NEWS RELEASE
Ride to the Reunion
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ADVENTURE CYCLING MEMBER RIDES TO 50TH HIGH-SCHOOL REUNION
Madison, a retired public health nurse and diabetes nurse educator, arrived in time for her September 13 high-school reunion in Folsom,
Calif., (east of Sacramento) on a Trek mountain bike with BOB trailer and 70 pounds of gear. A member of Adventure Cycling Association,
Madison set out in June and followed the association's Northern Tier Route through Montana, Idaho, and Washington as far as the Pacific
Coast. She then followed the association's Pacific Coast Route from Washington, through Oregon, and on to California. Understating what
must have been an overwhelming ovation from her former classmates in recognition of her feat, she said simply, "They were very impressed."
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Mary Madison in front of Adventure Cycling. | |
On her return trip, Madison got as far as Missoula, Montana, the location of Adventure Cycling headquarters, before cold weather brought
her adventure to a close (in mid-October). Her return journey followed part of Adventure Cycling's oldest bike route, the TransAmerica
Bicycle Trail, established in 1976.
Madison's mantra of "I can do anything, given enough time," served her well during her 3,400-mile round-trip journey. "I've never been
fast," she said of her riding style. "But given enough time, I can ride up to one hundred miles a day."
Madison started cycle-touring about ten years ago when she bought a set of rear panniers and began doing three- to four-day self-contained
tours near her hometown in northeast Montana. After a few years exploring nearby landscapes, she ventured farther afield after finding a
group of cyclists through Adventure Cycling's "Companions Wanted" service, with whom she rode around New Zealand earlier this year. That
trip convinced her that she had the right stuff to do solo self-contained touring, which inspired her to plan the bike ride to her fiftieth
high-school reunion.
How does one go about taking a three-month-long cycling vacation? Well, it helps to be retired. In 2002, Madison did just that after a
long, fulfilling career in nursing dating back to the late 1950s.
In 1958, while a nursing student at the University of California at San Francisco, Madison joined the Navy. After she earned her bachelor's
degree in 1959, she became a Navy nurse on Long Island. She then spent time at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland,
married Claude C. Dodson Jr. (an Army officer) and started a family. At one point, she took a few years off to raise her three children:
Carl Dodson, Kathleen Dodson, and Peggy Dodson Martino.
After about twenty years in the D.C. area, she returned to her home state of Montana (her family moved to California when she was five
years old). She worked for sixteen years for the U.S. Public Health Service and the Indian Health Service on the Northern Cheyenne Indian
Reservation, east of Billings, and earned a master's degree in nursing in 1989 from Montana State University. She spent another five years
on Fort Peck Indian Reservation, near her current residence, specializing in the management and prevention of diabetes. She is a crusader
for health through physical fitness and works to create awareness about the disease that has been the focus of her later professional life,
specifically Type 2 diabetes, a "lifestyle disease" that can be prevented through proper diet and exercise.
Madison's family history dates back to the early days of Montana. Her ancestors homesteaded land in the southwestern part of the state,
near Nevada City and Virginia City. Her grandfather, Earl Douglass, was a paleontologist who in 1899 earned the first master's degree ever
matriculated by the University of Montana. In 1909, at the peak of his career, he studied and documented the paleontological treasures of
what is now Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Prior to that, he had been working as a paleontologist for the Carnegie Museum in
Pittsburgh for a few years, and they wanted dinosaurs. He was sent to explore some areas in Utah where some fossils had been reported.
That's where he uncovered one of the richest beds of bones in the world, where he spent many years digging and extricating dinosaurs. He
remains a well-known figure in national paleontological circles.
A strikingly youthful 68-year-old (she looks more like 50), Madison has combated her own health problems through cycling. She has one leg
that is smaller than normal from childhood polio, and she smoked for thirty years before finding fitness astride a bike saddle. She claims
that she averted having corrective surgery on her leg and also reversed her pre-emphysema lung condition through long-distance cycling. Now
she is the picture of health: slim, fit, and vibrant.
Madison's physical strength is matched by her great strength of character, which has helped her deal with unexpected hardships, including
the loss of two husbands. Claude Dodson, her first husband, died in 1997 after battling with cancer. In 1999 she married a patient of hers,
Guy Madison, who fell victim to a farming accident about a year later.
Although she completed most of her bike ride alone, her son, Carl, joined her for one week, and Mary Hernandez, the American Diabetes
Association coordinator for the state of Montana, joined her for another week. Madison helps the ADA of Montana with its annual bicycling
fund-raisers, and she also is a member of the Montana Diabetes Project Advisory Coalition and Sigma Theta Tau International, a nursing
honor society.
Challenges during her trip included the usual mechanical problems such as flat tires as well as healthy doses of extreme terrain and
weather, including nausea-inducing heat (in Montana) as well as hypothermia-inducing cold (also in Montana).
Madison said that she much prefers following Adventure Cycling Association's routes rather than creating her own routes, which was required
for part of her trip. "Adventure Cycling's maps are the absolute best," she declared. "They are the essence of cycle touring."
As is true on many Adventure Cycling routes, there are many fellow cyclists to meet along the way. On her trip, bikers were especially
prevalent along the Pacific Coast Route. Madison referred to traveling Highway 1 in Oregon and California as a "biking social."
"Every night I camped with other bikers in the hiker/biker camps, often biking with and meeting the same people in camp at night for days
on end. We socialized, cooked together and became friends," she said.
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