Bicycling Across the USA to Raise Money for JDRF

I will update progress as I remember how to load pictures from my phone to my blog. I am old and easily befuddled by technology. I have pedaled 256 miles the first five days. Adequate start. In five days, an average of 1,095 children get diagnosed with type-1 diabetes.

Personally, I am about to find the answer to the following question: Can a gentleman of substantial age, training on Oreos, bicycle across the United States, in an effort to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes ResearchFoundation? 

First, I am riding in honor of Emily Viall. My daughter has been dealing with type-1 diabetes since she was 14. 

I am riding for Pattie Spicher, who has been battling the same auto-immune disease for 53 years, and Audrey Lake, who was diagnosed in 1962. I am riding for Lilly Banks, 16, recently diagnosed, and Adam Kavka, a former student, who gave me a boost when he heard my daughter had learned the same bad news he did, when he was young. I will be riding for others, as I get organized and collect names and their stories. 

So, what could go wrong. I’ve got Oreos on my side.

The plan: Start at Acadia National Park -
pedal west until you hit an ocean.

Not only do I have Oreos to fuel my ride, I have Jim’s Bicycle Shop in Deer Park in my corner. He rebuilt my bicycle for this trip – the same one I’ve used to ride across the USA before. Jim sold me my Cannondale in 1999, and he’s never led me wrong.

Third, I’m riding for Emily’s twins – who want to grow up with a healthy mother. Emily is now a nurse, and takes excellent care of herself, with the help of Ryan Bowling, her partner. She has good health insurance, too. 

Many type-1 diabetics do not. 

Emily's boys: Story with the yellow car, Prosper with black.
My wife, Anne, an excellent mother and grandmother, both.

Emily has been dealing with type-1 diabetes for 19 years.
She has great class, like her mom.

My rebuilt bicycle, ready to roll.

I expect to meet plenty of kind people on my ride – as I have on previous rides. I expect to lose 25 pounds again, too. And I’ll see some beautiful sights. I should also thank my wife for letting me try this again. 

I have said innumerable times, that Anne is the most balanced, best person, male or female, I have ever met. 

So: Here we GO!

If you would like to donate, to help find a cure 

for type-1 diabetes,

 go to this link.

Battling and Beating Type-1 for 53 Years: Pattie Spicher

Ray (nickname: Baby Beef, left), Pattie, right.
You know what joke is coming.

“Am I Blessed or What?” 

When I asked Pattie Spicher to sit for an interview, I knew she’d have a tale to tell about dealing successfully with type-1 diabetes. I first met Pattie in 1972, when she married Ray Spicher, my high school friend. By that time, she had learned, at age 20, that she had “adult diabetes,” as doctors then labeled her condition. 

Pattie was petite – and still is – but neither she nor Ray could have imagined how complex the journey ahead would prove. 

I had been discharged from the Marines by that time, so I wasn’t exactly a wimp. But Pattie, like every “veteran” diabetic I have ever known, has proven herself way tougher than me. 

If someone you love is new to this life-altering diagnosis – that they are type-1 – I believe Pattie is an inspiration. She has persevered and with “God’s help,” as she says, has led a full life, filled with joy. That’s the first lesson from her tale. Pattie will tell you being type-1 is “a pain in the butt.” There’s still no cure, so you’ll always have to watch what you eat. And you can’t wish the disease away. Like Pattie, you have to set your mind to the challenge and do the best you can. 

To Donate to JDRF, please click here.

When she was first diagnosed, care was primitive by today’s standards, and she was informed she could never have children. One doctor told her she might die before she turned thirty. At first, her medical condition was misdiagnosed. For over a year, no one thought to start her on insulin. They believed she had what today we would call type-2 diabetes, an increasingly common health problem in this country, as the average American’s eating habits grow worse and worse. 

