida.

Riding long distances is in Wright's blood. She led her first long trip, from Vermont to Maine, with a church youth group in 1980. “The bikes were old and heavy, the gearing was bad, the helmets were awful, and we had a ball,” she said. She and Ken led their first cross-country trip, with five high school students in tow, in 1996. Since then, they've made three more trips with students and three with adult cyclists.

Wright seemed relaxed during an interview last Tuesday. Before she departed the next morning, she said she'd had a few butterflies while Ken drove her down to Lebanon, but those disappeared as soon as she started putting her bike and trailer together.

Her solo ride is as notable for what she's not doing. “This is the first time in 50 years that I didn't go back to school in the fall,” Wright said while she stood with her bicycle outside Lebanon Junior High. “I thought it'd feel weird, but it feels pretty good.”

Follow Nancy Wright's progress at www.bluebike.wikispaces.com or at www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc.bbpr0910.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or at (603) 727-3219.