In this heartfelt and inspiring episode of Epic Begins With 1 Step Forward, Zander Sprague sits down with author and podcaster Teri M. Brown, whose life changed when she and her husband rode 3,102 miles across the United States on a tandem bicycle. What began as an adventure became a powerful journey of healing after Teri escaped an emotionally abusive marriage and doubted her own worth. She shares how trust, teamwork, and letting go of control rebuilt her confidence – one pedal stroke at a time. Teri also reflects on grief after losing her husband, redefining identity, and why epic goals do not require bucket lists but pure action. From writing novels to chasing new “not yet” dreams, this conversation is a reminder that resilience is built by showing up, even when the road ahead is unknown.
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3,102 Miles On A Tandem: Trust, Trauma, And Taking The Road Forward With Teri M. Brown
In this episode, I’m so honored to be joined by Teri M. Brown. Teri, tell us who you are and what you do.
That could be long or short. I’ll do the short version for you. I’m Teri M. Brown. I am an Author, a Podcaster, a Book Reviewer, all things writing and reading. That’s pretty much who I am.
Becoming A Writer And Riding On A Tandem Bike
Let’s start off and talk about the book or books that you have written.
Yeah, so I’ve written three novels, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, An Enemy Like Me, and Daughters of Green Mountain Gap. They’re all in the historical fiction genre. I have another novel coming out in April 2026. It’s called Peg, Unhinged. It is a humorous women’s fiction. I have a children’s book because my granddaughter asked me when I was going to write one for her, and so that’s called Little Lola and Her Big Dream. I have my memoir because my husband and I rode 3,102 miles across the United States on a tandem bicycle. When I got back from that trip, I realized that I had learned some things. I wrote a book called 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure.
There you go. As a road cyclist myself, I got to talk about that epic adventure of riding across the country on a tandem bike. For my audience, in the cycling world, we sometimes refer to tandem bikes as divorcycles.
I have heard that over and over. People would say, like, “Are you guys still married?” They were very sincere. Fortunately, Bruce and I had an amazing relationship, and the bicycle trip only made it stronger. You have that opportunity to, like, really strengthen the relationship or realize that you are not meant to be together because on a tandem, you have to work together. Everything is together. Not just pedaling starting the bike. It’s stopping the bike, knowing when to take a break, knowing how fast to go, trying to find a cadence that meets both people, all of it.
More importantly, one person has to rest control of the bike to the person up front who actually has the steering handlebars. For many couples, very strong relationship, but the not being in control can be a huge part of why we jokingly call it a divorcycle because there is so much cooperation and there’s trust.
Luckily for me, Bruce was an avid cyclist. When we decided to take this trip, I had not been on a bicycle in 40 years. I was not an avid cyclist.
Please tell me you did some training before you left.
About a year’s worth. We did some training. The point that I said, “Count me in on this epic adventure. I want to do something like this,” we were dating. I hadn’t been on a bike in 40 years, and I thought I wanted to do something big. I had just gotten out of an abusive relationship. I spent fourteen years married to an emotionally abusive man. I got out of that relationship and I didn’t believe in myself anymore.
Riding a tandem bike requires working together with another person, making it a great way to strengthen relationships.
I kept thinking I wanted to do something big and bold that would prove to the world that I still had value. It turns out that the world didn’t doubt it. I doubted it, and I needed to do something big and bold to prove it to me. I met Bruce, and he told me he’d always wanted to ride across the US on a bicycle. I said, “Are you going to talk about it until the day you die or are you going to do it?”
He said, “No, I really want to do it.” I said, “Count me in.” It did not take long to realize that as an experienced cyclist, there was no amount of training that I could do to catch up to where he was. This trip would be no fun if we took side-by-side bicycles because he would always be ahead of me or he would always have to be holding back so much that he wouldn’t have fun. On a tandem, he can’t go faster than me and I can’t go slower than him. We have to find a way to work together to make it work.
Just Try And Do Whatever You Have In Mind
It’s so exemplifying that epic begins with one step forward and those things that we say. That’s how my whole epic idea came about, which is we all say, “Someday, I’d like to do this. I’d like to ride across the country, I’d like to write a book, I’d like to run a marathon, I’d like to travel somewhere.” We all do it. I do it. I realized that the epic things that I’ve done in my life happened because I just decided to try and do it.
