ECE alumnus bikes across the U. S.

Engineering at Illinois alumnus Karl Kohlrus (BS 1979, Electrical Engineering) pedaled his way through what had been his “number one bucket list item for 20 years” last year—he successfully completed a 1,397 mile long biking trip across the USA.

“I said years ago, ‘When I retire I’m going to ride across the country,’” he said. “It was a fulfillment of a goal from decades past.”

Kohlrus and his biking partner Deeanna Shidler—backed by Kohlrus’ wife Christine as the support car driver—biked from Kyle, Texas, to St. Augustine, Florida, in late January and early February 2011, and then from San Diego, California, back to Kyle, Texas, in October of 2011. Shidler had to be in Florida in February for a cruise, so the pair broke the trip up into those two legs.

The route they took was the Adventure Cycling Associations’ Southern Route, which they chose for two main reasons. “You miss most of the mountains,” Kohlrus said. “And we wanted to escape the Midwestern winter.”

However, to Kohlrus and Shidler’s dismay, they did not miss out on the cold winter during their trip—the weather followed them. “The Eastern half [of the trip] was not warm,” Kohlrus said sadly. “It was thirty degrees, windy, and cold.” But when the pair got to Florida, it had started warming up and soon they were biking in 70 degree weather.

One of the traditions for cross-country bikers is to dip the bike’s back wheel in the Pacific Ocean before you depart, and dip the front wheel in the Atlantic Ocean when you reach it. “We went and dipped our front wheel in the Atlantic Ocean even though we were only half done. We were just celebrating because we had completed a big part of the journey.”

They set off again in the fall of 2011 on the Western half of the trip after dipping their back tire in the Pacific. The second half of the journey was more interesting than the first, according to Kohlrus. In fact, that portion of the trip contained his favorite route of his whole biking career. “There was a big downhill that lasted for ten miles” in California and they “basically coasted without pedaling for ten miles” he said. “It was just the most exhilarating and fun ride of my entire life because it was gorgeous scenery, it was no work, and you could just enjoy it.”

Each leg of the trip lasted about a month and Kohlrus and Shidler biked around 50 miles each day, but one day they rode 98 miles. After they ended the trip where they started—in Kyle, Texas—the group headed to San Antonio to celebrate on the river walk. “It’s a great way to see America,” Kohlrus said of his biking trip.

When he isn’t cycling across the country, Kohlrus is an energy planning consultant. He is retired from being Supervisor of Electric Planning at City Light and Power in Springfield, Illinois, a position he held for 31 years. “It was a very rewarding career,” he said. Now he works a lot less and has a lot more free time. “But I’m still involved in what I love doing, working in the electric industry, and using the knowledge I gained over the years to help other people with their projects.”

After all was said and done, Kohlrus compared completing the bike ride to something else. “It was very gratifying, it was almost as gratifying as completing my college degree,” he said. “It was a very rewarding and fulfilling accomplishment.”

Pictures and daily summaries of the cross country trip can be found at Kohlrus’s trip blog.
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Contact: Tom Moone, communications coordinator, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 217/244-9893.

Writer: Heather Punke, ECE ILLINOIS

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.