Now this is just the coolest darned thing I’ve seen all week.

This is Bill and Amarins Harrison, and their three daughters, ages 3, 4 and 6.

They hail from Renfro Valley in Kentucky (Mt. Vernon) and are en route to Alaska . . . on a 14.5-ft. (not counting trailer) quint bicycle.

Their only supplies are what they carry with them on the bicycle, which includes a tent, but today is a special occasion — the Harrisons’ wedding anniversary — and so they’re staying in the Oneida Guest House behind our office. They pulled into town at around lunch time and will hit the road again tomorrow morning.

They departed Renfro Valley on Saturday. Their immediate destination is Oak Ridge, and then on to the Atlantic Coast by way of the Carolinas. From there, they’ll travel to Florida, head to the Southwest by way of the Southeast (hoping to spend the winter months peddling through warmer environs) and will eventually travel up the Pacific Coast to Alaska.

They figure on arriving in Alaska in August 2010. They’ll stay there for one year, then head back to Renfro Valley, arriving back home sometime in late 2012.

I chatted for a while earlier with Bill Harrison, who has more ambition in one finger than I could ever hope to have. He says the trip is all about getting out the message for people to live life simpler and strive to achieve their dreams.

“Risk-taking is what made this country great,” he says. “It wasn’t politics or religion. It was about risking to go around the next bend in the river or over the next mountain. If we still took those risks today, this would be a better world.”

His kids are having a blast on the trip, he said, but they are, after all, still American kids. “Every day my six-year-old says ‘Are we in Alaska yet?’” he said with a laugh. “I say, no, baby, we won’t be in Alaska until next summer. So first we have to go through fall, winter and spring, and then we’ll be in Alaska.”

Adventure is a way of life for the Harrisons, who had an out house and lived in a tent for several years while they were building their home in Mt. Vernon. Amarins, a native of The Netherlands, is fluent in three languages (Frysian, Dutch and English). Bill was born in America, but has lived in three continents, including several years in Israel, and is fluent in Arabic. The couple actually have six children, but the three oldest aren’t making the trip.

“They think we’re crazy,” Bill said. “But so do half the people I meet. Everybody back home thinks we’re nuts. But then they thought the same thing when we pulled up in my pickup truck eight years ago. They gave us a week until we packed up our tent and went back to wherever we came from. But we built our house out of scratch and stuck around. I knew they would have a pool going when we decided to do this, so I stopped by to ask them what the pool was and they gave us a month until we head back home with our tails between our legs. They first said we wouldn’t make it to Tennessee but they finally conceded that we might last a little longer.”

Today they crossed the Tennessee line. Tomorrow? “We’re just taking it a day at a time,” Bill said.

The plan to bike their way to Alaska came to fruition this year.

“I decided, ‘It’s time,’” he said. “I’m 48. If I wait any longer there won’t be nothing left of me, and if the girls get any bigger I won’t be able to drive them on the bike.”

So why a bike?

“Amarins has always wanted to bike the spine of the Rockies,” he says. “Our goal is to make the pass in New Mexico before winter sets in.

“We thought about taking a horse and wagon but we didn’t know how we would feed the stupid thing,” he adds with a laugh.