Danny Sullivan, 17 and entering his senior year at Boys Latin High School, bicycled this summer from Georgia across the continent to the Santa Monica pier in California.
The trip – 11 young people led by a pair of group leaders not long out of college – took 44 days. They left a small town near Savannah, Ga., on June 22 and hit the amusement pier on Aug. 2.
Dan’s mother, Baltimore lawyer Sharon Snyder, was there to greet him along with relatives of the other cyclists. Snyder believes the trip was an education – in both endurance and tolerance – that Dan could not have gotten otherwise.
Dan – who can’t say enough about the good counsel he received from the folks at Light Street Cycles in Federal Hill before making the trek – agrees.
“We took a southern route, avoiding most major cities. I’d never really been to the South,” said Dan, a drummer in a death metal rock band. “Southern hospitality is real. There is nothing those people wouldn’t have done for us.”
Two moments stood out. One involved a fire chief in Union City, Okla., population 1,375, in the western half of the Sooner State – and the other concerned kosher food at a Christian church.
“One girl’s bike broke outside of Union City. Our leader gave her his bike and had to figure out how to get hers to the nearest shop to be fixed – 125 miles away,” said Dan.
“The chief said, ‘Stay right there, I’m on my way.’ He drove the leader to the bike store, waited with him for it to be fixed and then drove back to where we had continued the ride.”
At one of the many Protestant churches that welcomed the troupe, a Jewish cyclist sat without eating while everyone else chowed down.
When one of the church ladies learned that the boy kept kosher, she went into the kitchen and made him something that didn’t violate Jewish dietary law.
Crossing the Mississippi River with a police escort was one of many highlights. And there was the matter of tender derrieres against hard bicycle seats for stretches of up to 12 hours. A day of a mere 60 miles was considered a lark.
“The people at Light Street cycles taught me some new riding styles,” said Dan. “They taught me how to sit in a different way.”
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