GREEN BAY – On April 4th, tandem bike duo Peter and Tracy Flucke departed from their home in Green Bay to travel 2,200 miles from Mobile, Alabama to Boston, Mass.
The couple plans to reach Boston by late May and while to most this likely sounds incredibly ambitious, the Fluckes are experienced cross country cyclists.
“We’d been riding tandem for probably 35 years now, we bought our first tandem so that we could ride with our daughter when she was probably four or five years old, we wanted to be able to do some longer trips,” Peter Flucke said.
Their long distance rides together began when Tracy planned to ride a 100 mile trail for the first time and she wanted to do it on the tandem bike.
As the two began training for the ride, Peter described their newfound love for the long rides, “We started training for it and it was during that time that we really discovered that we liked riding the tandem and riding together. For us it’s kind of like ballroom dancing, it’s a date night for us.”
Since then, they have done many cross country biking trips from both West to East and North to South.
Tracy Flucke mentioned, “2014 was our first long cross country trip. We started in Bellingham, Washington which is just north of Seattle, Washington and we biked all the way across to Bar Harbor, Maine. It was 72 days and we traveled about 4,300 miles.”
Riding alongside the Mississippi River was their next trip which took place in 2015 when they traveled from Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana.
Following that ride, in 2016 they rode Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.
However their biking trips took a brief pause in 2018 when Tracy was struck by a car that ran a stop sign.
Peter explained, “Tracy was coming off of a knee injury, she was unfortunately hit by a car about three miles from our house on a quiet Sunday morning.”
Tracy got knee surgery and was back on the tandem bike in 2019 to ride the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges.
When it comes to the benefits of bike riding in general, the pros are well known, so Tracy explained why they do cross country trips.
“I think it’s the adventure out there. Every ride we see something different, you meet different people. It’s the exercise, getting out in your community as well as other communities.” She continued, “It’s just a great way to stay in shape, all the fresh air, it’s relatively easy once you get going and get comfortable with it.”
Logistics, when it comes to cross country biking, is more complex than one may think.
“On our trips we carry all of our gear with us so we are totally self supported, we carry about 50 pounds of gear and we do have camping gear… We do camp about a third of the time and then we hotel motel maybe another third and then there is an organization called Warmshowers which is an online community for cross country or long distance cyclists. When we come into communities we can reach out ahead of time… we stay at people’s houses and they let us use their laundry,” Tracy said.
The community that they have found with other long distance cyclists is not taken for granted by them so to pay it back, they let other cyclists passing through stay at their house.
Both Peter and Tracy mentioned that the acts of kindness both others and they do restores their faith in humankind.
From troubles with storms in Texas to getting snowed in at Glacier National Park, the two of them have had their fair share of difficulties during their trips.
Despite that, taking it for granted is not something they are willing to do as Peter discussed how every mile is an adventure.
“Every minute of every day we are going so much slower and we have time to look around, so we are appreciating the journey. We’re appreciating the big oak tree and the way the wind blows through the wheat in Montana or the color of the rocks in New Mexico or what the sound of Niagara Falls is like. So all of those things are kind of more important than any one place.”
Tracy and Peter Flucke invite those who are interested in their current or past adventures to check out their website at https://webikeetc.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/2026-south-east-coast-bicycle-adventure/ or their books Coast to Coast on a Tandem and Bicycling Historic Route 66.
Outside of their biking, they advocate for safer roads here in Wisconsin through their consulting firm We Bike.
“We really promote safe infrastructure, safe roads for everybody so we work a lot with communities and nonprofit organizations to help them design their community as well as their roads so that everybody can safely move through that community and along their roads,” described Tracy.
While out on rides they often take in things that they noticed about the roads in regards to safety in hopes of improving the roads for everyone so that more cyclists and pedestrians can navigate communities safely.
Peter said, “You get caught up very easily in the rat race and there isn’t a rat race on the bike. You’re in the pace of the bike, it’s busy in the morning getting ready to go but all day long we’re just using our bodies, relaxing our minds. Again it’s a heck of a lot of work, I always tell people you live and die multiple times every day on the bike but by the next day you always wanna get back on and keep riding.”
Pass It Forward™ editorial is sponsored by Packers Give Back, Nicolet National Bank and the National Trust for Local News.
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