In those days, all Pattie could do to test her blood sugar levels was pee on strips, like those pregnancy tests. If the strip turned bright green, that meant sugar levels were high. All she could do to lower her levels, or so doctors believed, was “take a walk” or skip a meal. “They would starve you,” is how she explained it, and compared treatment in the early 70s to that of Thomas Jefferson’s wife. Experts now suspect Martha Jefferson died in 1782, from the complications of type-1 diabetes. So Pattie tested and did her best. She stands five-and-a-half feet tall, but her weight plunged from 110 to 90. 

Pattie on her wedding day - 1972.

If you know the history of type-1 diabetes, until a hundred years ago it was an early death sentence if your immune system had been compromised. Insulin was not discovered until 1922, and Pattie was learning about the disease forty-nine years later. Now she’s been dealing for fifty-three years. 

And here’s the second lesson to ponder. She has seen miraculous improvements in how doctors help patients approach their new lives, and that’s why she says she’s “so thankful for JDRF.” As all who have loved ones afflicted with this disease learn, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has been leading the search for a cure, and funding research into better treatment, for many years. 

In her case, once it was understood she had what was then called “juvenile diabetes,” she was finally put on insulin, and instructed on how to give herself shots. She had a chart to hang in the bathroom to help her keep track. Shot in the left arm one day, right arm the next. Left butt cheek, right butt cheek, left thigh, right, and a shot in the stomach for “fun.” Then start all over again. 

As I said, I had been in the Marines, and knew how to curse; I’d have got about as far as the first tender cheek, and I’d have started f-bombing the world. Pattie will only admit she was “mad,” but also said she was determined diabetes wouldn’t beat her – and, as we know now, it could not.

 

In Ray and Pattie’s life, one of the great hurdles that had to be cleared was that they badly wanted children. But in that era, they were admonished that it would be dangerous for Pattie to try. They talked to Catholic Charities about adoption; but when the charity followed up with Pattie’s doctors, on why she couldn’t have children, they told the charity folks that she might die early, and it wouldn’t be fair to place a baby with the Spicher family. So it seemed parenthood was out. 

In those days, Pattie worked at a women’s clothing store called “5-7-9,” for the sizes they sold. It was in a mall. 

When people still loved malls! 

One afternoon, God took a hand. A customer came “almost floating in,” Pattie remembers, and told her he was shopping for his wife. She helped him pick out something nice and asked about the occasion. “My wife just found out she’s pregnant, and she’s a type-1 diabetic,” the man replied. “So we’re both thrilled.” 

When Pattie said she was type-1, too, he told her about a study being conducted at the University of Cincinnati, gave her the name of  Dr. Harvey Knowles Jr., and left with a gift for his wife. 

Pattie told her boss she was leaving work immediately, drove home, used the land line (this is back in the day), and called UC to get the information she needed. 

Knowing that pregnancy was possible, and having been enrolled in the study, herself, she and Ray decided, “We would put it in God’s hands.” In 1976, she got pregnant for the first time. As she told me, in those days, the only ways to test your blood were to use the urine strips or draw blood, which was most accurate. So, during her pregnancy, she had a pic line put in one arm. She was told she’d have to spend a week in the hospital during the first semester, a week during the second, and the entire third trimester in a hospital bed. 

“I wasn’t sure I could do that,” she said in deadpan fashion, “because I really don’t like hospitals.” 

I had to laugh.

 

So she “solved” that problem by having her first son, Scott, at 28 weeks. He tipped the scales at three pounds, three ounces. 

“Three pounds, three ounces!” I said. “Whoa.” I had been premature myself, and my mother had eight miscarriages in eleven tries. So I knew that for Ray and Pattie, this must have been a terrible shock. 

“Wow,” I added. “I weighed four, five.”

Children weren't supposed to be an option.
Scott, left, decided to arrive early, Nick, right followed five years later.

