EF Education-EasyPost
The world is often said to be smaller than ever due to the Internet, but the country hasn't gotten any smaller physically. Australian pro cyclist Lachlan Morton rode the route of the Pony Express last week in 6 days, 21 hours and 15 minutes. His run bested the 1861 record set by the riders that relayed Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address to California by 19 hours and 45 minutes. The 1,966-mile odyssey was Morton's farewell from EF Education-EasyPost, the only American team on the UCI World Tour
For those of you who fell asleep in U.S. history class, the Pony Express was a mail service that carried letters between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California in ten days or less by horseback. When the service was founded in 1860, St. Joseph was the westernmost point in the country accessible by rail. Anyone who wanted to cross the Missouri River and go further west overland had to do so on foot, on horseback or via stagecoach.
If the frontier began beyond the Missouri, who were the Pony Express riders delivering mail to? California's population boom after the 1848 gold rush created demand for faster coast-to-coast communications. However, the Pony Express was never financially successful. According to the Smithsonian, the service's original $5.00 per half-ounce cost on top of typical postage was considered very expensive. After only 18 months in operation, the Pony Express became obsolete and filed for bankruptcy when the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed in October 1861. The service only delivered 35,000 letters.
Different horses for different courses
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The legend of the Pony Express looms so large despite its brief existence because delivery work was so treacherous across the rugged American West. The riders, mostly young men and teenagers, became revered figures for their bravery and fortitude. Morton said:
The appeal for me is the history of it. It's wild to get into that mindset – you're a kid trying to make some money, and there's this opportunity to ride a horse with a mochila full of mail through the night for 75 miles flat out, across remote, gnarly terrain that no one else has been crossing. It's quite a courageous thing. It's hard to imagine, and that's why I want to go out there and try to get a better understanding of what that would have been like, and the difficulties they faced doing it over 150 years ago.
Morton approached the route with a similar methodology to the Pony Express' operations. The service had fixed stations spaced roughly a dozen miles apart for riders to constantly switch to a fresh horse. The original route still isn't fully paved, so Morton opted to switch between a road bike, a gravel bike, and a mountain bike to adapt to the shifting terrain. Instead of setting up their own stations, EF Education-EasyPost tailed Morton with a truck carrying his "fresh" bikes.
It was about the journey, not the destination
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The journey to Sacramento was as difficult as expected. Morton dodged mud patches in Nebraska, fought through headwinds in Wyoming, avoided freezing in the passes over the Rockies, and pedaled through "moon dust" in Nevada. There were also the lingering fears that Hurricane Rachel would bring even stronger winds and potentially wash out his final day traversing the Sierra Nevada. Thankfully, it stayed dry and Morton made it to the Pony Express Terminal in Sacramento.
Morton reveled in the Pony Express' struggles and enjoyed meeting locals along the way who were eager to share their pride in their communities. EF Education-EasyPost even encouraged fans to follow the record attempt by broadcasting the Australian's GPS location and "dot-watchers" joined Morton for part of the route to show their support, including a Dutch fan studying at the University of Wyoming. The original Pony Express and this new record run show that community conquering distance has been part of the American psyche for over 160 years.