Severna Park’s Tim Stevens Cycles From Delaware Through Florida, Stopping To Aid Helene Victims

September 1, 2024, marked the one-year anniversary of “trop rock” star Jimmy Buffett’s passing. So, it was a fitting day for longtime Severna Park resident and bona fide Parrot Head Tim Stevens to set out on the adventure of a lifetime in honor of his favorite musician and in celebration of his recent retirement.

Stevens, who turned 65 the day after he retired this past July, completed a 1,900-mile solo bicycling journey from Ocean View, Delaware, to Key West, Florida, this fall. The excursion took him through scenic historic cities and a few treacherous remote areas, and along the way he formed friendships with people he will remember for years to come.

Stevens has been an ardent cyclist and Buffett fan since the ‘70s. In 1972, his older sister’s daring cycling trip from Boston to Miami, paired with her gift of a bicycle repair manual called “Anybody’s Bike Book,” ignited his own passion for bike riding. Four years later, while hitchhiking across the country, Stevens’ cousin stopped at his home in Minnesota and gave the teen his first Jimmy Buffett album, “A1A.” He fell in love with both almost instantly.

Nearly five decades and countless concerts and cycling excursions later, Stevens and his wife, Deborah, visited friends in Ocean View, Delaware, this past Labor Day weekend to enjoy a performance by the Jimmy Buffett tribute band Changes in Latitudes. Then, his journey began.

Through a blog shared with family and friends, Stevens documented his ride daily in photos and stories paired with excerpts from Buffett songs. He traveled down Delmarva to the Virginia Beach area and into North Carolina with only a few hiccups. Enter a Buffett song title that would become a mantra throughout this experience: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”

Along the way, Stevens crashed with friends, camped under the stars, stayed in hotels, and enjoyed the hospitality of Warmshowers hosts – cyclists who open their homes to other touring cyclists. His host in Greenville, North Carolina, was a marine biologist who also happened to be a passionate cycling advocate and whose commencement speaker at graduation was none other than Jimmy Buffett.

In Wilmington, North Carolina, Stevens stayed with a former Severna Park neighbor, Lori, and her boyfriend, and enjoyed one of his best meals of the whole trip at a restaurant where her son was a master chef. That day, he shared on his blog, “I am so fortunate to have the health to do this ride, the friends (some old, some newly made, and some friends of friends) who support me along the way, and the resources (financial, emotional and mental) to draw from and complete it.”

As he approached Charleston, South Carolina, on September 15, Stevens had to contend with the iconic 2.5-mile Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge that ferries roughly 95,000 vehicles in and out of the Holy City each day. Whipping winds forced him to walk his bike across the top span of the bridge.

Later that day Stevens recorded his own revised words for Buffett’s “Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season,” foreshadowing a challenging fact of coastal living that would become another prominent theme of his journey.

He took a down day to explore Charleston before continuing south, where he was again met by a looming cable-stayed bridge heading into Savannah, Georgia. He was grateful for the alternative option of crossing the river by ferry, and for the opportunity to explore the city’s iconic riverwalk and historic squares. Stevens’ Buffett song selection that day was “Savannah Fare You Well.”

Intrigued by a long line at a local barbecue shack, Stevens feasted on a chicken and ribs combo that ended up being a culinary highlight of his long trek. “No sides, no drinks, no utensils, no frills - just exceptional food,” he journaled of Savannah’s Randy’s Bar-B-Q.

On the road again, Stevens enjoyed a free concert in Darien, Georgia, before hitting 10 brutal miles of rough terrain thanks to one of several bad suggestions from Google Maps. Slogging through sand, mud, swamp and brush, he texted his host that he was four miles out and not convinced he would make it there alive. He did make it, eaten up by mosquitos, and reflected on Buffett’s “Lucky Stars.”

Stevens arrived in Florida on September 23, elated to pick up State Road A1A – which Florida lawmakers unanimously voted to rename Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway earlier this year.

With hundreds of miles still ahead of him, Stevens enjoyed a trolley tour of St. Augustine with a friend and stayed there an extra day to ride out Hurricane Helene. He arrived in Orlando after his longest single day of cycling – 86 miles – before meeting up with his friend, Chris Birks, who had planned to ride the final leg of the journey with him.

A resident of a beach town in the Tampa Bay area that was ravaged by Helene’s storm surge, Birks was fortunate that his home sustained minimal damage.

“Feeling sick at the devastation around the area,” Stevens wrote upon surveying Indian Rocks Beach. “The amount of destruction here is more than I have ever personally seen. Most everyone’s yard is piled with the ruined contents of their home. So sad.”

“Today was a different kind of exhausting,” he shared the next day, after taking a break from his bike to help rip out drywall, cabinets and insulation in flooded homes. He was amazed by how the locals worked together and generously supplied one another with food and cleaning necessities.

A big fan of ice cream, Stevens recalled a local ice cream shop where floodwaters had flipped over the freezers. “There (was) just melting, rotting, stinking ice cream all over the place,” he said.

After helping with cleanup efforts, Stevens and his travel companion set out on October 1 for their final destination and one of Buffett’s residences: Key West. They dodged thunderstorms as they traversed the southern half of Florida and arrived in Key Largo as the Sunshine State again braced for direct impact of a powerful hurricane, Milton. They offered to help locals prepare for the storm, and between blog entries, Stevens shared a prayer for those impacted by Helene and Milton.

On October 10, they crossed a couple of long bridges battling a hefty headwind and arrived hot and weary at a hotel in Marathon Key. In addition to sharing a Buffett song, Stevens penned his own stanzas:

So the final ride is tomorrow.
It's been a marvelous trip.
It's tinged with both joy and sorrow.
To think I actually did it.

I've had adventures galore,
And good luck known only in dreams.
But to see my wife once more,
Well, that's my cake with ice cream!

Stevens was delighted to reunite with Deborah the next day, shortly after he and Birks arrived at their journey’s end. “Made it to the southernmost point of the U.S. in Key West at 12 noon October 11,” he shared with his followers in real time, repping Maryland in an Old Bay cycling jersey in photos. With his wife by his side, Stevens rounded out his trip by exploring Buffett’s haunts and Key West attractions.

Reflecting on his remarkable 41-day expedition, Stevens noted several highlights including exploring Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine, as well as sampling local fare such as the grouper Reuben in Tampa, yellowtail snapper in Key Largo, and home-cooked meals prepared by various hosts. But the people he met from Delaware to Florida were perhaps the best part of the whole trip.

Amid a contentious presidential election season, he shared that those folks were “phenomenal,” regardless of party affiliation. He blogged, “There are still amazing, generous people in this world, some you know directly but others you encounter randomly. These trips restore my faith in humanity, give me a reason to improve how I treat others, and help reinforce the point that working together we can solve a lot more problems than when we work in isolation.”

Stevens hopes that his most recent cycling journey, combining lifelong passions, will encourage others to follow their dreams and to recognize that the relationships we have and can build are priceless.