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.

A Photo Essay: More or Less

This is my "fat" picture:  I had a few pounds to shed.
Taken at Bonnaroo Festival, June 2011.



My brother Tim was riding with me my last couple of days in California.
Luckily we were going DOWN this hill and on a newer road.

 

Riding in California, headed for Stockton, second to last day.

Ride 4615 miles and you HAVE to lose weight.

Bicycling in the Grand Tetons was a highlight of the trip.

The face of El Capitan, Yosemite Valley.
I thought for a moment a climber was hidden in that speck of shade at left center.
That gives you some perspective.





The last day I rode from Stockton to San Francisco my brother Tim trailed me in his car.
He had his flashers on and a sign in his rear window:  "Bicyclist on the Road."
You can't tell from this picture; but it really helped.

Does this pair of shorts make my ass look fat?

Meeting great people made my trip special.
Mike and Kathy Firzoel, Peru, Illinois. 
Kathy has been diabetic since she was a young girl; but her spirit is indominatable.

Early Mormon pioneers crossed the Great Plains pulling their possessions in handcarts.
That tops bicycling for difficulty any day.
Statue in Salt Lake City.

There were places in Indiana and Illinois so flat I didn't have to shift all day.

Trust me:  the ride through the Sevier Desert in southwestern Utah was tough.
I pedaled for 92 miles and there were no services.

Sunrise over Bear Lake, Utah.
I was up early because "camped" beside a golf course and the maintinence men were busy
by 5:30 a. m. 
I also got doused by the course sprinklers in the middle of the night.

This young lady was watching a parade in Wilmington, Illinois.
Most of the time she waved a little flag.

You really notice these memorials along the road when you're biking.
Each one represents a number of broken hearts.
We need to remember that every day we're granted is a gift.

A great way to end a ride across the continent:
spending time with my brothers Ned, left, and Tim, right, in San Francisco.

Tim Viall:  my older brother rode with me for two days.
Not bad for a guy born in 1946!

Tim in the foothills east of Stockton, California.



A helpful warning to riders:  if you don't already know,
tire debris from blowouts can cause most of your flats.

Riding into Yosemite National Park was great.
Tioga Pass:  9,943 feet, had to be crossed.

Near the top of Tioga; that's a glacial valley center, above bike.

Notice the specks on the rock behind:
those are climbers.

Close up of the same climbers.

Romance near Vernal Falls in Yosemite.

I tried to climb onto this rock in Mirror Lake (at Yosemite) and failed.
Notice my JDRF jersey.

Yosemite Falls.

In September the falls has slowed and you can climb up to this crystal green pool.

Only these two teens and one old guy (me) were willing to brave the icy waters.

Before taking the plunge.

Vernal Falls with rainbow.

Vernal Falls in black and white.

Vernal Falls overlook.

That wedge of rock is about eight feet long.
Near Yosemite Falls.

Rushing waters at Yosemite National Park.

All you need to bicycle across the country is a good machine and a bit of motivation.



Losing a lot of weight was a great bonus to the ride.

 

Damp Somewhere in America

Let me say today that it's raining in New York State.  I could have posted the same sentence yesterday and the day before the only variation would have been "in Vermont."

I like bicycling and like raising money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation but let me make this clear. I am not a duck.

Here's what I learned when being poured on in Vermont. If you are wearing glasses like me and rely on a mirror attached to those glasses to provide visibility to the rear, this is what you cannot see once your glasses and the mirror fog over:

1. road signs
2. potholes
3. pedestrians
4. small farm animals
5. blimps
6. any cars within a mile
7. picturesque New England churches
8. picturesque New England towns
9. picturesque New England scenery
10. basically anything...

So, yeah, riding in the rain isn't all that much fun.

