PORTLAND — Riding his bicycle toward East End Beach on Wednesday, Cecil Elbert looked a bit different from when he started his coast-to-coast trip. It’s been 50 years, after all.

His original plan was simple: Elbert, his brother and two friends would ride from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, then travel to Montreal for the Summer Olympics. Elbert took a year off college to work at a sawmill and raise money for the trip.

The group set out in 1976 with minimal planning. There were so many unknowns — from broken bicycle chains to car crashes. They relied on the kindness of others, often staying in church basements and making plans from town to town as they made connections.

Everything was going well until the crew hit Thief River Falls, Minnesota, where a crash stopped Elbert’s journey short. His pedal hit a curb and he lost control and collided with a nearby car. He spent 16 days in a Minnesota hospital before eventually reuniting with his friends, who had continued their journey, in Montreal.

But Elbert has always known he wanted to finish the ride he started. His attempt in 1976 was planned around the United States’ bicentennial. This year’s semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary, seemed as good a time as any to complete the journey. He’s retired and now lives in Dayton, Oregon. While he hadn’t exactly kept up with his biking regimen over the last half century, he recognized that his time might be limited.

Asked about his biggest challenge this time around, Elbert answered simply: “Being 70.”

“When you’re 20, you can pedal for two or three hours with stopping, now it’s about five minutes before having to coast,” he said.

He hasn’t been immune from falls this time, either. One of his hands was still noticeably bruised from a fall a few days before he rolled into Maine. For a while, it was so swollen he didn’t know if he would be able to continue.

He had better safety equipment this time, though. The back of Elbert’s bike features a Garmin Varia, a device that acts as a car warning signal, beeping whenever a car is approaching from the rear. It was helpful on some of the more rural roads, but the constant beeping was an annoyance during city rides. Elbert mentioned Portland as a particularly nerve-wracking place to ride with crowded and narrow streets, something locals know all too well.

Elbert’s wife, Anna, was relieved to see him finish his journey. She’d been following in a support car and checking on her husband every few miles. It’s always been his dream to finish and she wanted to support him, she said, but it made her nervous. There was one night when he made a wrong turn and she didn’t know where he was for several hours.

Prior to the trip, the couple created a guide with a printed map and travel plan, including handwritten notes and edits. He kept a journal every day of his ride. The entries varied from riding conditions to motel and ice cream shop reviews.

“Stopped for ice (cream) sundae at Molly’s ice cream — really good. The place we are staying the night at is awesome. It has a creek with waterfalls running right by the cabin. It has a screened-in porch so you can sit outside and listen to the water. It also has a maple tree growing through the porch and the roof, making a tree house,” read one entry from New York.

Elbert said he certainly felt older, but he still held a lot of youthful excitement. And he was able to use the same bike he saved up to buy as a 20-year-old, although he added some additional safety measures and changed its gearing to make riding easier.

When he dipped his front wheel into the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, it was four days behind his original schedule, but 50 years to the day after his accident. Walking his bike down the boat launch at East End Beach in Portland, he smiled.

He had finally reached the end of the line. He could rest now.