Droeger takes 3,800-mile bicycle trip
Editor’s Note: The following story on 2012 Little Wolf High School graduate Tyler Droeger appeared in the Thursday, Sept. 30, edition of the Waupaca County Post.
Droeger was completing the final leg of a 3,800-mile long bicycle ride throughout the western United States to raise awareness about the food crisis on the Navajo Nation in Arizona and to raise money to award a mountain biking scholarship to Navajo students in the Flagstaff, Arizona, area.
According to the Utah Highway Patrol, Droeger, 27, was on his bicycle on State Route 89 near Hatch, Utah, on Sept. 29. A passing SUV hit the back of his bicycle, sending him off the shoulder of the road and into a rocky ravine. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
By Greg Seubert
To say that riding a bicycle is Tyler Droeger’s passion might just be the understatement of the year.
“I’ve had more than one girlfriend tell me they wished I looked at them like I look at my bike,” he said. “That’s happened more than once.”
Droeger, a 2012 graduate of Little Wolf High School, was speaking Sept. 23 from a valley in east-central Nevada.
So how did Droeger end up in the middle of nowhere in Nevada?
It’s part of a one-man journey that started more than two months ago and will end sometime in October.
“I want to say I’m getting close to three-quarters of the way done,” he said. “I have just under 1,000 miles left on a 3,800-mile trip.”
The ride is Droeger’s effort to raise awareness about the food crisis on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. He’s also raising money to award a mountain biking scholarship to Navajo students in the Flagstaff, Arizona, area.
Droeger has raised just over $1,500 of his $4,000 goal. Anyone interested in donating can check out his gofundme page at www.gofundme.com/f/willbike4food.
“I’ve spent a good amount of time in the Southwest, moving around and exploring,” Droeger said. “I started making my way into the Navajo reservation and I started to realize that I would pass the last city and last house. Ten miles later, there’s an elderly person walking toward the city that I passed 20 miles ago. It piqued this interest in me that was questioning how this situation happens. How do you get somebody walking in the middle of the desert to a grocery store that’s still 20 miles away?
“I realized there’s a huge amount of inequality,” he said. “We’ve taken this land and allowed it to stay incredibly barren and dry and desolate. I wanted to experience that kind of journey and use my own power to get around to these places and figure out where a lot of these folks are coming from. That was really the initial inspiration for the trip.”
Timing was right
Droeger lives in Arizona.
“‘Live’ is kind of a strong word,” he said. “I’m kind of a nomad at this point of my life. I home-base in Arizona quite a bit. I find myself in Utah every once in awhile, I find myself in Colorado.”
He currently doesn’t have a steady job, which made the timing right for the trip.
“I’ll pick up a contract for anywhere from three to eight months, generally in the tourist industry,” he said. “It worked out perfectly with the situation I was in. I was planning on starting much later in the season and I ended up starting earlier.”
Droeger started the trip in Boulder, Colorado, in July and followed the Great Divide to Grants, New Mexico, where he caught Route 66, one of the United States’ most popular highways.
“When I was on the Great Divide, I met somebody who just happened to have the same route planned out for the next couple of weeks, so I had a partner to ride with for the first three weeks,” he said. “I’ve been on my own for about 4 1/2 weeks now.”
The trip will eventually take Droeger through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah.
He followed Route 66 into Arizona through Flagstaff and eventually into California, where he rode through a stretch of the Mojave Desert.
“The only way out of the situation was to keep pedaling and eventually, I’d get there,” he said. “When it’s hot and dry and there are very few resources, the only thing to do is to keep moving. Route 66 took me all the way to Santa Monica and then I was on the Pacific Coast Highway for a little over 600 miles and that brought me to San Francisco.”
Organizing the trip was not a problem, according to Droeger.
“It was really easy to put the route together because I’m following four really major bicycle routes,” he said. “I just happened to link them together. I was able to get these maps and everything has been masked specifically for bicycle touring. It tells me where water is, where resources are, where there’s camping.”
Working in Waupaca
Droeger moved to Phoenix, Arizona, after graduating from high school and eventually moved back to Wisconsin.
He worked on a project at Serenity Park in Waupaca in 2019 as a crew leader with the Wisconsin Conservation Corps.
“Working with the Wisconsin Conservation Corps was really one of the best experiences I’ve had,” he said. “It was everything I liked to do: living in tents, living in parks, traveling, moving, working with my hands.”
Droeger averages about 70 miles a day.
“If I can go over 50 miles over 2,000 feet of climbing, that’s an average day,” he said. “If I start pushing 80 miles or 5,000 feet of climbing, then I’m really having a rock star day.”
He rides from about 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and was asked if he even thought of throwing in the towel and quitting.
“I’ve been thinking about it the whole time,” he said. “I got stung by a scorpion six times underneath a bridge and that was a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is something I signed up for.’ That was definitely a moment where I had to reconsider what I had going on.
“I was in Big Sur (California) and it seemed like I hadn’t seen the sun in four days,” he added. “My sleeping bag was wet, my clothes were wet and my phone was so wet that it didn’t work. I have to give my mom a huge amount of credit. Anytime I had one of those moments, I usually call her and she goes, ‘You’re having the experience of a lifetime. Just keep rolling and you’ll be fine.’ That’s been a really big help.”
Droeger provides updates on his trip on Instagram
“It’s been incredibly overcast and foggy for the last five days, but I’m happy to say I’ve made it to San Francisco to finish the third leg of my trip,” he wrote Sept. 12. “I’m dry for the first time in days, the sun is out, my bike is in a garage and I can roam freely without worries.”
Other posts weren’t so positive.
“There’s no soft way to say it, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he wrote Aug. 14. “My toenails are thick, brittle and falling off in chunks. My skin is dry and cracked and I’m losing weight at an alarming rate. My face feels like it’s hanging off my cheekbones like damp laundry on a line.
“My skin is constantly covered in dirt and grease, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” he wrote. “I’m more in touch with the world and energy around me than I’ve ever been.”
Droeger said he looks forward to wrapping up the trip.
“This whole last week has been amazing,” he said. “I feel like I’m back in my comfort zone. That’s eased my stress. I can see the finish line. I’ve got three more map segments to go as opposed to 11. That’s making me feel good.”
He hopes to finish the trip in early October.
“It’s too hard to plan out,” he said. “A flat tire will take 10 miles off of a day. Talking to a tourist, that’s a whole morning.”
Droeger has said people he has met are happy to help him out.
“I’m going to remember how cool people can be when they see you doing something that’s positive,” he said. “I’ve had such wonderful interactions with strangers. If I’m in a store and fill up all my resources, I’ll be talking to somebody and they’ll say, ‘What do you need?’ I’ll say, ‘I really don’t need anything.’ They’ll say, ‘I just have to do something to help out.’ It’s been really cool to see how people leap at this opportunity to help me make progress on this trip.”
Droeger is looking forward to finishing the trip in Denver, Colorado.
“Once the trip is over, the adventure I’m really craving is being normal,” he said. “I would really enjoy having a bed to sleep in every night. I’ve done my exploring and had my wild adventures.
“I have the easy job in the whole situation,” he said. “I’m just riding a bike.”