Owls Head Transportation Museum Executive Director John Bottero is currently hard at work preparing for one of the museum’s biggest fundraisers of the year.
On Friday and Saturday, Aug. 25-26 between $5 and $7 million of classic cars will cross the auction block during the 45th New England Auto Auction, one of the largest auctions of its kind in the country.
Leading up to the event Bottero’s long work days are filled with meetings with museum partners, donors, and trustees as well as doing the actual detail work of pulling the whole thing together. For Bottero, a veteran auctioneer and Nobleboro resident, the auction 15is a labor of love.
This year he doesn’t mind the long hours as some of it was work deferred while he took time off to complete a long-held goal.
“You can’t have it all,” he said. “You want to go play, you have to pay the fiddler.”
Beginning Memorial Day, May 29 in Astoria, Ore., and concluding July 14 at Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth, Bottero completed a transcontinental bike tour, crossing 15 states and covering more than 3,782 miles.
The idea of cycling across the country is a longtime bucket list item, Bottero said, one that he kicked around with a friend while they were both serving in the Navy. During this period the two servicemen pedaled all over southern California and Mexico. His friend being from Oregon and Bottero being from Maine, there was discussion even then of a Portland-to-Portland bike tour.
Fast forward about 45 years, Bottero said, his Navy friend encouraged him to make the trip. At first Bottero fought off the suggestion, but when it came up again the following year, Bottero presented the idea to his wife of almost 24 years, Lisa. When she gave the trip her blessing, Bottero knew he could get serious.
As much as he is passionate about the museum efforts, Bottero is equally passionate about involving young people in science, engineering, technology, and math. He decided to turn the trip into a fundraiser for the museum’s STEM education program for area K-8 students.
“We are current well past the halfway point in a campaign that is going to transform the museum to include STEM education for kids and use the collection to inspire the youngsters,” he said. “Just before I left I decided, because I am so involved with all the growth at Owls Head, that I would use this bike ride as a way to raise funds for the STEM education program through the museum’s capital campaign.
“So what I did was I put it out there, rather than just look at dollars, I looked at the mileage and so I put it out there that anything that would support be able to support the museum: a penny a mile, 38 bucks – a nickel a mile, a dime as mile. We based everything around 3,800,” Bottero said. “Of course, people can write in anything they want and I pitched it to a very good supporter of the museum and he agreed to match the total.”
Bottero said he hasn’t accounted for all the money raised during his trip.
An avid, lifelong cyclist who has done quite a few bike tours, Bottero knew what he was getting into and he knew he wanted to travel with a support team. Extreme long distance rides can and have been done on literally every kind of bicycle, and at minimum, little more is required than a sleeping bag and gumption, but Bottero had done those kind of tours already.
“I had no interest in sleeping under the stars,” he said.
After some online research he found Trek Travel, a company based in Madison, Wis. that specializes in organizing and supporting cycling tours in North America and abroad, including one the company calls Portland to Portland, beginning at the Pacific Ocean in Oregon and ending at the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Elizabeth.
“It was a real aggressive ride, 3,800 miles over the course of 47 days,” Bottero said. “There were four rest days built into that so about every eight to 10 days we’d take a rest day and catch up on whatever our bodies needed.”
Trek Travel offered a fully supported ride, providing the bicycles, food, and arranging hotels and technical support. During Bottero’s tour, a three-person team used two vans to support 11 participating riders. On off-days, the company flew in mechanics to tune up each bike.
“It was fantastic from the first call to going on the trip,” Bottero said. “The big thing is if you can manage your food, your hydration, and your rest, you can do it.”
Each travel day, one member of the Trek Travel crew rode with the riders, while the other two members drove the vans ahead. Every day, every 25 miles or so, the support team would organize a rest stop, providing food and liquids. The third stop of the day usually involved a hearty, healthy lunch.
Breaking up each day’s ride into 25-mile segments helped mentally, Bottero said.
“That was good for the head, to know that ‘OK let me push another 25 miles and take a breather,” he said. “Mentally that worked out really well.”
An affiliate of the Trek bicycles, Trek Travel supplied each rider with a Trek Domane SL 7, a high-performance road bicycle designed for long days in the saddle. Before departure, each rider provided their personal measurements to Trek Travel and the company had a bicycle prepared specifically prepared for each client upon arrival.
“It was a really enjoyable trip,” Bottero said. “You had to put the physical energy in obviously, but to be able to get on the bike, and spend the day focused on that, not emails, not all the things that life throws at you. It was real, real pleasure – opportunity I’ll even say – to be able to do that in such a way.”
The group began and ended every day at the same place, but each rider set their own pace, which suited Bottero just fine. He rode many miles with one or more members of the group, but he spent the majority of his time riding solo.
“I want to ride my own ride,” he said. “My ride is if I’m feeling aggressive, I’ll go fast. If I am feeling like I want to check out the landscape, I go slow. If I want to stop and take a picture, I’ll stop and take a picture. That’s the joy of it for me, not going fast. There were other guys that had to smash the records. They would leave last and get there first and I am thinking ‘I didn’t do this to be sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for my room to ready.’”
The trip averaged 97 miles a day, including 154,000 total feet of climbing. Bottero estimates he expended between 4,500 and 7,000 calories per day during the trip, losing 20 pounds in the process and reshaping his body.
“I feel better than I have ever felt,” he said. “I’ll be 63 and I think ‘Holy cow, why didn’t I do this 20 years ago?’”
The last leg of the ride was a 72-mile day from North Conway, N.H. to Crescent Beach State Park where the tour riders ceremonially dipped their tires in the Atlantic Ocean, completing the ride.
“Because I was the hometown guy, they let me lead the ride in,” Bottero said. “That was really exciting … People ask ‘What was your best day on the bike?’ My best day on the bike was the 72 miles from North Conway to Crescent Beach. Before this trip I would have thought 72 miles was monumental. It was a wonderful, wonderful ride. Not only because I could sit there and say I did it, not only because I was going to see my family again after all that, but to be able to sit there and say I got this one.”
Returning home that night, Bottero’s personal ride was not over. He had one more leg to do, which he completed Saturday, July 16, riding from his home in Nobleboro to the museum in Owls Head.
Since his return he has prioritized making up for lost time with his personal and professional obligations. Bottero said the staff at Owls Head was outstanding in his absence, allowing him to take time off to achieve his goal.
On the personal side, Bottero said he plans to make good with his wife, whose support was essential. Bottero said he was keenly aware of the sacrifice she made so he could make the trip.
“I do owe her a great vacation as a result of her patience,” Bottero said. “I mean it’s two years of training. I ramped it up in these last 33 months. I was putting in 12, 15, 18 hours a week in training. That’s a big sacrifice. Now she is still being patient because now I’m getting caught up with all the things I had to defer while I was away. I couldn’t do it without her.”
From Bottero’s perspective, the trip was a tremendous family experience. Although he put in the miles alone, he relied on his family’s support as he made his way across the country and they were with him every pedal stroke along the way.
“My kids have been phenomenal,” he said. “We have a blended family of five and to a member, the support was amazing. The ones that could be here in Maine where there when I pulled in. The ones that couldn’t, (like) my son out in Colorado, he drove up to South Dakota, spent one of my rest days with me. That meant the world to me. You can’t do anything major like this without support.”
For more information about the 45th New England Auto Auction and other events at the Owls Head Transportation Museum, go to owlshead.org.
