It wasn?t the all-day climbs in the Rockies, or the twisting turns down the Appalachian Mountains they feared the most ? it was Kansas.
Flat Kansas, supposedly a haven for cyclists, was a disaster.
“It was hot ? and so windy it was hard to stay on the bike at times ? and stormed like mad,” said Patrick Blair, 24, who rode 6,200 miles this summer with former University of Maryland, Baltimore County pals Adam Driscoll and Jesse Stump. The trio was raising money for the American Diabetes Foundation and Kupenda, a Baltimore County nonprofit managing eight schools for special needs children in Kenya.
They outlasted the prairies, riding across country, doing mini-events, TV, radio and newspaper interviews to highlight their causes, and now are close to their target of raising $20,000 for Kupenda and $10,000 for diabetes awareness and research. Type 2 diabetes “is practically sweeping the United States,” said Driscoll, who?s been taking insulin since he was 10. “But I also want to show people with Type 1, what I have, that it doesn?t have to slow you down ? anything is possible.
“I rode a tandem bike 40 miles with an 11-year-old girl, Tess, with Type 1 diabetes, as part of Cycle Across Iowa,” Driscoll recounted. “You could see the difference it made in her parents, who had been kind of sheltering her. She was so happy, though. When she got off the bike, she had tears in her eyes.”
“If we raise $20,000 for Kupenda, it will change a lot of kids? lives,” Blair said. “People there don?t have cars. If you?re a handicapped kid and live three miles from school, you?re just not going.”
Thursday afternoon, they finally arrived home. However, they first stopped to visit children at Sinai Hospital, where they?ve tracked the cyclists? progress across the country.
Driscoll compared insulin pumps with 5-year-old Braden Hamelin.
“Braden was really excited to meet Adam,” said his mother, Tracey Hamelin.
Braden, in kindergarten at Timonium Elementary, doesn?t ride a bike yet, but said he plans to learn soon. Asked if he thinks one day, he might be able to ride across the United States, Braden said, “I don?t know; that sounds like a lot of work to me.”
Impossible, right?
“Not impossible,” Braden said.
