A Marquette Man on a Nearly Impossible Transcontinental Mission

The Latest from Marquette, MI by Brian Cabell

HE’S 78 YEARS old, he has Parkinson’s disease, and he’s riding his bicycle 4200 miles across the United States, from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon.

“Some people have said I’m crazy,” Bruce Closser laughs, “but it’s been in the back of my mind for a long time. It seemed like a cool thing to do.”

At a time when most of us his age are celebrating our feeble 175 yard drives down the fairway while riding golf carts from hole to hole (or more likely, watching televised golf tournaments from the comfort of a sofa), Closser is pedaling his way across the continent on a bike which, loaded down with his gear and supplies, weighs 65 pounds.

Last we checked with him, Closser, who’s been documenting his journey on Facebook, had made it to Kentucky, having climbed up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Still ahead—southern Illinois, Missouri, the Ozarks, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, the Cascades, and finally, the Oregon coast and the Pacific Ocean.

“I didn’t know if I could do this,” he tells you. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I have taken long bike rides, but not like this, day after day.”

He’s averaging 44 miles a day so far. He rests along the way at hotels and motels, private homes and campsites. 

Closser’s a retired real estate appraiser who’s spent most of his life in Marquette. He’s been an active athlete—a distance runner at one time, a longtime downhill and cross-country skier, and still an avid mountain biker struggling to keep up with younger folks in their 40s and 50s.

But now there’s the issue of Parkinson’s. He was diagnosed with the disease in 2019 although he’d known for the previous five years that something wasn’t quite right.

“It’s slowed me down,” he explains, “and sometimes I have a balance problem. But when I get on a bicycle, I’m fine. There’s something magical about me being on a bike. Not only that, but we know that exercise is good for Parkinson’s patients, especially pedaling. So, something’s going on that’s not quite understood.”

His medication—Carbidopa/Levodopa—has also helped. But how much of it should he be taking, and how much should he push his biking? Uncertain, unknown.

“Not too many people my age are doing this (biking long distances),” he says. “And almost none with Parkinson’s are doing it, so we really don’t know what to expect.” All he knows is that tomorrow, he’ll be pedaling another 40-50 miles, and he’ll do the same the day after that, and the day after that.

Something else has been motivating him: His wife Sally died last year, after a long bout with Parkinson’s. They’d been married 54 years. It left a huge hole in his life. “This bike ride, I think,  is a way of connecting with something, of dealing with loss…” He struggles to explain it further. “It’s just something I can’t quite express…”

So, he pedals on day after day, through foul weather and fair, across mountains and plains, on back roads and Main Streets, past farms and factories, toward a Pacific Ocean which still seems impossibly far away.

A man on a mission. A man intent on defying the odds, on stubbornly resisting a cruel disease.

“I’m just riding my bike,” he explains. “It’s really simple. It’s hard, but hard is not bad. It’s just hard. And it’s very satisfying when you do it.”

He’s planning on arriving in Astoria in August. Could he break down before he gets there? Possibly, but he doesn’t think so. His body and mind have held up remarkably well so far.

“I know I’ll get it done,” he tells you. “Whatever it takes. I don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time, at this stage in my life. I’m on my own schedule. My strategy is to go as far as I can for as long as I can, until I just can’t go any farther.”

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