Here’s the thing. It’s try and do it. When you guys set off on your adventure, every intention of finishing, but realizing there are a lot of things, a lot of detours, roadblocks that will come up that may make it so that you don’t finish it, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t successful. It just means we set a destination but we didn’t quite hit it yet.
For us, we had to change our mind along the way. We had envisioned that we would ride every single mile with no help, that we would do it and we would never get off the bicycle. We were never pushing. We had this in our minds. It didn’t take long to recognize that when you’re going over big huge mountains and you live on the coast of North Carolina and that’s not what you’re used to, that there are times where pushing the bike makes a whole lot more sense.
Get off and push because there’s no riding this. You’ve got a grade that’s way too high and you’re on a tandem pulling a trailer full of junk. There’s no way you’re getting up this hill. We hit a patch of road where it was torn up completely. They were doing road construction. It was down to the roadbed. We can’t ride across that.
Someone put us in a truck, took us across. We could have seen those things as failure. Now we didn’t do what we set out to do. The truth is, we set out to ride across the United States on a tandem, and we did it. It just looked a little different than we had envisioned it before we got on the road and realized what we were going to see.
Cycling Across The US From West To East
Isn’t that true of every epic adventure? Be it writing a book, you sit down and go, “I want to write a book,” and where you start and where you end oftentimes are not necessarily exactly how you thought or how you got there or whatever. Did you guys ride East to West?
We rode West to East. We flew out to Astoria, Oregon, sent our bicycle out, and then rode back to the East Coast because prevailing winds are West to East, and so you want the wind behind you as much as possible. However, when we were in Montana, apparently, the winds got very confused. Did not know which way they were supposed to be blowing, and for three weeks, they blew in our face and it was horrible. I really don’t care if I ever see Montana again.
That’s fair enough.
Eastern Montana in particular. Western Montana is beautiful with all the mountains. You get into Eastern Montana and you’re going an average of 40 miles a day and it takes a long time to get through Montana.
I’ve done centuries and metric centuries and even just on rides where I’m like, “Let me go explore someplace new,” and then I’m like, “I’m happy I saw that but that is not a road that I feel I need to go on ever again.” I do totally get that there are people who don’t ride. Yes, there are times where you hit a grade that is so steep that you have to get off because otherwise, you’ll tip over because you just get to a point where you cannot push the bike fast enough to keep balanced.
My husband wore a heart monitor to keep up, and when his heart rate would get above a certain point, he would say, “We’re getting off the bike and pushing.” It doesn’t make any sense for me to wear myself out. We can get to the top I can get us to the top, but we’ll never go anywhere past then because I will then be done.
When I first started cycling, where I live, there was a great road and there was this hill that just literally got progressively steeper. I remember saying, “All right, I’m going to make it to the top of the hill,” and I did, but I swear, I was probably about two heartbeats away. It’s getting a little gray on the sides.
If you force your way and then there you are, now what? For us, we had to get to the next place where we could camp or get a hotel. We had to be sure we could get there. You can’t use all of your energy on hill number 1 and then have 28 miles that you still have to ride. I really am so thankful that he was the one in charge of that because he knew his body well. I did not. I was still figuring it all out, and he knew it well and he knew when to say, “We’re getting off the bike.”
For me, it was difficult. We’d get off the bike and cars would go by and I would think, “What are they thinking of us?” I was very concerned with what other people were thinking. After a while, once we’d been out on the road for several weeks, my thought was, “I don’t care what they’re thinking until they’re out here doing it with me.”
My attitude on this is however I have to complete this. My audience knows I run marathons and there was walking involved. There was I did a 50k ultra, and that was mainly like on bike paths and stuff, but the last five miles were slightly uphill. By that point, that was miles 27 through 31 or so, and I want to run up this hill, but I really don’t have enough energy. I had to go down through this off of this levee and on this trail, and I’m like, “I could push myself a little.”
