X-America by Bicycle: Silver Springs, NV

Why?

We are doing this ride to raise money for Research Autism. We are aiming to raise £25,000.

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.

What are we doing?

Starting in late April, we intend to bicycle across the USA in aid of Research Autism. We will be riding from New York to San Francisco, a distance of 5000km.

The ride will take us through some of Americas greatest cities, over the Rocky Mountains, and across the Utah ‘badlands’, with temperatures ranging from under 0 to over 30 celsius, and altitudes from sea level to 11000ft: this will be an epic. We will camp along the way, meeting Americans from all walks of life.

5000km 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.

June 22, 2010

Silver Springs, NV

Day 58 - Middlegate station to Silver Springs - 80 miles, total 5789kms

A day that starts with Pancakes, eggs and bacon is a good day. We were done with our breakfast by7.30, but hung around until 8.30 slowly packingup. We were thinking today about how this felt like a relaxed late start - whereas in the first three weeks, 8.30 was our earliest start by quite a way.

We were headed to Fallon for lunch - 50 miles away and our last long stretch with no services in between. Although it was mostly the same as the rest of Nevada (up and down, dry with spindly, wiry plants and salt plains) we did see a couple of more interesting things: sand mountain - a massive sand dune covered in quad bikes cruising up and down, and also a couple of the target area's for the "Top Gun" fighter pilots. Then we cruised through a large salt pan, where people have written their names into the barren landscape by rearranging rocks.

Along the way we passed a whole bunch (about 25) of people, cycling supported to Washington DC, but they didn't stop to chat - they cruised past us in long lines on fancy road bikes. We did talk to a random couple of other cross country cyclists, one old man cycling home to minnesota having retired from work and having finished with San Francisco, and another guy who had quit his job and was seeing america from the relative comfort of a recumbent bicycle.

In Fallon, we relaxed in Taco Bell for a couple of hours - great place - as much as it takes to fill us up, in Taco Bell it costs only $5, including a refillable soda. We moved on just before 4, after slaloming through Safeway's car park to find some more suncream - the heat in Utah meant that we finished our second bottle.

We took it easy and reached Silver springs at 6, after a long chat with Will Macdonald, another cyclist, 5 days in to his cross-country mission. I will remember Will for his comment on my Icebreaker cycling shirt: "Awesome, Icebreaker! (dramatic pause) - proof that man was meant to enslave sheep!" We had good pizza and pasta and then headed to a campsite by the Lahontan reservoir.

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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.