At 72, Hanna Elshoff goes for a two-year bike ride

This message from your “bucket list”: Time is fleeting. Get moving.

Chatfield, Minn., resident Hanna Elshoff, 72, wanted to ride a bike from Texas to Iowa for as long as she can remember.

“If it took me a year it didn’t matter. I was going to live footloose and fancy free,” Elshoff tells the Rochester Post-Bulletin. “I was going to go from one little town to another and work my way to Texas. But my sponsors said it was too dangerous and they told me I couldn’t do it. I’ve regretted it all my life.”

She’s been waiting ever since to be “footloose and fancy free” and when she found herself thinking she might reach that point around the time she turns 80, she decided she would make the trip when she turned 75.

Then she saw a powered bike at Menard’s, got inspired to search for a solar-powered bike, and set a date.

“My kids and everyone are taken care of. They don’t really need me. I’m going to start (in May),” she tells the paper.

The trip around the country will take two years. The first leg will end in Plains, Ga., because the German native has another item on the bucket list: Get Jimmy Carter’s autograph.