There was loose sand and I’m like, “I am not getting 30 miles into a 31-mile race and twist my ankle or something.” Be that close just stop and walk, you’re okay, the goal is to finish. Just like you, your day, you’re like, “We got to do our 40 miles.” You’re right, if you burn yourself out on mile five, it is a long day.
We had to stop and reevaluate, figure out like, “What are we trying to achieve here?” It wasn’t a certain number of miles a day, it wasn’t getting done in a certain period of time, it was getting done. It was, “Can we make it?” If that means we had to take a day break because we were now exhausted, then we took a day break. If the weather was going to be so bad that riding was really going to be more dangerous, then we took a break. We soon realized this was about us and we got to make the rules. There wasn’t someone standing over us saying, “This is what success looks like.”
We have to stop and reevaluate every now and then to figure out what we are trying to achieve in life.
Couldn’t say it better myself. Did you take a more Northerly route or did you go and then you dropped down? Obviously, to get back to North Carolina, if you’re up in Montana, you’ve got to do South a little.
What we did was we started in Astoria, Oregon. We actually finished in Washington DC, so we didn’t come all the way down. What we did was we went what’s known as the Lewis and Clark trail until we got over the Rockies because that passes over the Rockies at Lolo Pass, which is one of the lowest passes that you can cross over the Rockies in that portion.
Low being a relative term.
Relative, but it was a couple of thousand feet and that makes a big difference on a tandem. Once we did that, then we actually went North and got on Route 2 and took Route 2 almost the entire way across the United States. Route 2 is really close to the Canadian border. A good portion of the time, we were within 20 to 30 miles of Canada. We rode, we went into UP Michigan and went up and around Michigan, down around the Cleveland area. From Cleveland, we went into Pittsburgh and from Pittsburgh to DC. That’s the route that we took.
I assume that you started this in probably the springtime or late spring?
Do you want to hear a great story?
I do.
Making The Ride During The Height Of The Pandemic
We had anticipated starting in May because that made the most sense. We were planning to go during 2020. Do you remember what was happening in 2020?
I am familiar. I have not forgotten.
We thought that our trip was over, like we weren’t going to be able to go. We were so sad about that, having planned and we were so ready to go, that we decided as long as we could start by July 15th that we could still make it across. We actually started like on June 28th. Much later than we had anticipated, but we finished up the first week of October 2020. It was a little chillier than we had wanted, but we were fine. It was great that we did it.
Snow had not started to fly quite yet?
We did not have snow, we made it through. There was a point there where we didn’t think we were going to get to go. Things started opening up just enough that we decided we’re in the US, worst-case scenario, we’ll rent a car and come home. You can break that tandem down quite a bit and get it into a car and we’ll just come home.
As it turns out, being where we were, up North, in very small communities, we didn’t see a lot of COVID. Now we saw a lot of things closed, people were not out and about. We never really ran into pockets where people were afraid. It happened later, after we made it through, when we were home, things started happening up North. I think it’s because the colder weather came, more and more people were inside, they were starting to feel better, they went out into group events.
I guess another advantage for you doing it when you did was there was a lot less traffic.
There was a lot less traffic. The issues that we had, though, was there was a lot less traffic, but often there were less places open to get food, less places open to find a place to rest for the night. It was good and bad. The best part, though, was that instead of sitting home all summer being cooped up and feeling horrible, we were out. We were doing this huge adventure while everyone else was cooped up. That had a lot of people reading my blog. I kept a blog every day about what we were doing, and we had avid followers because they had nothing else to do. They’re stuck at home going, “Look, where’s Terry and Bruce today?”
How Teri Became An Author After The Ride
I love to ask this question of people who have been on these big epic adventures, which is when you finally got to DC, whatever your stopping point was, how did you feel when you got to wherever your finish line was?
We stopped at the Marine Corp Memorial.
The Marine Corp Memorial was your finish line. You ride up there, ecstatic that you finished. How long after that did you ask yourself, “Now what?”
I think I was asking myself like the day before, because we stayed in an actually nice hotel normally we were staying in campgrounds or motels, and that’s a kind thing to call them.
You had a roof over your head. Sometimes that’s all you need.
