Twenty-five years ago, I started bicycling across the United States. I wasn’t trying to write a book or claim bragging rights. I wanted to give my wife a skinnier husband for Christmas, and I wanted it to be me. That didn’t work out as planned. As I wrote in the book, I can’t say that it was fun, but I’m glad I did it. A lot has changed since then. 

For the billions of people who didn’t read the book (Just Keep Pedaling), I rode from an island north of Seattle to an island south of Miami, but didn’t lose any weight, waist size, or percentage body fat. Evidently, I was too efficient. Evidently, I did write the book, largely thanks to my friends who encouraged me to do so after I finished the ride. Thanks, folks.

Such a ride can define, or at least redefine, a life. Mine has certainly been different, but the bigger changes have been in all of our lives.

When I rode, I understood computers but found myself cut off from them soon after leaving Western Washington. Email was sporadic, with shared keyboards at truck stops covered in road grime. Cell phone service was occasional. Navigation was via paper AAA maps, calls home, and a lot of guessing and hoping. Head SE, young man (who felt old at 40). 

I retired at 38, and was living an uncommon perspective with no role models. I had the somewhat rare opportunity to redefine a second life without having to wait for a retirement in my 60s. I confused many people. Friends and family were a bit confused. Strangers I met on the ride assumed I was riding for some noble cause, like raising money for cancer research. Riding because I could, didn’t register as valid. I rode anyway.

I saw a slice of the United States at less than 20 mph. 

Last month, I drove from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. (Road Trip – August 2025) It was far less aerobic (#massiveunderstatement), and quicker (~60 mph). I did it to attend a family celebration, but I also realized I could see a slice of the United States at a time when news outlets tend to be biased or challenged. We seem like a fractured country. I think that’s right.

Twenty-five years ago, social media wasn’t popular. People doubted the need for the Internet, but were willing to invest a lot in it. Inequality had been rising for decades, and we were witnessing a new breed of wealth as the Internet Bubble boomed. It began to bust as I rode. For most people in the middle, the digital world was abstract. A nascent coworks in Kansas seemed just right to me, but was an oddity in its neighborhood. The founder was impressive. I wonder if it worked. Few things were recorded. Broadcast TV was still busy. We were still living within the fading echoes of the close of old wars. We also weren’t very aware of each other except through broadcast media.

Now, hotel TVs try to be so inclusive and expansive that one evening is not enough to educate myself on the control. That was okay because wi-fi is almost ubiquitous, and mostly what I watch is on YouTube and Amazon Prime. The AAA maps weren’t an issue because I could let the phone figure out where we were, give it a destination, and with some caution, trust it to steer me right. It is an imperfect system, but unimaginable 25 years earlier. Except for radio, everyone can see what everyone else is watching, which has exposed unseen barriers between our various cultures. Oops. Instead of emphasizing what we have in common, we’ve focused on our seemingly irreconcilable differences. 

For decades, we thought we were a melting pot of people, and now we’re worried about the mix of spices as if they were pesticides. So much for ‘E Pluribus Unum’.

In those 25 years, the bubble burst, we’ve had a Great Recession, and a pandemic. We’ve watched the remarkable rise of Putin and China. Climate change has gone from arguable to logically undeniable. (A lack of logic can survive anything. Ask the flat-earthers.) AI is rising. Fossil fuels are falling. Cash is becoming so uncommon that some businesses don’t want it, and would be happy to avoid plastic in favor of online payments. Cameras, storage, and networks have become so cheap that it is easier to assume you’re being recorded. (Pardon me as I double-check my laptop’s camera indicator light. Off? Good. And yet I doubt it.)

We have replaced the existential threat of mutually-assured destruction by interposing more immediate threats of artificial intelligence, oligarchic controls, random actors, and the consequence of various histories and technologies which can’t wait to be dealt with – despite what deniers may think.

So now, look ahead 25 years. Shudder. Make it real. Think of taking out a 30-year mortgage. What will the world look like then?

Climate change isn’t stopping. Various studies suggest that conventional governments will be unable to stop the power shift to corporations. Autonomous operations will replace more humans. At best, social injustice will begin to resolve itself, but it is easier to imagine the worst-case scenarios.

And maybe, health care will improve lifespans to beyond 124 years, AI will find solutions to many of our otherwise intractable issues. We’ll be better established in space and less reliant on carving up our planet. Maybe we’ll finally meet or at least find aliens.

More radical of all, maybe we’ll figure out how to live with each other, take care of each other, and feel less alone.

I don’t have a 30-year mortgage. I don’t have any mortgage, and I’m glad.

I don’t know how long I’ll live, but wonders can happen; and maybe I’ll get to see what we have 25 or 30 years from now.

But, for much of modern life in America, guessing personal finance decades in the future hasn’t been predictable, but has been reasonable. The changes we are witnessing are radical enough to literally reshape land, what and where and how things can live, and how or if we’ll have to pay for it. 

And yet, guess, we must. Good luck with that. In the meantime, and in the midst of all of that, frugal living remains valid and powerful. As a character said in Doonesbury in 1976, “Be firm. Fly low. Stay cool.” (And vote, assuming you can.)