Dartmouth's quirky Teevens to bike across country

	Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens isn't your average 50-year-old college football coach. AP
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Kirsten Teevens thought she was done with this two years ago. Her husband, Buddy, had woken up one day and decided that instead of traveling with Kirsten and their two kids to a vacation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he'd bike there. From Hanover, N.H.

"We were at the end of our driveway, like, 'Okay, see you. Bye-bye,' " Kirsten said. "Honestly, the man is nuts."

Teevens is now in his third year of a second stint at his alma mater, Dartmouth. He quarterbacked Dartmouth to an Ivy League championship in 1978, coached the Big Green to two more in '90 and '91 and sometime in between, after his little sister Moira biked from coast to coast, he decided his life wouldn't be complete without a similar trip of his own.

So 20 years later, Teevens has decided to make his one trip. On May 7, two days after Dartmouth's spring game, Teevens will begin his trek in San Diego. He plans to be in Connecticut for his son's prep school graduation on May 31. Somehow, he convinced Dave Shula, his favorite wideout from his playing days at Dartmouth, to bike the first few legs with him. Those are 160-mile-a-day legs.

"His wife thinks he's nuts too," Teevens said gleefully. "They may just commit the both of us."

May is ordinarily the month Teevens hits the road anyway. He visits high schools and chats up coaches and alumni. For a school like Dartmouth, that generally means criss-crossing the country. Bet the athletic director's loving how flush the recruiting budget's going to look.

"It makes a lot of sense," the 50-year-old Teevens said.

A daily runner and dedicated bike rider, the father of two amped up his bike rides a few months ago. He ran the St. Louis marathon with his 21-year old daughter Lindsay last weekend ("Yeah, it was like he was jogging around her," Kirsten said) and he got himself a newfangled helmet with a built-in headset for his cell phone. He bought a road atlas at the campus bookstore, drew a diagonal from San Diego to New Hampshire and had the Big Green Alert blogger post his early itinerary. Kirsten wants to know why people reading the blog keep offering to put Buddy up -- as opposed to riding with him.

"I'm begging people to go with him. Begging," she said. And then Kirsten asked me where I lived.