Just about a bike (and also about a friend): Dale Shewalter's 1983 Specialized Expedition

I was first introduced to Dale Shewalter in 1993. His sixth grade classroom was located two doors down the hall from the room where I was about to start my student teaching, in fifth grade, with the legendary Grant "Brad" Gerver at Weitzel Elementary School in January of that year.  The always gregarious Gerver was great about taking me around and introducing me, right away, to everyone that I would be working with, and Dale's room was one of the first stops on my first-day tour. 

Having grown up in a multigenerational family of teachers, I immediately recognized Dale as a teacher's-teacher, cut from the same bolt of no-nonsense but ever-compassionate fabric that my mom, grandmother, great-aunt, and great-grandmother had likewise each been hewn from.  Naturally, I liked him right away. And it was my great good fortune that we were able to remain friends for years, long after I completed my student teaching, well into my own career as a professional educator.

I bought this bike from Dale in 1997. He had purchased it new in 1983.  It's a Specialized Expedition road touring bicycle, designed and built to be ridden intentionally heavy-laden over long lonesome distances.  By Dale's own admission, despite being an avid horseman at heart, he nevertheless rode it far and wide in his younger days, bivouacking out of it's panniers in forests and deserts, inside dark box culverts and upon photogenic mountain tops all around the western U.S. "Only crashed it loaded a couple times," he told me, pointing at the scuff on the right brake lever, on the day I drove out to his humble horse-property north of Flagstaff to pick it up.

The bike was fabricated for import via Specialized by Toyo in Japan. It has beautiful lugs, 40-spoke wheels, flawless original paint, clearance for 38s, and braze-ons front-and-rear for pannier-racks. It is long, amply geared with a low-range triple, shifts super smoothly from the downtube, and stops with expedience via non-aero Superbe levers and the highest-of-profile canti-brakes.  

It's a special bike, but not because of its vintage or any of the aforementioned features.  

It's a special bike because it was Dale's.

You see, Dale wasn't just a beloved elementary school teacher, Vietnam vet, and friend. This tribute, penned by Randy Warner, member of the Board of the Arizona Trail Association, says it best:

DALE SHEWALTER: ARIZONA SCHOOL TEACHER WITH AN 800-MILE SHADOW

The Arizona Trail lost its founder, Dale Shewalter, on January 10, 2010. Dale died after a long and determined battle with cancer, and after more than 25 years of working to make real his dream of an Arizona Trail.

Born and raised in Illinois, Dale came to Arizona after serving in the Marines in Vietnam. He was a geologist, an avid hiker and horseman, but most of all a teacher for the Flagstaff Unified School District. And at some point, these vocations and avocations coalesced into a crazy idea. Why shouldn’t there be a hiking, biking and equestrian trail that crosses the entire state of Arizona?

“The idea’s not new,” Dale said in an October 1985 article in the Prescott Courier newspaper. “A lot of people have thought about the trail before and other people have walked the length of the state.”

Dale recognized that Arizona’s public lands formed a natural corridor through the state, and existing National Forest and other trails could be used. “A trail system,” he said in the same article, “could link some of these areas with towns in between, so people could enjoy the urban facilities of restaurants and motels, while experiencing Arizona at the pace of a walker.”

To scout the route, Dale walked the State from Nogales to the Utah border, averaging just over 25 miles a day. He gathered much of the intelligence he would later use to promote the Arizona Trail. Soon after, he began traveling the state hawking the idea of an Arizona Trail to state and federal agencies, outdoor enthusiasts, and anyone else who would listen.

One such organization was the Arizona Hiking and Equestrian Trails Committee, a citizen advisory committee to the Arizona State Parks Board that later became the Arizona State Committee on Trails (ASCOT), The committee voted to support the trail, and quickly became an advocate for the Arizona Trail.

The project began to snowball as other individuals, organizations and agencies joined in. Eric Smith heard Dale speak about the Arizona Trail at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in 1987 and was hooked. “While Dale enjoyed presenting his idea and vision,” Smith recalls, “he also made everyone feel welcome about joining the effort. He knew that it would take many people, and a very long time to succeed in such an effort.”

