FEATURE STORY
Biking for Breath Around the World
by Paula Holmes-Eber
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Part V: The Final Journey - Across the United States and Canada
The rain slowed to a steady drizzle. After two days of pelting, splashing, and spraying, the softer mist was hardly noticeable: our
socks, gloves, shoes, panniers, and tents already permeated with a constant, numbing damp. Our family halted the tandems at a curb in
front of Ridgeway, Pennsylvania's only accommodation -- a beautiful white-pillared, Victorian bed-and-breakfast that definitely seemed
out of our budget range. I glanced over to my husband, Lorenz, looking guiltily at our soaking wet twelve-year-old daughter, Yvonne, and
her equally mud-sprayed and exhausted fourteen-year-old sister, Anya. I didn't have the heart to suggest that we pedal on another ten
miles to find somewhere more affordable in the next town.
Behind us, a large pickup truck pulled to a halt. A friendly sandy-haired head poked out of the cab.
"Can I help you guys?"
The signs on the back of our bikes caught our driver's eye. He whistled softly and said, "You aren't really cycling around the world for
asthma are you?" |
Mother and Daughter descending along the Missouri River.
We laughed and the girls began cheerfully to explain that, indeed, we were only 500 miles away from finishing a full circuit of the
globe by bicycle. As they recounted our adventures -- through such exotic places as China, Russia, Mongolia, Greece, Australia, Tonga,
and now, finally, across the United States and Canada from Astoria, Oregon, to Washington, DC -- his eyes danced with excitement.
"Listen, you guys got somewhere to stay tonight?" he asked warmly.
We shook our heads.
"Well then, I'm making an executive decision. I know my wife won't mind. You're staying at my place." He smiled and put out a strong,
warm hand. "Name's Charlie."
An hour later, as I lay soaking away three days' worth of rain, mud, and grime in Charlie's jacuzzi bathtub, I smiled at one of the most
delicious truths of living on a bicycle for a year and a half: you never know what great adventure or opportunity is waiting around the
next corner!
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Paula taking a break in Montana. |
I must admit that after a year of cycling through Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, when our family entered our final North American leg in
April 2004, I worried that our adventures were over. What, I wondered, could compare to being caught up in a Mongolian drug smuggling
plan, cycling along the ancient pilgrims' path to the Greek temple of Delphi, sleeping in a Buddhist monastery, or drinking kava to the
chants of Tongan dancers? Yet, as our family sat in Charlie's kitchen, eating a warm home-cooked meal of pasta -- excited neighbors
crowding the room and handing Anya and Yvonne copies of Teen Magazine to autograph -- I grinned at my naivetÈ.
North America had awed us with the breathtaking snow capped Rocky and Bitterroot Mountains, its enormous multicolored Oregon and
Washington deserts, spooky Montana ghost towns, ancient North Dakota Indian archaeological sites, quaint colonial east coast towns, and
most surprisingly of all: its people. Along our 3,500-mile route through the northern United States and Canada, we were welcomed into
the homes and hearts of some of the most generous and warm-hearted people we'd met anywhere in the world.
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Yvonne working as navigator.
Along the Columbia River in Oregon, we were invited to spend the night as guests in a traditional hunting lodge. As we sat in the dining
room eating deer meatloaf, surrounded by the racks and heads of moose, bear, elk and deer, we were entertained by hair-raising tales of
survival that made our own around-the-world ride seem tame by comparison. In Montana, we were offered free airplane rides over the
twisting colorful cliffs and Great Falls of the mighty Missouri River. Honorary guests at a traditional barbecue following a Saturday
morning fly-in, we ate hamburgers and potato salad under the wings of a four-seat Cessna 172 in a Great Falls airplane hangar.
Our family shared an organic dinner of homegrown chicken and salad with a Christian homeschooling family in Minnesota, listened to
Native American tales as we camped on the lawn of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in North Dakota, and learned to water ski with a
Wisconsin family in their summer cabin on one of the thousands of Wisconsin's northern lakes. In Michigan, we spent a hilarious evening
visiting a graphic arts teacher's pink fifties trailer filled with Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, a retro diner bar, and highly decorated
outhouses. And a night-time tour of the Niagara Falls light show, by a friendly Canadian seaman and his wife, turned into a two-day
visit and birthday party for me, complete with a homemade cake, candles, and guests from the neighborhood.
One week after we left Charlie's house in Pennsylvania (cleaner, drier, and better fed), our family began our final journey into
Washington, DC, along the historic 200-mile C & O Canal Trail. That evening we held a celebratory meal of steak, potatoes, and burned
Pillsbury rolls cooked over a campfire along the shady former canal towpath. Nestled on the banks of the Potomac River in the shadows of
the Appalachian Mountains, we smiled and laughed and shared the warm and incredible memories of the many thousands of miles and hundreds
of people who had been a part of our journey.
On August 28, 2004, our family cycled the last 9,332 miles of our world journey past the imposing monuments of our nation's capitol.
Guided around the city by our friend Mark -- whom we had met as we shivered and cycled over 5,235-foot Lolo Pass in Idaho two months
earlier -- we ended a lifetime of adventures by splashing sparkling water over our two Burley tandems as we stood in front of the
Capitol building. The ride was over, and yet, the memories and the friendships we had made along the way would last forever. 
This story is dedicated to the generosity, warmth, and love of the people we have met around the globe, who have believed the
impossible: that a small family with two young girls could pedal the world for asthma. They were right! May you, too, live your
dreams.
The Eber family departed on their sixteen-month cycling tour around the world for asthma on May 6, 2003, World Asthma Day.
To read the previous installments of the story, check out Part I,
Part II, Part III, and Part IV.
To get more details or to make a donation for asthma research and programs, you can visit them at
www.bikeforbreath.org, send them mail at: World Bike for Breath,
P.O. Box 11581, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110, call their headquarters at: (206) 855-2907, or email them at
bikeforbreath@hotmail.com.
Photos courtesy of the Eber Family
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