UPDATE:
The article below is mostly about bicycling and about goodwill.
Whether you read it or not, I urge you to read a piece that appeared today on wsbtv.com, Atlanta.
It is about 19-year-old Fred Barley, a homeless college student who had ridden his little brother’s bike for six hours from Conyers, Georgia to Barnes, Georgia, to register for his second semester of college, carrying nothing but two duffel bags with all his belongings and two gallons of water.
The problem is that Gordon State College dormitories don’t open until August.
Barley pitches a tent among some bushes on campus and the young African-American man is promptly confronted by police officers and taken away…
After Baton Rouge, Minnesota and Dallas the reader probably expects the worst.
Not this time.
Please read the whole story here.
Boy, did we “need this.”
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Original Post:
Although I lived in a culture where the bicycle is king, I don’t consider myself a bike “connoisseur.”
Although, when I was a young boy living in the Netherlands, I had to cycle about five miles each way to school every day, fighting wind, rain, snow and ice — uphill both ways 🙂 — I don’t consider myself a biker.
Yet, those experiences did leave with me an interest in bicycles and a respect for those who make bicycling their profession, their athletic pursuit, their passion.
Moreover, when such athletic, sports and racing events are combined with altruistic, charitable goals, I can’t help myself but to tell about it.
Thus I have written about the HeartGift organization’s participation in the grueling SCORE Baja 1000 car race in Baja California on behalf of children worldwide who are in dire need of life saving surgery to correct congenital heart defects, or about the perhaps even more grueling, 3,000 mile (bicycle) Race Across America, or RAAM, “one the most respected and longest running endurance sports events in the world.”
In the 2013 RAAM, a fellow Aggie, Dr. José Luis Bermúdez and his support team, were in it to help raise money for a low-income family in Bryan-College Station through the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity — “just enough to build a house.”
It was not to be in 2013 — finishing the race, that is.
According to theeagle.com, “Bermúdez suffered kidney failure in the California desert — landing him in the hospital for more than 10 hours before he was back on his bike — and a disorder called Shermer’s Neck in which he lost control of his neck muscles.”
Yet, Bermúdez managed to continue on for more than 500 miles, until his injuries prevented him from making it to a race checkpoint in time, according to The Eagle.
And yet, Bermúdez was still able to raise nearly $25,000 for Habitat for Humanity.
Incredibly, after only a one-year absence from the race, in 2015 Texas A&M Professor Bermúdez competed in and completed the 3,000-mile bicycle race “racking up sponsorships and donations” along the way for Habitat for Humanity.
The Eagle again:
“The funds raised through Professor Bermudez’s 2015 RAAM Challenge will be used to sponsor the construction of a new home for a local low-income family,” said Andy York, interim executive director of [Bryan – College Station] Habitat for Humanity. “His support of Habitat is so much more than raising money. He raises awareness for the mission of Habitat by associating it with his extraordinary athletic accomplishment. Our sincere thanks go out to Professor Bermudez, his race sponsors, road support team and everyone who donated money to provide a home for a hard-working family.”
As to the race itself:
As if a cross-country bike race isn’t challenging enough, Bermudez said [the 2015 event] was “the hottest RAAM ever run,” with temperatures approaching 120 degrees in some areas. In addition to the heat, cyclists had to pedal up a total of 170,000 vertical feet throughout the course and deal with storms that Bermudez said left the final 36 hours of the race dowsed in “torrential rain.”
“The terrain there is incredible hilly, so going uphill you don’t have very much traction when it’s wet,” Bermudez said. “Going downhill you have very poor traction, so you’re just throwing your bicycle down these steep hills on poor road quality and in the dark and the rain and just hoping for the best.”
If the storms, sweltering heat and steep hills weren’t enough, Bermudez said, to keep on schedule, he had to limit his sleep to 90 minutes per day.
“After 10 or 11 days, you really build up this huge sleep deficit,” Bermudez said. “It’s just hard to stay awake. I fell asleep on the bike a couple of times and woke up in a drainage ditch. One thing you’ve got to learn when you’re a long-distance cyclist is that if you fall asleep, fall asleep to the right, not into the oncoming traffic.”
This year, Bermúdez decided to “take it easy” and participated in the 2016 Tour Divide over the Great Divide Mountain Bike Road, “the world’s longest off pavement cycling route…highlighted by long dirt roads and jeep trails that wend their way through forgotten passes of the Continental Divide. It travels through Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and the United States of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. By route’s end a thru-rider will climb nearly 200,000 feet of vertical (equivalent to summiting Mount Everest from sea-level 7 times” and will have covered more than 2,700 miles.
The route description mentions:
The route is unmarked and circuitous, requiring navigational acumen. It travels through remote backcountry with Grizzly and Mountain Lion density. Intervals between services are frequently 100+ miles and demand calculated food/water resupply–or else. Riders must also find shelter each night or bivouac trailside. In minutes the Rockies’ dynamic mountain weather can wreak havoc on route surfaces, skewing even the most near-term travel projections.
Bermúdez experienced all of that, including a bear sighting, below.
…but also some beautiful sights, such as a magnificent view of the Tetons. (FaceBook photo by Dr. Bermudez)
Dr. Bermúdez finished the 2712.8 mile-long Tour Divide 2016 in 18 days, 17 hours and 2 minutes, and in 10th place.
Readers can follow his race, day-by-day, here
In the meantime the 2016 RAAM also took place with a course measuring 3,069 miles, the longest since 1987, and one where racers — if past experience is an indicator — will collectively raise in excess of $2 million for a wide range of charitable causes.
Here are some of the names of solo riders and teams:
Team Nico – In Fight for Children with Cancer
Ray Brown for Breast Cancer Research Foundation
Cycling for Autism
Team Tri for Hospice
Bike the US for MS
Talking about bicycling and about good causes, do you remember what a challenge it was to teach your youngster how to ride a bicycle? You know, the ones with two wheels.
Wait till you hear about a couple of dedicated men who teach young children to ride unicycles thereby inspiring them to “grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially…”
Stay tuned.
Lead image courtesy Race Across America
