About six years ago, a question began to nag Lisa Watts, a question that most women in their fifties will find relatable.
What now?
A solid career as an editor and communications manager was winding down, the kids were grown, everything was running on all cylinders heading into what Jane Fonda has called life’s “third act.”
At 58, Watts wasn’t ready to kick back, retire her cycling shoes and while away the days streaming “Murder, She Wrote.”
“So many of my friends, once they’ve raised their kids and they’re out of the house, feel like everything has gone down hill,” Watts said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Are you kidding? Everything has opened up and you get to play now.’”
And that’s what Watts did, fulfilling a lifelong dream to bicycle from Key West to Canada, with an equally adventurous 67-year-old friend, Dee Bird.
People are also reading…
Accomplishing that feat led directly to her tackling another dream: writing a book.
Watts, now 63, will talk about her book, “Crossing Bridges: What Biking up the East Coast Taught Me About Life After 60,” on Saturday, April 6, at Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro, from 4 to 5 p.m.
Watts lives in Greensboro, with her husband, Bob Malekoff. In 2006, she was named the first editor of Winston-Salem Monthly, a job she held for a year.
More than a travelogue of her ride, Watts’ book explores her motivation to bicycle 3,000 miles and the lessons she learned along the way.
“The closer I got to sixty, the more restless I felt about the trajectory of my life. I had an itch to do something just a bit extraordinary, one thing that shot up above average,” she wrote in the book. “If I didn’t push myself to realize a dream now, would I ever?”
Watts has been involved in endurance sports for several years and knew that physically, she could take on the challenge. But that window was starting to close with each passing year.
Watts and her friend followed the East Coast Greenway, which connects 15 states for 3,000 miles from Florida to Maine, on a network of roads, trails and bicycle paths. Forty percent of those 3,000 miles are protected paths away from motorized traffic, Watts said.
She was familiar with the route in a couple of ways — Watts did marketing and communications for East Coast Greenway Alliance when she decided to take the trip, and she has lived in cities up and down the East Coast, including Baltimore and Boston.
The two-month ride included its share of difficulties — awful head winds, torrential rains, occasional tension with her riding partner and self-doubt. Watts and Bird did allow themselves the comfort of staying either with friends, in motels or in Airbnbs and gave themselves permission to accept car rides from people when covering miles on their bicycles was too dangerous.
Along the way, they became inspirations.
“One mother told us, ‘Looking at the two of you, I know I can do this,’” she told Watts and Bird. “We started laughing, but we knew what she meant. The fact that we were 58 and 67 made it a little unusual, but I want to tell women, ‘You’ve still got plenty of ability.’”
When it came time for the book, Watts said that writing a straight travelogue eventually bored her. All in all, she said, the trip really wasn’t all that dramatic.
“A bike trip is repetitive. You’re doing the same thing everyday. You need to have some arc to your story,” she said.
But after taking a memoir-writing workshop, she decided to think more deeply about all the ways the trip became a metaphor for aging well. Lessons on traveling lightly and crossing bridges can be applied to both bicycle trips and aging gracefully.
With the trip and book behind her, Watts is looking forward to new adventures, including a four days of hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
And she’s keeping her ears open for what might be next.
“A good rule of thumb for me has been paying attention to what makes me feel envious or jealous,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, this is something you really want to do.’”