That was enough. We had actually stayed in a hotel, not a motel, and it was nicer. I went and got my hair cut like we’re going to come in now. We washed our bike, we were all ready. It was on that day that I’m going, “What are we going to do when this is done?” I don’t even know how we’re going to fill our time. I have spent so long doing nothing but get up, ride, set up camp, get our clothes washed in the sink, hang them, make sure we eat, write in my blog, go to bed. Get up, tear all that down, get it packed up, get our breakfast, get on the bicycle, ride, do it again. That’s what we had been doing for so long, I couldn’t even imagine what a day was going to look like.
In my epic adventures, I, too, have said that you spend all that time focused on, “Here, I want to get to this destination, I want to accomplish this.” it’s awesome. I’m not taking away from how ecstatic you are, but I ask the question of you specifically for a reason, which is you do get to the end of this. I finished my first marathon, I was so excited, and then I said, “Now what?” this is great, but it doesn’t end here.
For me, it was interesting. I started the ride as someone who was still pretty damaged from having been in that horrible relationship. Bruce and I had gotten married. He’s a wonderful guy, but still there’s a lot of me that is afraid. I was afraid of a lot of things. I was even afraid to go get us a room in a motel, which I know is stupid, but it’s where I was. I was just in this, “I can’t put myself out there.” By the end, that was all gone.
We’re doing the last mile. Bruce can see where we’re stopping because there’s a flag, and he says, “Do you see that flag?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “That’s it. That’s where we’re stopping.” I’m laughing and crying at the same time, like, “Whoa, we’ve done it,” and then I had this like epiphany. I just rode across the United States on a tandem bicycle. Me, a non-athletic woman who hadn’t been on a bike in 40 years. I did that. That means that I can do anything I put my mind to. It’s not a matter of, “Can I do it?” but “What do I want to do?” I asked myself, “What do you want to do?” and the answer was, “I want to be an author.” fourteen months later, my first novel came out.
Yes, we are all a lot more resilient than we believe. It is things like riding across the country, starting something new, be it running, riding a bike.
Just learning to paint, picking up a new hobby. I tell people all the time, my book, though it’s filled with bicycling things because that’s the adventure that I took, is really for people who realize that they put themselves in a box and want to get out of that box. They want to do something. It could be something like get into or out of a relationship, move to a new town, start a new job, start a business, pick up a new hobby. It doesn’t have to be ride across the US. It can be anything that puts you just a little bit more outside your comfort zone than you’re used to.
To not be entirely too self-aggrandizing, it does start with that one step forward, that just deciding that here is something I want to do. More importantly, I’m sure that you and Bruce did not have all the answers to all of the challenges that came up. Yet, it doesn’t stop you from still going on the adventure and accepting that there is a whole lot of unknown. You don’t know how this is going to go, but every morning you get up, you get on the bike and say, “We’re going to do our best today.”
Every morning when you get up, always aim to do your best for that day.
I remind people all the time that for some reason, when we talk about our epic dreams, people say, “I have to know absolutely everything and how to do it. I’m like, “When you get up in the morning, you don’t have the answers to all the questions you’re going to get today and yet you still got up.” That is life. We don’t have all the answers. Yes, it’s good to plan.
You want some basic stuff done. I’ve determined that the definition of adventure is you have this idea, you plan and you plan, and on day one you recognize that there’s no amount of planning that really got you ready for this, and you do it anyway. Really, if you understood how difficult it was going to be and how many things you didn’t know, it would probably paralyze you and stop you from going, so you plan to the best of your ability and then you have to swivel.
I’m not good at that. That is not my strong suit. I like things to be nice and neat. You’ll get a kick out of this. At the kitchen table, prior to us leaving, I had set up a plan, so I knew where we were going to ride to every day. I had it all set out, I knew where we were going to stay. On day one, we did not go as far as I thought we would because we were crossing over a mountain range and having not crossed over too many of those, I was unaware of how long that was going to take. That was okay. I adjusted.
