Nineteen-year-old Jack Buczkowski has been a food delivery driver, a Little League field crew worker, a middle school lacrosse coach and a house-painting, lawn-mulching, grass-weeding handyman.
But for now, he’s just a cross-country biker.
Buczkowski is riding his bike from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean, a journey he and his friend Tim Brankin, 20, started Wednesday. The two Hinsdale residents are hoping to knock out the 2,139-mile trip in just a month before returning to real life.
The trip arose out of Buczkowski’s not knowing what he wanted his “real life” to look like. The two biked from Seattle to Portland last summer, and he figured another trip would be what he needed.
“You’re just on your bike, thinking for the whole day,” he said. “Whatever is on your mind, like ‘What am I going to do with my life?’, you just empty it.”
After graduating from high school and heading to Tulane University to study architecture, Buczkowski realized after one month that it wasn’t what he wanted to do.
“I felt pretty lost in terms of what I wanted to do,” he said.
Buczkowski returned home to Hinsdale, thinking he would take off only one semester. After being home and starting jobs, he decided to turn one semester into two and go back to Tulane a year later. He began putting money away, knowing that before heading back to school he wanted to take one big trip.
“I had my sights set on going to California,” he said. “All of my adventures need to have a good starting and end point.”
He settled on Route 66, nearly 1,700 miles more than his Pacific Northwest adventure.
The idea wasn’t always to saddle up his bike and hit the road. Buczkowski toyed with the idea of hitchhiking (too dangerous) and taking a train (too boring). Eventually he landed on a two-tire trip on his bike, which he affectionately calls “Pickle,” and started prep work.
“I spent all of December zoomed in on Google Maps looking at the route,” he said. “I have a document of every turn I need to make from here to California.”
Buczkowski is confident enough in his planning that he and Brankin, who coincidentally ended his first year at the University of Missouri after one month, are foregoing any sort of support vehicle.
“We’re hoping this trip answers a lot of those ‘what do we want to do’ questions for us,” Buczkowski said. “Doing it without a van makes us do it completely on our own. It gives us more independence.”
No support van, though, means having to carry everything they’ll need on their bikes—”no backpacks,” Buczkowski said. They packed food such as oatmeal, granola, ramen and freeze-dried meals to get them by, but they also plan to stop for plenty of burgers along the way. This trip is Buczkowski’s first time seeing most of middle America, and he has every stop and turn hung on the wall in his parents’ home.
“We knew this trip would be bigger and better [than last year’s], but we just didn’t think it’d be this big,” said Jack’s mother, Liza Buczkowski. “Letting Jack leave to go on this very challenging trip was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a parent.”
But Buczkowski’s parents couldn’t be prouder of their son and his ambition, even if they’ll be on edge for 30 days. The two adventurers agreed to be in touch whenever they stop, and Jack’s parents expect him to share their location at each stopping point along the way.
The two are planning to cover approximately 90 miles a day before breaking for the evening. Three nights of the 30, they’ll stay in hotels. The rest of the time, the two will stay in campgrounds. They’re bringing camping gear and enough money to get by for a month. Buczkowski and Brankin are self-funding their journey, not asking for assistance from their parents.
“He knows we would support him as much as we could and as much as he needs,” Liza Buczkowski said. “But he feels better about the endeavor if he does it on his own.”
Buczkowski and Brankin aren’t just in it for themselves, either. That would be too simple (and too “coming of age movie”-esque). The men are raising money for World Bicycle Relief, a charity that builds locally sourced bikes for African children, doctors, educators and more. Buczkowski and Brankin are hoping to raise enough money to fund 30 bikes, one for each day they’re on the road, at $147 per bike to manufacture.
“At first the trip was just to have some time alone on the road to California,” Buczkowski said. “But then we thought that we could use the grandeur of the trip to help out another cause.”
The two raised funds ahead of their departure and plan to spread the word along the way. At the time of publication, they had raised about $1,000 of their $4,410 goal. They’ve set up a Facebook page and a separate fundraising site to spread the word.
Once he makes it to the West Coast, Buczkowski plans to work in Santa Barbara, Calif., for the summer before heading back to Tulane to study English. It’s a far cry from architecture, but hopefully more in line with what he pictures for his life at the end of his 30-day trek. While there’s much to look forward to on the road, Buczkowski has one thing he is dead set on doing.
“I’m trying to figure out how to move forward,” he said. “I’m doing this to get a better perspective on life … and figure out what my goals are.”
@shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeyechicago.com
