Riders: Mike & Anne Kruimer, Edison, NJ

END TO END BICYCLE TOUR of 2004 A "True Tandem" with Two Dreams to Fulfill! Thanks for visiting our page! Please support our fundraising ride on the ECG. Please read the rest of this page, and click the "support" button to give online with a credit card.

Anne and I have always enjoyed riding bicycles and using them for fun and transportation. For me, the bicycle was a way to earn money. I delivered over 100 daily papers for many years on my 3 speed English racer with big wire saddle bags and during the 2 years I lived in Michigan I would ride out to the farms to pick fruits and vegetables to earn extra money for school clothes and spending money. Anne was always on the way to a friend's house or to the store. I remember buying Anne her first new bike just months before our son was born in 1973. She rode that 5 speed Schwinn Collegiate until just 3 weeks before his birth on July 18th. We spent the next two summers riding around Hightstown and East Windsor Township in Central NJ with our son behind me in a bicycle seat. Without helmets or an odometer we would ride maybe 10 miles in a day of picnicking and playing on swings and counting all the different farm animals we would see.
After our daughter was born in 1977 we parked the bikes for the next 10 years as we made ourselves busy with work and raising two very active kids. Between swim teams in the winter and summer, soccer in the fall, and baseball or softball in the spring, the years passed quickly with many happy memories. Then, in 1988, Anne suggested we do the 5 Boro Bike Ride in NYC so we packed everyone up in our 1980 Buick Century Station Wagon and went out for our first organized ride. We also had our first of many helmets and purchased something new, bicycle gloves! Our 5 speed Schwinn Collegiate bikes were old but still rolling. We then went on our first of many Princeton Event bike rides in August of that same year.

We joined the Princeton Freewheelers Bicycle Club in August of '89 and found out about Central Jersey Bicycle Club at the same time. We were now living in Edison, NJ in the house we bought in 1983, and so we joined CJBC in September of '89 and began dreaming of riding cross-country some day after the kids are grown and gone and I had retired from Delco Battery, New Brunswick, NJ, a division of General Motors in 2003.

We became very active with CJBC over the next couple of years. Anne was riding during the week on Club rides and we would go out together on weekends. We did our first 3-day tour Labor Day Weekend of '91 along the Eastern Shores of MD with Jerry Glick and a group of 20 riders. We remember how wonderful it was to travel for 3 days and not get into a car for the entire time. The next spring we went on JerryÕs 5-day Memorial Day Weekend trip through Cooperstown, NY on our upgraded 10 speed Schwinns with a triple ring added for the "hills" around Cooperstown.

We also attended our first Great Eastern Area Rally (GEAR) sponsored by the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) in '91 in Williamsburg, VA. We would both enjoy reading and hearing about the long trips that others would do in the bicycling magazines and we would dream of the day that we would go out the front door of our house and ride to the West Coast on our bikes.

It was also around this time that we first heard about the dream of an East Coast Greenway. I made contact with Jim Girvan and was going to meet up with a small group that was going to ride some of the Greenway through NJ. I remember that it was a weekday and raining so I did not take off from work so that Anne and I could join them. I wish we had gone that day because we would have met some "wonderful dreamers" if we had.

August 8th, 1992 was our 20th Wedding Anniversary and Anne had been eyeing a '91 Terry Symmetry at Cranford Bike Shop for some months. We took it out for a test ride and stopped to adjust the seat 3 times. The bike fit her like a glove. It was perfect. I bought it for her and we did one 30-mile bike ride the next day. Then it rained for the next 2 weeks. I came home on Thursday, August 20th from work at 3 pm and we went out into the beautiful sunshine to run errands with our bikes. We were finished in Metuchen just before 5 pm and our friend, Howie Glick of Jerry & Stan's Bike Shop, was closing up at 5 pm in Perth Amboy. We decided to meet him and ride home with him to Fords. We never made it. After purchasing a new presta frame pump at Metuchen Schwinn Bike Shop, we rode down Amboy Ave./New Brunswick Road into Hopelawn. Just before entering Perth Amboy, a car made a left hand turn in between us. Anne went head first into the hood and then continued over the other side. The Bell Spectrum helmet saved her life. Her back was broken and our dreams of riding cross-country laid shattered with her new bike in the road. We were only 4 miles from home with 8 more miles on the Terry.

August 20th, 1992 changed our lives in so many ways and has become a very important part of our lives and our dreams. The Middlesex Greenway uses an abandoned railway that runs parallel to Amboy Ave./New Brunswick Road and will soon be open for use. If the Middlesex Greenway had been open in 1992, I am sure that Anne would still be walking today. We would have been on the Greenway that will go from Metuchen to Perth Amboy. A portion of this Middlesex Greenway will also be part of the East Coast Greenway. Now you see the connection.