Day two, we also didn’t make it as far as I had assumed. Day three, I threw that away because you really cannot plan three months of adventure from your kitchen table without being on that adventure, because every day the weather could be different. Maybe you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, maybe you’re having issues with the bicycle and we’re only going to be able to get to the first town with a bike shop so that we can fix whatever the problem is. You can’t say, “On that Tuesday, we’re going to have three flat tires, so I won’t be able to.” You don’t know that until you’re there doing it.
Teri’s “Not Yet” Dreams In Life
Absolutely. One thing I love to ask my guest is, for me, my book, I love these two words. Not yet. The optimism of saying, “I’m doing something, but it’s going to take time.” you and I as authors know not yet. Teri, has your book come out? Not yet. Since you’ve written 3 books and I’ve written 3 books, you got a fourth one coming out, oftentimes, the hardest or the longest part is not actually writing the book, but it’s editing the book.
Editing takes forever. Something funny that Bruce would tell people, because as we’re going along, we’re on a tandem bicycle with a trailer. We’re obviously doing something. We’re also filthy. Everything is just covered. People would say all the time, “Where are you headed?” they knew we weren’t out for an afternoon. Bruce always said, “Washington, DC, but not today.”
That’s so true. We had to focus on the day that we were on. Sometimes, we had to focus on just the pedal stroke that we were pedaling at that moment. You couldn’t go further than that. It’s the same with writing a book. It’s the same with pretty much anything you do in your life. They talk all the time about being present, in the moment. When you’re doing something like riding across the United States, you have no choice but to be in the moment.
Riding your bike long distance, be it just you’re out on your own and doing a 40-mile ride, whatever, it’s great to say, “Here’s where I’m going. Here’s why I want to get to,” but when I was running marathons, I can say I know the destination, I know I’m at mile five, but I have to run the road that’s in front of me. You have to ride the road that’s in front of you. You have to write the chapter that’s in front of you.
You can’t focus on the destination because there’s a lot between where you are and where you want to be. It’s good to have that there, but your attention can’t be focused there. It’s this thing on the side that you know that’s where we’re headed, but right now, I’m dealing with this hill.
You cannot focus on the destination alone because there are a lot of things between where you are and where you want to be.
My question to you is. What are one or two of your not yets?
I would love to be a public speaker. That isn’t happening yet. However, I have gotten on a lot of podcasts, so I feel like I am moving in that direction. I have a book that I can talk about, things that I’ve learned. I have things in place and I’m moving in that direction, but it’s not yet. That’s one. Another, unfortunately, is in 2022, my husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma.
He passed away. I am now figuring out new Teri, like, what does this look like? One of the things that I’ve decided is that I would like to try riding a bicycle just me. There are a couple of rides. I wouldn’t do it completely alone because I definitely would need the support of others. I’m looking at some group rides where I go and do something that would be epic for me. It’s not going to be across the US like it was with my husband, but something bigger that I can say I’ve taken what I learned from him and I’ve moved on. That’s also a not yet, but it’s in the works.
That is awesome, Teri. Anyway, I can support you in both of those. Know that I’m all about supporting people’s epics because it is. It’s great to realize that we have setbacks in life, we have things that happen. Life is a participatory sport. Whether you participate today or not, your life still goes on. Much better to be a participant in it and not sit on the sidelines going, “Woe is me.”
It’s one of the reasons why I no longer believe in bucket lists. I say if you have a bucket list, that’s just a big bucket of wishes that you’re not likely to ever get to. Instead, look at that list, find the 1 or 2 things that really grab you and go do something now that starts you forward on that. It may take you 6 years, it may take you 15 years, but start doing something that moves you toward that item. I would rather die doing, working toward something than have this list of 63 things I wish I had done.
I will say, I think a bucket list to it’s good because that is your epic list of here’s my list of not yets.
I like to focus my down a little more than let’s focus on two not yets.
It helps you say, “All right here’s this list of things that I think I want to do. There’s nothing wrong. There are things in might not yet list that may never come. I may never do it. However, it’s my not yet. Whether I do it or not, I still say I’m leaving open the possibility that I can do these things.
I just hate to see people, though, who have the bucket list and aren’t moving. They have the list. “Someday, I’d like to write a book and I would like to see all 50 states,” and what about any of that?