Otherwise, this has been a good stretch; when it's dry New England is beautiful and most of the roads have been safe, with wide shoulders. There are some KILLER hills, however.  The Middle Gap from Hancock to Middlebury has grades as much as 15%. Even the road along the western shore of Lake George had a long uphill stretch that slowed me in places to "stand-on-the-pedal" and try-to-move-forward speed.  It's not too bad going up a steep road at 4 mph.  When you get down to 2.6 and you're straining every muscle in your legs and sweating profusely, it gets hard to be philosophical and enjoy your trip.

Then you curse.

As I mentioned briefly, two nights ago Molly and Bud Reed put me up at their house in Middlebury for the night. Bud used to have his own business organizing bicycle tours and he and Molly have led rides in places like Russia and China. They know more about biking than I ever will and were wonderful hosts. Last year they took a family trip, nine months, around the world with Spencer, their 14-year-old son and Rachel, their 19-year-old daughter. Rachel is a top student, now attending Johns Hopkins.  Spencer is your typical guy, smart, but not necessarily fond of school. (It reminds me of when I was young and  managed, for example, to earn an "F" in art, because of a bad attitude.) I should have taken a picture of the Reeds but didn't think of it during the evening and left early the next day before my hosts arose.

I give them an A+ for their treatment and pleasant conversation, including talks with their friend Tim, also an avid cyclist and a former Government Accountability worker in Washington, D.C., who shared stories of trying to keep tabs on various agencies that might be, shall we say, "bending the rules." Bud threw together a great meal, and ended it all with ice cream and strawberries topped with Molly's homemade chocolate syrup.

Yesterday, I did another 63 miles (I hope to pick up the pace soon). My policy for picking places to eat is to do what the locals do. In fact, it's almost foolproof if you follow this rule: Go where the guys in baseball caps and work clothes go--and you're going to get a lot of good food. I passed Fort Ticonderoga yesterday, scene of heavy fighting during the French and Indian War and military ineptitude in the American Revolution. The British lost the fort without a shot being fired early in the war and Ethan Allen became a hero. Then the Americans lost it back, because portions of their defenses were compromised by drunkenness among the troops.

Then I churned out the miles down the Lake George road and had dinner at the Diamond Point Grille.  First, dinner was awesome. I would recommend the Grille to any bicycler or car-driver or camel jockey following 9N along the lake. Better yet, a woman named Beth Thomson was seated at the bar with three friends and spun around on her stool to ask how far I was going. When I said, "California," she and her friends, Greg Mason and Anthony and Lois Porrazzo, began asking about my ride and my purpose.  Beth told me about her three kids, and sounded a little worried about her son, who was going to Weber State in Utah last year, but is now home and taking classes at community college. Then she mentioned to her friends that the young man was doing 70 hours of work between two part-time jobs. You figure anyone who can work that hard will do fine in life.

Eventually, Greg stepped outside to make a phone call and when he returned sat down with me and said he had fixed it with a friend, who owned a nearby Super 8 Motel, so that I could stay for free, since I was riding for JDRF. Greg is a retired music teacher and we talked "shop." I asked him the question I ask almost every teacher or former teacher I meet. "Do you think standardized testing is improving education?" He laughed and said, "I was a music teacher," meaning it didn't effect him and he was glad, "but, no."

I worry about that a lot. But I finished my meal and told the four friends I'd mention them in this blog. "How do you want to be described," I wondered, "as the best looking quartet in the bar?" They laughed and said no, just four locals. So four nice locals from Lake George, New York it is. I jumped on my bike and off I went, excited by the prospect of a dry (free) room for the night. About a mile down the road Anthony came flying past in his car, honked, and then pulled over and said, "You left your money and credit cards back at the restaurant." The people who worked there wouldn't give them to Anthony; so I had to pedal back to pick them up. 

Then off I went again.

My only regret is that I failed to buy them all a round of beers.

That's my update for now. Back to the bike Batman!

Abigail Adams reminded her husband John: "Remember the ladies,"
when writing the Declaration of Independence.

If you would like to donate to help find a cure for type-1 diabetes please click HERE!