In 1988, Dale took a year-long leave from teaching to work on the Arizona Trail, and became the first Arizona Trail Steward, a position funded by several national forests. The same year, the first seven miles of the Arizona Trail were dedicated on the Kaibab Plateau.

By the early 1990’s, the development of the Trail was in full swing. Through Dale’s efforts – and those of other individuals and agencies too many to name – the necessary partnerships and relationships were in place to make Dale’s dream of a border-to-border trail a reality. An Intergovernmental Agreement was entered into by state and federal agencies to provide financial and other support for the Arizona Trail project. But one piece of the puzzle remained.

In 1994, the Arizona Trail Association was established. Dale was on the first Board of Directors, served as President for a time in the mid-2000’s, and was a board member for the rest of his life. But more than that, he remained the inspiration for a growing group of people committed to seeing the Arizona Trail to completion and beyond. His messages at the ATA’s annual meetings left people energized, and he continued to set an example by doing everything from trail building to relationship building.

As Dale would later explain, he viewed the Arizona Trail as a collective effort by many. “I am indeed proud of my work to plan, map, and promote the Arizona Trail,” he wrote after a trailhead sign in his honor was dedicated at Flagstaff’s Buffalo Park. “But much more has been needed to bring the Trail to completion. During the past twenty plus years, a great number of highly creative and capable people have devoted their expertise to development of the Trail. I think it safe to estimate that several thousand people have contributed ‘sweat equity’ to the Trail.”

Dave Hicks, current Executive Director of the ATA, was one of those whom Dale inspired. He met Dale at a work event in 2001, when Dale sought him out to talk about the trail and Hicks’ experiences as a through-hiker. “I was flattered that he took the time to talk,” Hicks says. “He was the real deal. No fluff. And a person genuinely interested in other people, especially Arizona Trail hikers.”

Dale’s involvement with the trail continued during his illness. Whenever able, he would participate in a work event, attend a board meeting, or join the celebration at the annual ATA Member Rendezvous at Mormon Lake.

In 2009, Congress named the Arizona Trail a National Scenic Trail. As usual, Dale’s response was not to take credit, but to give thanks. He wrote: “I am personally grateful for all of the devoted people who have worked so hard to bring National Scenic Trail status to our Arizona Trail. The trail will be an adventure for generations of outdoors people to enjoy, and the magic of Arizona’s landscape will be shared with the world.”

The astonishing thing about Dale Shewalter was not that he had a great idea. It was not that he hiked the length of Arizona to map the Trail’s route. It wasn’t that he was a great salesman, managing to get so many people organizations and government agencies to buy in. It wasn’t that he was an inspirational teacher for so many students while remaining an inspirational leader for the Arizona Trail Association. It was that he was all these things.

ATA president Emily Nottingham described it this way: “Lots of people have good ideas, but few have the commitment, vision and persistence to turn them into reality. Few people understand how complex a long distance trail can be to put together, but Dale, even understanding the challenges, did it.”

Dale leaves us with fond memories, certainly inspiration, but more than anything the challenge of completing and preserving the Arizona Trail.

I last saw Dale in person in 2006 when we bumped into one another while each of us were visiting doctors at the Physicians & Surgeons Office Building near the Flagstaff Medical Center one afternoon mid-summer, life often happens in this way in small towns such as ours.  I, along with my wife and our infant daughter, was there to consult with a surgeon about a small hernia in her tummy that we'd noticed a few weeks prior.  He, along with his wife, was there to visit with his oncologist, wherein, he told us with firm resolve, he had been given the news that his cancer, with which he had been battling for years already, was no longer in remission. 

Dale fought on, valiantly, for a several years afterward, but that would be the last time we would interact face-to-face.  Nevertheless, I think him often, certainly whenever I ride this bike, and often when I just happen to glance at the place where it hangs from the ceiling in my garage.  It hasn't been on an epic tour in many years. Except for a few centuries and sundry other longish regional rides, I've never really put it to the use for which it was intended.  But I have, quite deliberately, kept it almost exactly as it was when it was his. And I have always enjoyed riding it.  It's spirit and inclination to freely range far-and-wide will forever bear Dale's imprint.