X-America by Bicycle: The Day Before...

Why?

We are doing this ride to raise money for Research Autism. We are aiming to raise £20,000.
We are supporting Research Autism because my cousin Jamie is severely affected by the disease, and I have seen its effects not only on him but on the whole family." He is 13yrs old, but cannot yet talk.
Just take a moment to imagine not being able to talk.
Imagine understanding everything going on around you, but not being able to comment.
Imagine having to be dressed every morning in clothes you don't choose, and then hurting your parents as you try to tell them you wanted the blue shirt today.
Imagine being swamped by having to hear everything that everyone is saying around you, and not being able to listen to just one thing at once. Jamie loves being in a swimming pool, just floating, legs held motionless by the weight of the water, while he keeps his ears underwater to just relax, hearing nothing.
He understands everything - he appears to have a photographic memory - but can’t get his thoughts out.
Frustration leads to despair, and anger, which is just one of the many things that his family has to deal with.
He has extremely specific eating requirements and requires round the clock supervision. Jamie is at the severe end of the autistic spectrum, but given that one in 100 people suffer from the disease (with varying severity), and that everyone has some autistic traits, it is shocking that so little is known about it'.
Click here to support our cause and donate to Research Autism.
Read the "Meet Jamie" post - the only post in February, for more information about Jamie, and a poem - painstakingly slow for Jamie to type, but ultimately incredible.

April 24, 2010

The Day Before...

...We leave tomorrow morning, early. We have done a lot today, we now have a "Patsy" tent - the 2 man MSR Hubba Bubba, weighing in at 2.3kgs. It is named "Patsy" after its generous benefactor. There was a lot of thought that went into buying the tent, which is why we ended up buying it the day before we left - procrastination of the hardest tasks seems necessary. We are thankful to EMS for their generous donation.

We had to choose between 2 man and 3 man tents - 2 man tents fit just that, and 3 men tents could fit our kit as well. We went for the lighter option of a large 2 man tent with large vestibules on the outside for kit storage, resulting in 1kg less pain for each of the 5000kms.

This is the last night staying with my cousin's in New York, and we are very thankful to both Jamie and Nicky for putting up with us for such a long time. It has been crucial to have a base in New York, without which we would have spent half of our budget already.

We also had our bikes fitted, which was very useful for me - less useful for Alex - his bike fits him well already. My fitting was more difficult - the Large bike I went for is not Large enough, but the Xtra-Large was too big, so Kurt from Bicycle Habitat did well to make the large bike feel bigger. We flipped the handlebars (ask if confused!) and moved the seat up and forwards as well as other more minor adjustments.

We tried to get sim cards for our iPhone's, but failed on this front - America is remarkably backwards in the phone markets, and the only options were $80 a month for unlimited text, calls and internet (which they weren't sure would work). This seemed a bit excessive - we would only be using them for sporadic texting and maps, so we will instead use one cheap phone sparingly (supplied with the help of Nicky and Jamie), and old fashioned but dependable paper maps.

SIGHT-SEEING: We went to the "Top of the Rock" as well as the Brooklyn Bridge, for Alex to have a whistle-stop tour of New York, and to take some photographs. The "Top of the Rock" is 70 stories high, at the top of the Rockefeller Centre - offering great views of Manhattan Island. We will put up pictures to the picasa site as soon as we can.

Tomorrow, to Princeton, the next day to Philadelphia.

Setting off into the unknown is unnerving, but we've been looking forward to it for a long while - so off we go!

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What we did!

Starting in late April 2010, we cycled across the USA in aid of Research Autism. We rode from New York to San Francisco, a distance of 6288km.

The ride took us through some of Americas greatest cities, over the Rocky Mountains, and across the Utah ‘badlands’, with temperatures ranging from under 0 to over 45 celsius, and altitudes from sea level to 11000ft: it was an epic. We camped along the way, meeting Americans from all walks of life.

6000km is the equivalent of London to Baghdad, or Nairobi to Cape Town and back. Click here to support our cause and donate to Research Autism.

About Us

We met during our first year at secondary school and found that we shared many common interests in sport, outdoor activities and travel. We are both going on to study geography at university later this year.

Will has lived all his life in Kenya, and spent much of that time outdoors, and is now a certified safari guide and sailing instructor. Alex grew up and still lives near London and has recently become a BASI ski instructor.

We wanted to raise money and awareness for autism by doing something different and challenging, and cycling across America certainly fills both of those roles.

Highlights

Watching an obese man eat a 3ft long cheese steak baguette in 14 mins.

Finally using 1 of the 4 tennis balls we have with us in a nice cold swimming pool, after a tough day.

Seeing some joker (called Sky, great guy – www.thirtysixer.com) on a massive unicycle wiggling his way up a hill on his way across country.

Top of the Rock in New York, for sundowners.

Worst day: Day 3 Philadelphia to Havre de Grace

Started off in the worst way possible by adding 10kms to the route by mistake, then had a hectic bridge to go over – on a highway with no shoulder with massive trucks in rush hour, steep uphill (too slow) then steep downhill (too fast to control with so little space) – at the end of which Alex fell due to a cunningly placed railway track – leaving him sprawled over the highway, luckily during a lull in traffic. Soon after I got a puncture (our first ever) and once we’d fixed that, Alex decided to get one too. Bear in mind as you read this, that the only time it stopped raining was just enough time to fix Alex’s puncture. Once we’d fixed his puncture, we were led quite firmly out of the area we were in by a paranoid man in a pick-up who was convinced that we were going to die if we stayed any longer in that area – called “Little Africa” – I didn’t tell him I was from Kenya, which was just as well – he then launched into a rant about how blacks were terrible which is why you should never go to anywhere called Africa.

To cap it all off, when we got to 1 mile away from where we were sleeping that night, we got to a bridge which it was illegal for us to cross – a fact google maps had neglected to inform us. But bad things come to an end, and we are still going.

Challenges

£5 a puncture

$10 a state

$10 every time someone guesses correctly first time where Will is from.

Challenging us makes the riding more enjoyable and means more is donated to Research Autism, so rack your brains and send us a suggestion by email.

If you are struggling to think of your own challenge - you can build on someone else's - send us an email saying which challenge you would like to increase.

If you are searching for ideas, bear in mind that we won't do anything illegal, and I don't want to ride with no clothes on (probably illegal too), but otherwise all is good.

X-America by Bicycle

The Route So Far - Google Maps

Why?

Photo Video - New York to St Louis

April 24, 2010

The Day Before...

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