When Matt Wills moved to Lincoln for college in 1989, he started pedaling to campus.
He pedaled to his first post-graduation jobs, and, when he became an architect, he kept heading to work on a bike.
He’s 48 now. He’s married to his high school sweetheart, Karen Freimund. They have two kids in high school, and Wills is still in love with cycling — a regular bike path and side-street commuter and a regular gravel road rider, too.
Russell Parde calls his friend with the big winter beard and the many bikes “an icon in the gravel cycling community here in Lincoln and the Midwest.â€
Friend and fellow cyclist Corey Godfrey calls him quiet and steady. “A very determined guy.â€
A little more than eight years ago, that determined guy set a goal with a biking buddy. They’d make a 100-mile bike ride every month for a year.
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A year passed — with a ride checked off the calendar each month — but Wills didn’t stop.
And two Sundays ago, accompanied by a host of friends and fellow cyclists, he set out to mark a milestone.
They met at Meadowlark Coffee on South Street just after sunrise. They pedaled out of town and onto gravel roads through Raymond and Valparaiso and Prague — up hills and into headwinds and through mud — before heading back to town with the wind at their backs.
His 100th 100-mile ride.
“I keep telling everybody this isn’t the last one,†Wills said a day later, back at work and a little bit sore. “It has to go on.â€
In cycling lingo, 100 miles on two wheels is called a century ride.
It’s kind of a big deal, even to people who ride regularly on city trails and quiet highways.
It takes stamina and a big chunk of time and hopefully, at some point in the ride, a tailwind.
Ride No. 1 was on New Year's Day 2013, Wills says. Or was it 2012? “Whatever eight years ago was.â€
It was fun. And the year passed without a hitch, or a flat tire.
“And we thought, 'Let's keep this going.'â€
They did.
Or at least Wills did.
The friend who pedaled through year one with him — Carl Gauger — eventually moved to California, but other friends joined in, sometimes four or five, sometimes more.
They pedaled south to the Kansas border and west to York and spent plenty of saddle time on loops past Cortland and Wilber and down by the Little Blue River and around to Malcolm.
“That’s a great one to see a little local geography,†the organizer says.
During the summer months, Wills joined the Bacon Ride, a group of Sunday morning cyclists pedaling to Platte River State Park and stopping for breakfast at the lodge. (Wills always tacked on enough miles on the way home to turn the mileage to triple digits.)
Most of the rides have been on gravel with stretches of pavement to connect them to the countryside.
The monthly ride didn’t have a set day. Wills would check the weather and send out a text when conditions looked good, especially during the unpredictable winter months.
“Semi-spur of the moment.â€
The ride never felt like an obligation, he says. Or a chore.
“It’s a lot more like Christmas morning. The day before, I’m so excited I can hardly sleep.â€
He explains the excitement this way: “Ten hours of hanging out with my best friends with no pressure to do anything except pedal.â€
Pedaling lonely roads, pushing their lungs and their legs. “Solving the world’s problems when we have time to talk.â€
The individual rides are a blur. He remembers ticking off that first year. He remembers hitting 60, and he remembers when 100 rides and the year 2020 seemed like a long way away.
He remembers the century ride from his mom’s house in Bellevue through western Iowa because it was new and different.
He remembers when Karen had cancer — and surgeries — and making that monthly ride was a challenge.
“It was hard finding a time when I felt comfortable enough to leave her alone for that long,†he says. “But it was comforting to have that goal, good for my head.â€
His friends remember that time, too.
“For him to keep going and for his family to support him is pretty special,†Parde says.
“I think he used the rides as a good release and outlet for him,†Godfrey says. “It’s amazing that he was able to do it for that long.â€
Godfrey has taken about 80 of those monthly rides with his friend in the last eight years. Parde has been on 30, give or take.
And the only cyclist to finish them all is already looking ahead to April and ride No. 101.
“It’s 100% enjoyable,†Wills says. “And I plan to continue to do it as long as I can.â€