Pattie is lively, and loves to talk, but had difficulty continuing. Doctor Knowles, she gulped, “was the best endocrinologist ever.” She switched a moment to talk about when her second son, Nick, was on the way in 1982. One day, Knowles told her during an office visit that he was “so excited.” There was a new machine, he said, adding, “There will never be another invention like this, ever!” You had to draw blood, and you placed it on strips, and calibrated the machine high, and draw blood and calibrate it low, and because she was in a study, they gave her a machine to take home. At first, it was about 8 x 10 inches. You had to fumble with the strips, and wipe them off after you touched them with blood, then use a stopwatch, also provided, to know when to check results. “Pattie,” Dr. Knowles had assured her, “there will be nothing to top this in the next twenty years.” In fact, it was only then, after several years of battling diabetes, that she could finally get real blood sugar numbers, an “actual number, 112, or whatever it might be.” The first machine she was given was “like six days old,” because she was in the UC program, and you couldn’t lug it around, of course. So she and Ray had a table set up at home. By the time she had Nick, the machine had been reduced to 5 x 7, and you didn’t have to calibrate it yourself. 

“It was amazing how fast things moved,” she said.

 

This writer’s family has seen great improvements in care, as well, watching our youngest daughter handle diabetes, starting in 2005. So far, Pattie’s story tracked positive, as Emily’s has. So I asked to go back to Scott for a moment. “So, he’s so small, you have to be worried about his overall health…” 

“Don’t even talk about it,” she replied, choking up a moment.”  

And Dr. Knowles,” she finally continued, “was so awesome.” He told Ray, with that first pregnancy, “If they come running out of the delivery room…” and she laughs at her emotion, and wipes away tears. “If they came running out of the delivery room, then he would know there had been trouble.” 

At that, she starts crying. “I still cry,” she admits, “and in fact every time I call Scott on his birthday I start crying again, and he just says, ‘Mom are you ever gonna get over this,’ and I say, ‘No,  Scott, I’m never gonna get over it.’” 

In those days, Ray was coaching baseball and teaching at Hughes High, and many of his students were poor. He often had to pick players up at home at 6:00 a.m., so they could practice before classes. One day, her water broke, and she called her sister for a ride to the hospital. Scott couldn’t go home until he weighed at least five pounds. So Ray would come up to the room after work, and see her, and being “dog-tired,” fall asleep in the bed. 

But they didn’t come running out on April 8, 1977, when Scott the Giant crashed the party of Life. “I thank God every day,” Pattie says, and her faith is strong. “Am I blessed, or what?” she adds.

Had care for diabetics not improved, Pattie wouldn't be here.
Nor would her seven grandchildren.

 

Here then: another lesson. I think most families of type-1 diabetics learn that it makes everyone involved stronger in all kinds of ways. It steels people with resolve – as it did Pattie and Ray. Her husband went on to become a highly-respected principal in the Cincinnati Public Schools – retired – got rehired as principal at Princeton High School within days –  worked a few more years – retired again – and got hired again within a week, to be principal at Madeira High. Scott didn’t stay tiny for long, went on to earn a degree from the University of Cincinnati, and got into education, himself. Today, he’s principal at Dry Ridge Elementary School in Kentucky. Their second son, Nick, also thrived, also did well in school and sports, and graduated from Miami University, in part aided by a scholarship for left-handers. Both young men married well, and there are two daughters-in-law that Ray and Pattie love, and seven grandkids, one adopted from Haiti – now eleven, and a killer on a set of drums. 

And Pattie is still here. 

Take that Death! You lose. 

Today, Pattie is still petite, still plays pickleball and golf, and knows how to have fun. So how does one deal with type-1 diabetes for more than fifty years? As she puts it, she set her mind from the start. “Nobody was going to beat me,” she said. She decided she would do whatever she must in order to meet the challenges posed by this insidious disease. During her first pregnancy, she added, “I would have run down the street naked, if that’s what it took” to have a healthy child. She also acknowledged, it’s never fun. She remembers thinking how nice a cure would be. “I just wanted one day where I could eat this, and not worry about what it was.”  She still remembers learning to give herself shots. You had to practice on an orange.