Just 2 days after the accident, while Anne was in Intensive Care recovering from surgery to fuse her spine from T-6 to L-1, friends got me to pick up our dreams and get moving again. I was in the hospital telling Anne that she must dream again of bicycle riding and traveling. She looked up from the hospital bed, unable to move, and thought I was crazy. I did not know how at the time but I assured her that I would find a way. While Anne did her rehab at Kessler Institute in West Orange, NJ to learn how to live in a wheelchair paralyzed from the waist down, I learned of Tandems East in South Jersey. We met Mel & Barbara Kornblau in March of '93 at their 1st Tandem Expo. They told us about the Counterpoint Opus IV semi-recumbent tandem that Jim Weaver and Angle Lake Cyclery of Seattle, WA had developed. Our $5,000 Counterpoint Tandem with a hand crank was delivered to Jerry & Stan's Bike Shop in Perth Amboy on June 21st and we went out for our first ride the next day. Just 11 months after the accident, we were back on the road bicycle riding. We now had a way to capture our dreams again!

In 1998 we ordered a new tandem from Tandems East with Belinky Bicycle Works of Philadelphia building up a newly designed Counterpoint frame. It was all technical changes and a stiffer frame. On February 14th, Valentines Day, 1999 Howie Glick joined us in Mel & Barbara's basement to build up our new Viewpoint Semi-recumbent Tandem. Mel and Howie poured their hearts into that bike with a true "Labor of Love"! We now plan on riding that bike from Maine to Florida on the East Coast Greenway.

We have averaged 4,000 miles each year for the past 5 years now and in May of 2001 we went over to Germany to visit my brother and his family. We brought the tandem with us and rode over 200 miles during our 2 week stay. We had a great time but our dream is to tour the USA on our bike. We did our first 6-day camping trip while on the Maine Wheels Moose Tour in 2000, and we have done a number of 3 and 5-day trips and LAB Rallies in the past 10 years.

In 1996 our lives were getting back to some semblance of normalcy and we again contacted Jim Girvan and the East Coast Greenway to see what we could do to help make it happen. I was now on the Board of the Middlesex Greenway Coalition and soon found myself on the ECG Board as well. We have also become very active with the Middlesex County Bicycle/Pedestrian Task Force and the NJ Bicycle Advisory Council. I was offered an early retirement and retired with 28 years in August of 2001. We now average 3 meetings a week and try to ride as often as we can. Last September 6th our lives changed again with the birth of Mackenzie Kathleen Roe, our first grandchild. We look forward to getting her out riding with us this summer.

We were late to join the End-to-End Tour because of the cost of the ride. $20,000 is a large amount of money but we are going to try our best to raise it all and possibly more. A number of things have changed our minds. On February 10th, Anne turned 50 and I will be 50 on March 11th. We see the future every day in the eyes of our granddaughter and we see that people need these greenways to make the safe connections to school, work, and shopping possible.

We see our participation in the ECG End-to-End Tour as a way to fulfill two of our dreams. We will get to travel a large portion of the US by bike and we will help to get the ECG off to a better financial future. We also hope to show that, unlike the Appalachian Trail, the ECG will be accessible to people of all abilities.

This trip is also one of a matter of health for both of us. Anne needs to keep as fit as possible for when the day comes that the doctors will be able to repair her spinal cord injury so she may again be able to walk. She needs to keep her weight down and her strength and stamina up. Anne hopes and prays every day that the doctors will find a way to repair spinal cord injuries but she will not sit around and wait. I am a Type II diabetic since late '96 and I need to lose another 30 pounds and continue to exercise to help control my sugar levels. My father died at 48 years old of a heart attach from complications of his diabetes and I plan on doing much better than that. We also need to keep up with our granddaughter.

Deciding to go on this trip has renewed our goals and helped us to focus our energy and minds on both the near future to complete the entire tour and the distant future when our granddaughter will be able to join us on a tour of the East Coast on one continuous greenway from Maine to Florida. Is a Coast to Coast Greenway next?!

Please do not hesitate to give any amount possible. Every penny counts. Each ride starts out with the first mile and they then add up to 30, 50, 100 or more miles. We need to see the same happen to our pledge money. Anne and I are not worried about completing the 2,800 miles of riding. We are concerned that we will not be able to meet the monetary challenge of $10,000 each. We are a "true tandem". We go together or we do not go at all. The only single riding I have done is commuting to work. We have now been married over 31 years and raised two children together. I am involved with a number of organizations along with being President of CJBC for the past 7 years and I will be the first to tell anyone that I could not do any of it without Anne's help. Dreams are so much brighter when you can share them with others.

We welcome you all to share in our dreams!

Our site is secure. However, if you are uncomfortable with giving online with a credit card, you can call the ECGA and provide credit card info over the phone (401-789-4625, 9 am - 5 pm, M-F), or mail a check (written to ECGA) with "The Kruimers" on the memo line to: ECGA, 135 Main St, Wakefield RI 02879.

Thanks again!