SALISBURY — Last summer, local cyclist Alan Lovejoy pushed far beyond familiar Northwest Corner roads, embarking on a 2,700-mile international bike trek that took him from the Canadian Rockies to the U.S.–Mexico border.
Lovejoy set out to complete the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, the longest off-pavement cycling route in the world. The trail begins in Alberta, Canada, and ends in Antelope Wells, N.M., tracing the Continental Divide through two Canadian provinces — Alberta and British Columbia — and five U.S. states: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
On July 31, 2025, Lovejoy, a resident of Amesville and a retired teacher at the Housatonic Valley Regional High School, rode out from the northern terminus. Seventy days later, on Oct. 9, he crossed the finish point in Antelope Wells, completing the journey, which draws cyclists from across the globe.
Alan Lovejoy at the start of his international cycling journey. Provided
The combination of long-distance cycling and camping is known as “bikepacking,” which requires riders to strap gear directly to their bikes and improvise overnight accommodations. Campsites ranged from forest service campgrounds to right beside an interstate highway.
Lovejoy had sampled the route in 2016, when he completed a section of it with a friend, and said that experience made planning for the full ride relatively straightforward.
Packing, he said, required strict discipline: only multi-functional items that could compress to a small size were brought along. In addition to his gear, Lovejoy carried a journal, making a point to write at least a few sentences each day to document the journey.
For the first seven days, Lovejoy rode alone. After the first week, he met cyclists from England, the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. A community formed among these strangers, who then went on to spend days and sometimes weeks together.
Each morning over breakfast, plans were made about where they would camp the following night and subsequently how many miles that day would entail. While weather conditions were a factor, most days entailed an average of 50 miles.
Time on the route was split, riding for seven to 10 days at a time, followed by one rest day in a nearby town to grocery shop, do laundry and enjoy a meal other than packaged tuna and rice.
The majority of the route, around 2,100 miles, is comprised of unpaved roads, meaning the weather played a large role in the condition of cycling. Using paper maps and GPS apps, Lovejoy was able to navigate around trails that were unsafe or poorly maintained if rain had fallen the night before.
In New Mexico, the main challenge was what cyclists refer to as “peanut butter mud,” in which the traction on the road is sticky and can interfere with the mechanics of the bike.
For Lovejoy, New Mexico also brought the most exciting wildlife.
One morning, a fellow cyclist was met with a road full of tarantulas, a sight Lovejoy was on the hunt to see for himself. He experienced the first snowfall on Sept. 23, two weeks before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.
Riding each day from sunrise to sunset with no music, Lovejoy relied on the scenic views around him to pass the time.
Now that the journey has been crossed off Lovejoy’s bucket list, plans for new routes have begun to emerge. In retirement he remains the track and field coach for HVRHS, and he stated his main consideration when planning future rides is that the timeline does not interfere with the high school track season.
Lovejoy challenges himself to ride 3,000 miles each year. In the Northwest Corner, his typical route takes him from Amesville to the Massachusetts state line and back.