Grandson A.J. is a killer on the drums.

 

My daughter Emily had to learn the same way; and when I try to tell Pattie about it, I can’t, until I compose myself. In Emily’s case, she’s been dealing for almost two decades. As a teen, she hated having to check everything she ate, and at one point rebelled and said she didn’t care. So I asked Pattie about health insurance, because Emily is a nurse now, but even with good insurance, paying for the supplies to fight diabetes is a drain. Pattie remembers a time, when she maxed out her medical coverage and fell into what was then called the “donut hole,” and had to pay for insulin herself at the end of the year. One day, she went to pick up a three-months’ supply and was told it would cost $1,900. She just left the insulin there and went home. 

But you can’t just leave insulin behind. Type-1 diabetics must have it to live. For older Americans, recent changes in how the federal government negotiates drug prices, have capped out-of-pocket costs at $35 per month. Young diabetics, often lacking the best healthcare, face much steeper costs. Some try to “cut back” on how much they use; but that can backfire badly, too. 

So Pattie knows it’s not an easy road to travel. I’ve bicycled across the USA twice, and plan to do it again, to raise money for JDRF. Having type-1 diabetes is like pedaling uphill every mile of every day. But what else can you do? Pattie has been pedaling hard for fifty-three years, and the key lesson I’ve gleaned from Pattie and every type-1 diabetic I know, is that they learn to pedal hard because if they stop it can’t work. If your loved one has been diagnosed recently, you can be sure that with your love and support, they’ll grind up every hill, every day, and you’ll be able to help them in myriad ways. 

JDRF has done all that an organization can to build better “bicycles” for type-1s to ride, and someday, with “God looking out,” as Pattie would say, we’ll get to the end of the ride, where there’s a cure.

To Donate to JDRF, please click here.

 

Destination Unknown: Pedaling for JDRF

If you would like to donate, to help find a cure 

for type-1 diabetes,

 go to this link.

Emily and the twins.

Well, I have a plan. I’m going to start off from Acadia National Park, on or about May 1, 2024. I’m going to pedal up to the top of Cadillac Mountain, and snap a few photos. I’m going to be sure to suck my gut in, because I need to shed 25 pounds. Then I’m going to coast down again and head west.

 

No telling how far I may get. I’ll just start pedaling. That’s the plan. I’m 75; I could end up going “over the rainbow” on the first steep climb. (I don’t think there’s a map I can use to find the route from Acadia to heaven.) But I’m stubborn; and I was in the Marines. I know how to handle a physical challenge.

 

So I hope to cover a few miles. 

Me: December 1968.

Meanwhile, I will be raising money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which works to find a cure for type-1 diabetes. My daughter Emily has been type-1 since she was 14, nineteen years, now.

 

Emily is tougher than me – and it’s not even close. She’s a dedicated research nurse, a mother of twin boys, Prosper and Story, age 3, and good with her partner’s kids, Zea and Cooper, too. 

 

I’m proud to be her dad.

Story, left, Prosper, waving the hat.

If you know any type-1 diabetics, they NEVER get to coast downhill. You can’t cure type-1. So you have to deal with the challenge every day. It’s like pedaling against a stiff wind – day after day – year after year. Yet they do it, and JDRF funding has helped fund research for a cure, and to advance care. 

I will be trying to raise money as I go. 

Cadillac Mountain - start of a ride across the USA in 2011.

Sidney, in pink, has type-1 diabetes, with brother Sam.
I rode for her and others in 2011.

Lunch break in Grand Teton National Park - 2011.

I pedaled up Tioga Pass, into Yosemite National Park.
(White dot on the road, above handle bars, is a big mobile camping home.

A scene from Wyoming, during my first ride across the USA.
The state has six people per square mile - 2007.

Maybe I'll get far enough this time to see buffalo again?

Or mountain goats in Glacier National Park.

Or even ride the Going-to-the-Sun highway in Glacier.
That would be cool.

