Editor’s note: Are you a senior who leads a particularly active lifestyle? We’d love to hear about it. Email your story to Mac McLean at mmclean@bendbulletin.com or call 541-617-7816.

Next month, Bob Sanders is shipping his 32-pound Surly Long Haul Trucker across the country so he can ride from Jacksonville, Fla., to Yorktown, Va. – a 700-plus-mile trek that will be the 71-year-old Bend resident’s second cross-country bicycling trip in the past three years.

“The thing is, I’ve always been an adventurer,” he said. “It’s hard to quit.”

Riding his bike for extremely long distances — previous trips have taken him down the Oregon Coast and from California to Florida — is only the latest chapter in the adventure Sanders calls his life. He has also served his country, managed cities and traveled the globe.

The adventure

Sanders spent most of his childhood living abroad as he and his family followed their father, a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, from base to base during the post-war era. He graduated from college in the late 1960s, joined a U.S. Marine Corps reconnaissance unit and fought in the Vietnam War for two years.

Sanders followed his military career by working as a county and city manager for a handful of localities in Colorado and Florida from 1972 to 1982. During this time, he met his wife, Kathryn, and took a sailboat on a three-month, break-in voyage from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Chesapeake Bay.

But these adventures only serve as a prologue to the main adventure that dominated Sanders’ preretirement life: The 23 years he spent working as a local government consultant for the United States Agency for International Development and other international groups.

This journey took Sanders to more than 70 countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He watched the U.S. military test its radar systems by firing ICBMs at a range in the Marshall Islands, tracked mountain gorillas in Uganda and helped local governments in Bosnia-Herzegovina follow the rule of law 10 years after a series of ethnic conflicts ripped that former Yugoslavian state apart.

During the time they spent abroad, Sanders and his wife – who joined him for any assignment that lasted more than a year – bought a house in southwest Bend and made it their full-time home in 2005. Five years later, Sanders bought his Surly Long Haul Trucker and set out for the Oregon Coast.

The ride

More than 46,000 people belong to the Adventure Cycling Association, a nonprofit group that publishes detailed maps long-distance cyclers can use as they set out on bike rides that last more than a day. About 18 percent of these people are 60 or older, association spokeswoman Winona Bateman said.

Sanders used the association’s maps when he set out to complete his first long-distance bike ride along the Oregon Coast from Astoria to Brookings in 2010. He has ridden more than 3,000 miles on his bike since then, traveling from San Diego, Calif., to Austin, Texas, in 2011 and from Austin to Jacksonville, Fla., in 2012.

Sanders usually rides by himself so he can set his own pace and make camp for the night wherever he pleases.

Riding alone, for what is sometimes 60 miles a day, also allows Sanders to completely immerse himself on his surroundings – the terrain, his speed the scenery – and the moment. The experience makes a good contrast to his former career as a planner and an administrator.

“You would think I’d miss the company, but I haven’t,” Sanders said. “People ask me, ‘What do you think about when your pedaling alone?’ ~ I tell them, ‘What am I not thinking about?’”

But Sanders also enjoys chatting with fellow cyclists when he camps out at public sites. On his first trip, he met people from Ireland, England and a couple who rode a recombinant bike from Tillamook to San Diego so they could visit their grandchildren.

He’s also signed up with the Warm Showers Community, a website that long-distance cyclists can use to find a place to stay on the road, and has offered his house as a place to stay for people who are on their bikes and passing through town. It’s a way to meet more cyclists and make new friends.

Sanders leaves Bend to start his East Coast bike ride April 12. For his next couple of rides, Sanders hopes he can make his way back across the country and travel from Yorktown to Astoria.