Finn Fremstad pedaled out of Fort Collins on July 23 and did not stop moving for 31 days, riding roughly 2,000 miles across five states before rolling onto the campus of Swarthmore College in the Philadelphia suburbs. The 18-year-old Fort Collins High School graduate chose the bicycle over a plane ticket for his move to college, picking a route through Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and figuring out most of the details as he went.
Fremstad set his starting point and his final destination, according to Colorado Public Radio. He traveled through Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania over the course of the trip. It made for a slower, looser trip than the interstate drivers he occasionally passed, and Fremstad said that was the point.
Knocking on Doors for a Place to Sleep
Rather than rely solely on hotels or campgrounds, Fremstad found places to sleep by using Warmshowers and, in some towns, asking homeowners if he could pitch his tent in their yard. Strangers regularly said yes, and many went further, per the same CPR report, offering him food, water and a spot to charge his phone.
The method echoes, if informally, the kind of hospitality networks that touring cyclists have relied on for decades. Warmshowers, a nonprofit founded in 1993, connects cyclists with hosts who offer free lodging, showers and meals to traveling cyclists. Fremstad used Warmshowers as well as knocking on doors, drawing on the hospitality that has sustained long-distance cycling in America.
Extreme Weather and Hundreds of Miles of Cornfields
The trip put Fremstad through a record heat wave in Nebraska and heavy rainstorms in Indiana and Ohio, along with what he described as hundreds of miles of cornfields stretching across the Midwest, the same CPR account notes. He filled the long, flat days with podcasts and the soundtrack from the Broadway musical Hadestown, and he checked in with his parents by phone every night of the journey. Fremstad described a sense of adventure as something instilled in him growing up in Colorado, a state he called known for that spirit.
Fremstad formed connections in both small towns and major cities along the way, and he arrived at Swarthmore College already something of a known quantity on campus — recognized, he found, as the guy who biked in from Colorado. He graduated from Fort Collins High School in May and plans to major in math at Swarthmore.
Fremstad enrolled at Swarthmore College.
A Hometown Built for This Kind of Ride
Fremstad's comfort on two wheels did not come from nowhere. Fort Collins retained its Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community designation from the League of American Bicyclists earlier this year, one of only three U.S. cities to hold the organization's top rank, according to Bike Fort Collins. The city first earned Platinum status in 2013 and maintains bike lanes, trails and shared routes. Colorado State University in Fort Collins holds its own Platinum Bicycle Friendly University status, making the city one of the few places in the country where the municipality, the local university and city government all carry that top-tier certification.
That infrastructure exists alongside a harder conversation happening in Fort Collins about cyclist and pedestrian safety. The city has committed to a Vision Zero policy aiming to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2032, after identifying a High-Injury Network covering 8% of city streets where 63% of serious crashes occur, Hoodline previously reported on Vision Zero. That focus sharpened after a fatal crash in July involving a middle school teacher who was walking her bicycle through an active repaving zone on Mulberry Street, a case Hoodline covered in a piece on the beloved teacher's death. Statewide, pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in Colorado doubled over a decade to reach 127 deaths in 2025. Colorado has since enacted a law expanding drivers' legal duty of care toward cyclists and pedestrians.
Philadelphia also has a Vision Zero initiative focused on traffic safety.
None of that touched Fremstad's route directly, but it forms the backdrop against which a Colorado teenager decided to ride 2,000 miles instead of flying. Bicycle tourism is part of the broader tradition of long-distance cycling in America. A Fort Collins kid with a tent and a Hadestown playlist rode his own long-distance trip straight to his dorm room.