 

What would really be cool, though, would be finding a cure for type-1 diabetes. So, I guess I’ll have to pedal a few miles.

 

 

I am hoping people will donate $7.50 for the cause.

(Get it, I'm 75.)

Emily - June 14, 2007

THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW I ENDED UP PEDALING ACROSS THE USA IN 2007, AT AGE 58. I DID IT AGAIN FOUR YEARS LATER. I THINK I’LL DO IT A THIRD TIME, WHEN I HIT 75 IN 2024. 

I DON’T WANT TO WASTE MY YOUTH. 

Dedicated to my lovely daughter.

Emily, bottom, getting a hug from sister Sarah.

Emily

(June 14, 2007)

 

In just a few days I will begin my trip across the United States to raise money for diabetes research.

 

____________________

One of the darkest times our family has ever faced.

____________________

Emily, 17, our youngest daughter, was diagnosed as a type-1 diabetic in March 2005 – one of the darkest times our family has ever faced.

Still, we consider ourselves lucky. Emily had been healthy all during childhood; and we could feel for those whose children were diagnosed early. Emily was old enough to give herself her own shots...old enough to understand what risks were involved...but not so old she wasn’t scared.

We have been lucky since, too. Our daughter has never once let a complaint slip her lips. She knew from the start that being diabetic would change her life and might change her future. So she set her mind on making the best of a bad situation. I will have more to say about her in future postings. For now I can only say that her mother and I are very proud of her.

Here are a few basics of my plan. I have a family reunion in New Jersey the weekend of June 15-17. The next day my brother drops me off along the coast. Bicycling tradition says you should dip your back wheel in the ocean where you start and dip your front wheel in the ocean where you finish. I expect to complete my trip to Oregon in roughly two months.

Loveland community support has been tremendous. I have raised a little more than $10,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Anyone who would like to donate may make out a check to JDRF.

Send checks to my home address:

John Viall
750 Woodbine Avenue
Glendale, Ohio 45246

 

*I am adding notes here, in 2022, because I’m thinking of doing another cross-country ride in the future. Emily is doing fine. She’s a nurse, and has identical twin boys, a year old. Anything in italics is added. 

In the summer of 2007, I had one year left in my teaching career, spent entirely at Loveland Middle School, in Loveland, Ohio. I told my students about my plan for this ride, and, as I’ll explain later, they pitched in and helped me raise funds.

Prosper and Story. Emily's identical twin boys.

Home, Sweet Home - for Three Days - July 2, 2007

Home, Sweet Home – for Three Days

(July 2, 2007)

 

I have done better than expected since last updating. I decided to push myself to get past the soreness of the first week and did 537 miles (not counting ten in the back of a red pickup truck in West Virginia) in my second week on the road.

For the record that makes just over 1,000 miles traveled.

People have been universally friendly, discounting one or two morons who yell, “Get off the road,” somehow convincing themselves that they have someplace important to go and something important to say to spice up their brain-dead existence.

I finally had a chance to see Jefferson's home at Monticello.

 

____________________

“May the blood of Jesus protect you through your journey.”
____________________

After stopping to write at the library in Pulaski, Virginia (see my post for June 27), I decided to push into the mountains, although a local man warned I was entering “twenty miles of nothing.” Pedaling out of town, I happened to see a light-skinned African American woman watering her flowers. I asked to fill my water bottles to be safe and was rewarded by the kindness of Mrs. Angie Conners, who could not have been more considerate. After talking about where I was headed and where I had come from, and plans to raise money for diabetes, she noted that she and her husband Willis, a retired army man, were type-2 diabetics themselves.

Then she insisted on providing ice, went inside her house, and came back moments later with a large chunk protected in plastic zip-lock bags. I thanked her; and she said she’d pray for me, adding, “May the blood of Jesus protect you through your journey.”

