Colleen Oakes and Renee Buteyne were only 12 when they met in junior high at Old Rochester Regional. The two girls spoke for the first time after Buteyne (formerly Bussenger) watched as a girl at school asked to borrow Oakes’ lip gloss “and she intentionally jammed her finger in it and ruined it,” said Oakes, now 29 and living in Aspen, Colorado. The girls looked at each other in disbelief, laughed it off, and bonded over the adolescent act of unkindness.
Years passed since that encounter with the mean girl who launched the two on their journey in life as friends. Sometime that journey was a figurative one – two friends, both at UMass Amherst sharing a dorm room, their dreams, their plans … More recently, though, their journey as friends became a literal excursion as the two set out together from Portland, Oregon, and made their way home to Tri-Town peddling 3,624 miles on their bicycles during a two-month, two-week-long trip across the country.
It was something Buteyne wanted to do since she was around 20, she said. And now in 2018, suddenly Buteyne was about to turn 30.
“I think I realized that a decade had gone by and I hadn’t done it,” said Buteyne. I better get that done, she figured, “Otherwise, that dream is going to get further and further away.
“Something kind of clicked,” she said.
Buteyne was never really a biker, she admits. She had never done any long tours or overnights or anything longer than a daytrip. It was just one of those things Buteyne had always wanted to do, said Oakes, “And some day she was going to do it.” Buteyne decided that time would be this year and asked Oakes to join her.
“I wasn’t sure,” Oakes admitted. “I was out in Colorado: I wasn’t sure if the timing was right.” But then, just like that, it was suddenly the right time when the Tesla store she worked at closed down and, suddenly, Oakes was a free woman.
The two women, both facing another new decade of life together, chose the cross-country bike trip as their way to say goodbye to their twenties while pedaling into their thirties. After all, Oakes said, “My dad did it back in the 70s and he still has the stories.”
Oakes’ father is Jeff Oakes of Marion, an active advocate for the Marion Bike Path and a member of the Open Space Acquisition Commission.
The trip began on May 2, leading the two friends across the map, stopping along the way to visit friends and family in various states and checking off bucket list destinations along the way, like Yellowstone National Park, for example.
“We would sort of hit these hubs that were important to us … then try to get there by a certain time,” said Oakes.
But it wasn’t so much the places that left the impression on the two women along the way; it was the people they met and the acts of kindness they encountered from strangers all over the country.
“People are just way kinder to you than you can imagine,” said Buteyne. “When you show up on a bike like that it’s sort of like a red flag that you’re in need of something … and people want to give that so openly.”
Some people would simply leave money on the counter to buy the women’s meals, others would offer hot showers or a place to sleep. Some had simply experienced travelling on a bike long-distance or had kids who did and just wanted to pay it forward, so-to-speak.
“Real generosity from strangers, which I feel like is always a surprise,” said Buteyne.
People along the way made a lasting impact of them, said Oakes, recalling a funny outcome to a rather unpleasant experience.
“One night we ended up sleeping in a tent behind someone’s trailer in a really, really small town in Wyoming,” Oakes recalled. “It was, hands down, the worst dinner we had ever had in our entire lives.” Uncooked meat served by angry waitresses, said Oakes – “And you knew that nothing was clean in there, but it was the only place open so we knew we had to.”
Then a nice man with no teeth offered up a spot for their tent for a night that Oakes said ended up being one of the most memorable, fun nights of the trip.
“It’s some tough living in some of these places out west, but they’re the most generous people we met,” Oakes said.
Clearly, this part of the two friends’ journey was a lifetime away from that moment a mean girl and her finger globbed with Oakes’ new lip-gloss brought them together. And a trip like this one requires a companion with a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh it off, just like they did when they were 12, because the two had their moments in between Portland and Rochester, Buteyne recalled.
“Renee was the one who would push us through, and if I saw Renee struggling, I’d push her,” said Oakes.
“I don’t think I could’ve done it without her and her strength and also her humor,” said Buteyne. “You have to have someone to laugh about and Colleen was the perfect companion throughout the whole thing. It just sealed the deal on how much I love her.
“You see how strong somebody is,” Buteyne continued. “If my cup was empty she just had a little more to fill mine and hers.”
All she had to do was look at Buteyne and know what she was thinking by the end of the trip, said Oakes, like that time they climbed 3,000 feet in elevation in one day as they crossed the Continental Divide. Buteyne’s family had sent them off with some homemade brownies and at one point Oakes looked to Buteyne who was clearly stressed and said, “Here. Eat this entire brownie right now.
“Slowly she came back to life and we were just laughing on a chocolate high,” said Oakes. “It’s just those little things. We can read each other and turn it around.”
The two are certain the trip has changed them for the better. After all, they did what they said they were going to do, said Buteyne, “And I just think that our words are strong and if you want to do something or you say you’re going to do it, you should do it.
“At the end of the day, that’s the stuff that makes you, being true to your word,” said Buteyne.
For Oakes, “There was never a moment when either one of us didn’t want to keep going. It wasn’t an option for us. We can pretty much get through anything and we’re a lot stronger and more capable than we probably thought.”
There’s more than just one takeaway from this journey for the two women. But as Oakes summed it up, “There’s more kind out there than there is bad, especially for two girls – people worried about us, the warnings, the cautionary tales,” said Oakes. “It’s a great country and people are really, really nice. It’s actually not so bad out there.”
Buteyne turned 30 on July 10 during her trip. The two made their way across Massachusetts, down High Street, and onto Stevens Road on Monday, July 16, where family and friends greeted them with confetti, balloons, a homemade finish line, and lots of hugs.
“I’m excited for them and so proud,” said Lisa Bussenger, Buteyne’s mother. “They’re such good people. When they say they’re going to do something, they do it.”
By Jean Perry
