I am not a great "distance" cyclist. I like to think of myself as a "fast" rider rather than a "distance" man. But on a March morning in 2003, I set out and completed a transcontinental bike ride.

This is a guest post by Louis Rossi, author of Cycling Along The Canals of New York State.

I have biked along hundreds of kilometers of canals. There are long stretches of still-functioning canals (Erie, Champlain, Oswego, Cayuga-Seneca) and many more abandoned canals all across my home state of New York. I've biked by ruins of original Erie Canal construction dating back to the late 1700's and along today's still-operating "Barge Canals" completed in 1914. When the opportunity came along to cycle along the Panama Canal, I wasn't going to pass up the chance. It's a great ride.

The first transcontinental crossings

No one is sure exactly when the first "Americans" arrived from Asia alongside the western fringes of what is now Panama and first walked across the isthmus. This certainly happened during the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago.

We do know that Columbus explored the Caribbean Coast of the isthmus on his fourth and last voyage and that shortly thereafter (1515) Balboa was the first European to walk across the isthmus. The Spanish saw the geographic significance of the isthmus. Immediately, a substantial and solid all-weather road was built across a hilly but all-weather route from the fortified cities of Panama on the Pacific and Portobello on the Caribbean. Portions of this roadway are still visible today. The wealth (mainly Inca gold from Peru) transported across this roadway would be stunning even today.

A flatter route was selected for the first transcontinental railroad. First thought of in 1832, the Panama Rail Road was incorporated in 1849, and opened in 1855. The original 47-mile long P.R.R. was a true worldwide railroad pioneer. It opened, luckily, almost simultaneously with the discovery of gold in California, resulting in yet another flood of gold across the isthmus.

P.R.R. Transcontinental Railroad - 47 miles end to end

From 1882-1889 the French squandered thousands of lives and figurative fortunes in gold attempting to dig a sea-level canal. After Panama's independence in 1903, the United States built the Canal we see today in about ten years, finishing the project in 1914. The Canal, and all the facilities in the former US Canal Zone were given by the United States to Panama in 1999. Today, Panamanians are trying to convert this phenomenal and unique set of physical and natural assets into a vibrant tourist destination.

Panama Canal

My transcontinental bike ride

Map of Panama Canal bike route.

People have walked across the isthmus for thousands of years, traveled by train over 150 years, by ship since 1914. Someone even swam the entire Canal, taking ten days, in 1928. I simply don't know when the first bicyclist crossed Panama. No roadway was ever built directly alongside the Canal for security reasons. The first paved roadway across the isthmus was not completed until 1943.