In the next two hours I was happy to have the ice, sipping the melt water when I hit hard spots and sticking the bag on my neck to cool down when necessary. Around 7:00 p.m. I ran into three local riders who cautioned me I was going to head over Little Walker Mountain soon and Big Walker Mountain right after. The first was two miles up, with numerous switchbacks, the second three miles up and even steeper.

I climbed over Little Walker, then decided to camp on a stream in the valley between the mountains. The camping was free, but “showering” consisted of jumping in the creek, where two deer had been drinking moments before.

The next day (6/27) I had to go over Big Walker first thing in the morning, and it took an hour to climb to the top. (I’m not Lance Armstrong, that’s for sure.) Much of the day was spent heading down the South Holston River Valley, a beautiful stretch, and then climbing two tough mountains in succession to reach Tazewell, Virginia. Near the top of the second mountain an elderly woman driving a black Ford Ranger offered a lift. I explained I was determined to pedal my way cross-country. So she cackled a little, revealing a few remaining teeth, and went on up the mountain. An hour later, entering Tazewell at last, I happened to pass her house. From the front porch she shouted cheerfully, “Glad to see you made it!”

Earlier, near Bland, Virginia, I crossed paths with a young man hiking the Appalachian Trail. I asked how he got interested, and he said a college buddy convinced him to do the trip and asked him to keep him company. I smiled, looked in both directions, and threw my arms wide, palms up, as if to ask, “Where is he?”

The bearded hiker laughed, “That’s a story in itself.” He said they flew to Atlanta from their home in Maine and headed out for the trail. After one week his friend couldn’t do it anymore and quit. So he had been hiking on his own for the last forty days. He hoped to finish the trail from start to finish this year. If not, he will go home for the winter and complete the journey next season. I told him I thought it sounded like a great adventure. He said the same about my plan to ride to Oregon.

As I have admitted, however, if I hadn’t told students I was going to make this trip I might not have lasted through the first week.

The morning of 6/28 was spent in a laundromat, talking to an old fellow, whose history reflects the changing fortunes of America workers. As a boy he helped around the family farm, but noted it “was too damn hard.” So he left home, joined the army, and did a tour as a military policeman in Korea during the war.

He returned home thinking he could catch on with the state police. One bad decision led to another, and he started hanging with friends from high school and “got to actin’ wild” and was soon arrested. That put the end to his plans in the line of police work. He hired on next with Chrysler till the slowdown of the early 70s. After that he went to work in the coal mines as a foreman for twenty-three years. By 1999 he was earning $5,000 per month and doing well enough for his wife to stay home and raise their three children. But it was soon clear he had black lung disease and he had to retire.

Riding that afternoon, I stopped for a drink and a rest. A fellow with a thick mustache pulled his car into the parking lot, noticed my bags, and asked how far I was riding. “To Oregon. At least that’s the plan,” I explained. Then I mentioned I was riding for diabetes. He wished me luck and drove off and I continued to work on my 32-oz. “Glacier Freeze” Gatorade. A few minutes later he pulled back into the lot, got out, and handed me $10 for diabetes. He explained, “The wife and I got to talking and decided we ought to donate for a good cause.”

Entering West Virginia, I dreaded the tough mountains I expected ahead, and stopped the first night in Justice. Failing to find a camping spot, I slept in a motel. Then I ate breakfast at the “Justonian” across the street. Eating alone, you tend to listen in on conversations. Four women nearby were talking about modern teens and their strange piercings. Then they turned to the time when they first had their ears pierced. One admitted she fainted when her sister pierced her ear. “When I woke up, though,” she continued, “the other one was done too.” The ladies (and I, behind my newspaper) all shared a laugh.

Julie Hatfield, who waited on my table (and I think owned the restaurant) talked to me about my plans. As usual, I mentioned diabetes. When I tried to pay the bill, she shook her head, explaining, “It’s been taken care of.” I offered again; but she said she wanted to help a good cause. So I set a total of eighteen dollars aside for my JDRF fund.