When you take that one step forward, oftentimes, there are many steps and stuff. I want my audience to know and you know, sometimes, they are truly grand epic things. Ride across the country on a tandem bike. Hugely epic. Write a book. Hugely epic. Sometimes, the epics are much smaller. Maybe you want to be a public speaker. Maybe what you do is you call up your local Rotary and say, “I’d love to be a lunchtime speaker.”
That whole thing is over, that epic’s over in 30 minutes. You did it. You can go, “That was awesome. I am a public speaker. I went out and spoke in public and it was great.” maybe you’re like, “Checkmark, I don’t need to do that again.” we do have those epics where we’re like, “That was great, but I don’t feel the need to have to do that one again.”
It’s funny. I do not feel the need to ride across the US again. It was so fantastic and I am so glad I did it. I can’t imagine my life without it. I also don’t need to do it twice to prove anything. I’ve done that one. There are a lot of other things on my, “I sure would like to try that,” list that I can’t imagine that I really want to do that one again. I know people who do. Every other year, they ride across the US on their bicycle and this is like a big thing for them. Great for you. It’s not something that would have any real value for me. I already proved to myself that I could do that. Now let’s move on.
Get In Touch With Teri
Teri, you and I obviously could talk for hours about all of this. People are like, “Enough about the bicycle, Zander.” Anyway, I want to thank you so much for being on the show. How can people get your book, find you, and connect with you?
The best way is to go to my website, which is my name, TeriMBrown.com. There you can find everything. You can find my books, you can find the podcast that I do where I talk with other authors about their books, it’s called Online for Authors. You can sign up for my newsletter, you can find all my social media, and I even have a Contact Me page if you want to reach out and say hi.
Teri, thank you so very much. What an epic adventure that you’ve been on and you are on. It’s so great to be able to talk to you and I’ve loved this.
Thank you for having me.
Of course. I want to remind everyone that if you’re ready to begin your epic adventure, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- Teri M. Brown
- Sunflowers Beneath the Snow
- An Enemy Like Me
- Daughters of Green Mountain Gap
- Peg, Unhinged
- Little Lola and Her Big Dream
- 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure
- Online for Authors
About Teri M. Brown
Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M Brown came into this world with an imagination full of stories to tell. She now calls the North Carolina coast home, and the peaceful nature of the sea has been a great source of inspiration for her creativity. Not letting 2020 get the best of her, Teri chose to go on an adventure that changed her outlook on life.
She and her husband, Bruce, rode a tandem bicycle across the United States from Astoria, Oregon to Washington DC, successfully raising money for Toys for Tots. She learned she is stronger than she realized and capable of anything she sets her mind to. Teri graduated from UNC Greensboro with a multitude of degrees – majors in Elementary Education and Psychology and minors in Math and Sociology – she just couldn’t settle on one thing! While homeschooling her four children, she began her writing career by focusing on small businesses, writing articles, blog posts, and website content.
During this time, Teri published five nonfiction self-help books dealing with real estate and finance, receiving “First Runner Up” in the Eric Hoffman Book Awards for 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home Now, finalist in the USA Best Books Awards for How To Open and Operate a Financially Successful Redesign, Redecorate, and Real Estate Staging Business and for 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home Now, and Honorable Mention in Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award for Private Mortgage Investing. In 2017, after finally getting out of an emotionally abusive 14-year marriage, Teri began dabbling in fiction, a lifelong dream.
Upon winning the First Annual Anita Bloom Ornoff Award for Inspirational Short Story for a piece about her grandfather, she began writing in earnest, and published her debut novel in 2022, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a historical fiction set in Ukraine. Her second novel published in 2023, An Enemy Like Me, takes place during WWII. Her latest novel, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, a generational story about Appalachian healers came out in January 2024. In June 2024, her short story, The Youngest Lighthouse Keeper, came out in the anthology Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women. Her latest book, 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure (Feb 2025), is an inspirational look at the life lessons she learned riding across the United States on a tandem bicycle. In April, her first children’s book, Little Lola and Her Big Dream, will launch.
Teri is a wife, mother, grandmother, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others – especially youth and women who are having trouble discovering their worth. Learn more at www.terimbrown.com.