Taylor Nichols has travelled close to 3,500 miles from his home. After just under two months of biking from San Francisco, he arrived at the town he grew up in, East Lansing, on Monday.
Carried with him is a letter written by one of his daughters that he delivered to his 101-year-old dad still living in East Lansing.
“I was looking for a way to kind of connect my family,” Nichols said. “My two daughters, I was such a part of their upbringing, and with my dad…he was so involved with my upbringing, and I sort of wanted to connect them.”
Nichols started his journey on May 15, where he rode across the Golden Gate Bridge through a path that took him through Oregon. His weeks have been spent travelling bike trails through Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
On Monday, he arrived in Michigan through the SS Badger, where he will be biking from Ludington to the finish line, East Lansing. He said he plans to be back to his dad on Monday.
The original plan was to go through the Upper Peninsula and over the Mackinac Bridge, but his trip was interrupted.
“I did have to take a short break in the middle to go home to Los Angeles to shoot a movie, and then I flew right back and got back on the bike, and kept going,” Nichols said.
But his journey isn’t just about connecting his family.
“I decided that I would just do it as a way of showing that the bicycle is not just a toy, but is an actual tool of transportation,” he said. “And that if we can create safe places for people to bike, we can break our dependency on oil and automobiles and things like that.”
Nichols has been riding bikes all of his life, but he really started getting into biking as a hobby when he lived in Aspen, Colorado in the 1980s, he said.
Nichols settled in Los Angeles years later after starting his acting career in New York.
But outside of his acting career, Nichols cohosts BikeTalk, a radio show advocating for safer spaces for people to travel on bikes. Nichols has documented his entire journey through the show.
“Our audience is following Taylor’s journey after maybe having listened to Taylor as a co-host on Bike Talk for several years, now he’s up and moving around the country,” Nick Richert, BikeTalk co-host, said. “He’s embodying everything that we’ve been talking about on the show.”
Richert said many of the stops Nichols consists of talking to people for the show. Although the show started a few years ago, the contents of the show have shifted over to Nichols trip, Richert said. Now, he and Nichols have to plan what happens next.
“We keep thinking about the future of Bike Talk and what it should become,” Richert said. “It’s a really niche show.”
But for now, Nichols is just excited to get to the finish line.
“I’m ready to get home,” he said. “I’m ready to see my dad.
“I’m looking forward to seeing my old friends from home who are going to meet me in Ludington when I get off the ferry. I’ve really enjoyed this trip, but just the fact that I’m near the end is making me kind of want to get to the end.”
He said his wife is planning to fly to Michigan to spend time with him and his dad. He will be flying back home on his return trip to California.