Many of the areas I passed through have seen better days. In Logan County a local told me they have lost 25,000 people since the 1970s; and that loss has “devastated the economy.” The region is coming back a little lately as coal rebounds; but there were a lot of empty homes.

People in this area work hard and often look tired and a little beat down. You see fellows with dirt on their t-shirts and up and down the front of their work pants. Even their ballcaps are smudged and tattered. But these are friendly men, quick to laugh, and all seem to know each other. These are coal miners, lumber workers, mechanics and truck drivers, the nuts and bolts of the American economy. My father would have said they were people “who don’t mind getting their hands dirty.”

He would have meant it as a form of praise.

That afternoon I stopped for another Gatorade. (I could do a commercial for the brand.) Three fellows in soiled clothing, just off work, questioned me about my ride. One commented, “You picked a hot day to travel.” I agreed, but replied, “You look like you have been working harder than me.” They laughed and I added, “Go home and have a cold one!”

My ride on 6/29 took me along Highway 10 and for the most part I made good time, putting in 87 miles from the seat of my bike. But one stretch was too dangerous to ride – and a kind-hearted couple, Ray and Frieda Napier, stopped to give me a lift in the back of their red Ford F150.

“We weren’t sure you knew what you were getting into,” Ray said. He explained they had passed me down the road and turned around to offer a lift. It turns out that Highway 10 between War and Logan, West Virginia is narrow and twisting, with heavily loaded coal trucks thundering past in both directions and no place for bicycle riders of any kind.

Frieda has been involved with citizens groups and has traveled to Washington D.C. more than once to lobby for funds to widen the road. Her grassroots approach to democracy is refreshing. So I promised I would add to my blog: HIGHWAY 10 MUST BE WIDENED!

POLITICIANS, GET BUSY!

I spent the night at a Ramada Inn in Huntington, West Virginia. In the morning I dawdled over breakfast, and got to talking with Cindi Acree-Hamann, who lives in Cincinnati. She works at Children’s Hospital and I told her how thrilled we were with the care provided for Emily when she turned up diabetic. Cindi explained that her husband, Captain Gene Hamann, was sleeping in late – and on medical leave from the Cincinnati Police. He was injured by a drunk driver in January and may retire as a result.

She explained that he was an ex-marine (like me) and interested in teaching (like me). He spent time in combat during Vietnam, however. Me? I sat at a desk at Camp Pendleton in California for two years fiddling over paperwork.

I think it’s safe to say Mr. Hamann is the hero in this tale.

By 6/30 I was back in Ohio and feeling confident. I had a short day (riding 67 miles) then found a camping spot in Shawnee National Forest, where I met a group of Boy Scouts led by Frank Duran. It was an impressive group. Duran has them active with scuba diving near Pelee Island in Lake Erie, rock climbing across the state, and practicing for a 70-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail in July.

July 1 was spent riding hell-bent for leather. I wanted to be sure I got home and so logged 105 miles, blisters, sore buns, and all. I assure you, too, that southern Ohio has a LOT of hills. I had to be pedaling uphill a mile or more at least ten times during this one day’s ride.

Coming through Milford, Ohio, I looked in my mirror (which attaches to my glasses) and spotted two heavily-loaded riders coming up behind me. It turns out they were recent college grads, Steve Cash and Ben Kelchlin, who started from Eastport, Maine a month ago and are aiming for California later this summer. It was fun to share stories and give and receive advice with two kindred spirits (though their combined ages would be two kindergartners short of my own). So we exchanged addresses and hope to cross paths somewhere ahead. They were staying at a friend’s house overnight and headed to St. Louis in the morning.

I headed cross town to Glendale to spend the next three days at home.

Clockwise from lower right: Our four kids in 1992,
Emily, Sarah, Seth and Abby. 

My wife, Anne. She wasn't thrilled when I said I would pedal across the USA.
Picture from 1992. 

 

*I have added a few pictures from recent rides and travels in the United States, and a couple of family pictures, as well. I’ll indicate which ones are added. Unless otherwise noted, the rest are from the 2007 trip. 

