Most people would use a nonmotorized, human-powered scooter only for short trips.
But Dayton Nash and a couple of friends from college, Abe Townley and Sam Artz, decided to ride scooters a bit farther: more than 100 miles in one day from Brainerd to Bemidji, Minn., on the Paul Bunyan State Trail.
Nash, a 24-year-old Eau Claire, Wis., resident, is an endurance athlete who likes to run and bike long distances.
But lately he’s been trying some more offbeat challenges, like riding a RipStik, a sort of two-wheeled skateboard, for a marathon distance of 26.2 miles on a track last summer. Then he and Townley and Artz rode kid-sized Razor scooters for 26.2 miles.
When the Razor company heard about the feat on Instagram, they sent Nash three full-sized adult scooters.
Nash and Artz, of Minneapolis, and Townley, of White Bear Lake, decided to see if they scoot the two-wheeled devices on a 100-mile ride. They used a 3-D printer to create water bottle holders for the scooters and wore backpacks carrying food and spare wheels.
At 8:30 a.m. on May 28, they set off from Brainerd, pushing and rolling north on the Paul Bunyan State Trail. A little after sunset, more than 13 hours later, they rolled into Bemidji and took a picture of themselves at the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues.
They actually completed 106.52 miles and burned 5,501 calories each, according to Nash’s GPS device.
“We were all just exhausted,” Nash said. He said scootering so far and so long was hard on the lower back, the knees and hips. “We definitely had times where it was just tough.”
“That was very taxing,” Townley said. “It was fun in a weird, painful kind of sense.”
And maybe the journey was worth it in terms of social media fame. Nash’s TikTok video of the trip recently surpassed 1 million views and more than 131,000 likes.
Nash is also considering what to do next. It might involve a unicycle or a pogo stick or maybe seeing how many miles he can go in 24 hours on a scooter.
“I’m always looking for these new wave challenges,” he said.
Richard Chin is a feature reporter with the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He has been a longtime Twin Cities-based journalist who has covered crime, courts, transportation, outdoor recreation and human interest stories.
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