Have horseshoes will travel, by bike.

As long as Chuck Carter has a serviceable bike expect to see him riding down the highways and byways of America heading to the Illinois State Horseshoe tournament or even the World Horseshoe Tournament. He was in Shelbyville at the state tournament on Labor Day Weekend, one of just many of his stops in his trek that stretches over 100’s of thousands of miles. Yes, he says he has 100’s of thousands of miles on a bicycle over the last 23 years.

“It feels like 230 years,” Carter says.

The bearded cyclist, age 57, from Cahokia, looks like Forest Gump on a bike, traversing the continental United States time an again. Ride Carter, Ride!

Carter has been to 48 states and half of Canada, even as far as White Horse, Yukon, 300 miles south of Anchorage. Not bad for a guy who doesn’t have all his original parts.

Carter lost all of his toes and both in-steps due to frostbite in 1976, before he ever started riding his bike. He was hunting out in the Oregon mountains on horseback with friends.

“I got turned around in a snowstorm,” Carter said. “My fellow hunters found me four days later and I had hypothermia.”

He lost his toes and in-steps and they were replaced with metal. Carter had been a over-the-road driver for 18-wheelers.

“I hauled cattle, flat steel and nitroglycerin for Tucker Bros. out of Idaho,” Carter said.

He couldn’t drive anymore. So he came home to Cahokia, but that didn’t stop him from picking up the sport of horseshoes and beginning an incredible journey on two wheels.

“I could get a drivers license, but I don’t want one,” Carter said.

Carter got a bike and started riding. He is actually more comfortable on a bike than he is walking, because of his feet. He gets really sore at tournaments where he has to be on his feet and pitch for hours at a time. But, even with that discomfort, the only pain killers he uses is ibuprofen.

Carter has ridden his 11 different bikes from Cahokia to four different World Horseshoe Tournaments. He rode to Syracuse, New York in 1994 where he won Class H-2, going 13-2 with a 35% ringer percentage.

The bad thing at Syracuse that year was that he had the date wrong and showed up two weeks early. So he rode his bike all over the state waiting for the tournament. After the World, he won an Illinois state title at Shelbyville that year, going 11-0 in S Class.

“1994 was a good year,” Carter said.