In the last fifteen years, coal mining jobs have continued to disappear, not matter what any of our presidents have done. 

As for hiking the Appalachian Trail, I recommend the hilarious book, A Walk in the Woods. Not the movie, though, the movie is no good.

Emily now has two twin boys.
Picture from 2021. 

Back on the Road - July 9, 2007

Back on the Road

(July 9, 2007)

 

It was fun to be home for a few days but hard to leave. Riding all day tends to focus your thoughts: and I realized how anxious I was to get home a few days ago. My wife is one of the finest individuals I have ever known, and it was good to see Emily, our only child still at home. The morning I left for the second leg of my journey Emily was subdued. I think she worries about me; but I know I worry more about her than anything.

She means the world to her mother and me.

Her senior year, Emily was on the Homecoming court.

 

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Fast approaching $11,000 raised.

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Weather has been tough the last four days, nineties and humid. At least once a day I ask myself, “What were you thinking when you hatched this plan?” Other bits of wisdom include, “I’m way too old for this!” “If a bus hit me, I’ll be out of my misery!” “Maybe I’ll get lucky, and someone will steal my bike!” You get the idea.

The people I meet continue to be kind. Passing through Brookville, Indiana, I stopped to eat at the China House where locals told me the buffet was outstanding. (Correct.) As I chained my bicycle to a pole a gentleman named Ken Litchfield approached. “Are you the guy I saw on the news last night?” he asked. Like a defendant on a television drama, I admitted I was. Ken reached in his wallet and pulled out $20 for JDRF. Then he ran down the street and got his camera and took a picture for the local paper. He said he’d try to get a story posted and drum up donations.

Meanwhile, Anne called me to say that one of our neighbors donated $500 and so I’m fast approaching $11,000 raised.

I logged 80 miles on July 6, 83 on the 7th and 82 on the 8th. One night I camped in a cornfield after washing up in a stream.

Memorial by the side of the road in Indiana. 

Old cathedral: Vincennes, Indiana. 

The next day a preacher named Lester Solomon talked to me in a Dairy Queen in Seymour, Indiana. After hearing my story he took my hand and said a prayer for my well-being. That’s the first time I ever prayed over ice cream. But I appreciate Reverend Solomon’s kindness and prayers can’t hurt.

One morning I passed a field and noticed all the cows were watching. Cows don’t get out much and I imagine they’re bored a lot. So I was something to watch, to give the brain something to work on, sort of like watching Wheel of Fortune for humans. I wonder what they were thinking. How sophisticated is the bovine brain?

Cow #1: Creature with shell on head. Not threat. Need to poo.

Cow #2: Creature moving fast. Hope crash.

Cow #3: I envy that rider his freedom. These other cows are morons. Oh well, nothing to do, except chew the cud.

I slept at a motel my second night out of Cincinnati. They had an exercise room and an elliptical machine. I decided to pass.

On July 8 I met a fellow named Jack L. Hamilton, who asked a lot of questions – what was I carrying – any mechanical problems – what did I do for food – where did I stay – was it hard to ride alone? Jack’s fiancé, Theresa, was with him and she has a diabetic daughter, now 34, diagnosed her senior year. “I tell her all the time I think there will be a cure in her lifetime,” she said. I agreed, and thinking of my own child, choked up.

The next couple of hours I rode hard – angry, really – thinking about Emily.

That same afternoon I ran across a nice couple from Bloomington. They mentioned a friend who rode cross country with his sons, to raise money for cerebral palsy. This was years ago and one of the boys suffered from the disease, and used a recumbent bike. Again, when I’m plowing up some hill and feeling sorry for myself, I remember a lot of people have steeper hills to climb every day.

Right now I’m a mile from the Wasbash River, and ready to cross into Illinois. A fellow in the library tells me it’s 97 degrees with humidity at 77%. Based on how I’ve been wilting today, I believe him.

I once read that "home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you."

Our house: the library.