Carson attorney begins last leg of bike tour

Paul Taggart's dream will take flight today when he boards a plane to Denver with his bike to begin the last leg of a cross-country cycling tour, this stretch from the Rockies to the Pacific.

The Carson City attorney, along with his older brother, Michael Stanza, from Maryland, plan to travel light, a mode of travel he calls a "Visa card tour" in which they will journey with little besides what they have in their small bike bags while stopping at hotels along the way.

They will start in Estes, Colo., Friday morning and ascend a high point of 12,183 feet over a mountain pass in Rocky Mountain National Park -- the nation's highest paved pass -- when the road opens that day.

Taggart estimates the trips will take 10 days to travel from Colorado to California. The brothers will be traveling back through Carson City around the first or second of next month en route to Point Reyes.

The east to west route was chosen in part for historical reasons, according to Taggart.

"We wanted to go the way the settlers went when they came out West, so we started in southern Virginia, we started right where the first settlers were in Jamestown, then we went past Yorktown and all the Revolutionary War landmarks and then all the Civil War landmarks like Appomattox. Then we just started following the path of settlers. From St. Louis we picked up the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express Trail and the California Trail."

There will be a 90-mile stretch without water in Eastern Nevada, Taggart said, except for what they carry by camelback.

And they will be traveling against the wind.

"The prevailing jet stream is from west to east so we will be riding against the wind," said Taggart "which won't make it any easier."