While many Union students were working for camps or interning in their hometowns this summer, three students set out on a 2,600-mile bike trip.
Josh Bullis, senior art and philosophy major, Peter Riggs, senior philosophy major, and Will Burke, senior music theory major, spent seven weeks on bicycles, riding from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Key West, Fla.
Bullis said his father and uncle, who took a similar cross-county bike adventure when they were in college, inspired him to do the same.
He brought up the idea with Riggs a little more than a year ago, and Riggs immediately took interest in the project.
Gregory A. Thornbury, former dean of Christian studies, approved Bullis and Riggs to receive philosophy credit for the trip.
C. Ben Mitchell, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy, also helped in planning and in writing the class curriculum.
Burke had listened to his two friends plan the excursion for a while, and he was up for the challenge himself.
He hinted to the two that inviting a third person might be a good idea.
The three were looking for an adventure, and they simply wanted to have fun, Bullis said.
“We just wanted to do it, so we did it,” he said.
They considered other routes, but ultimately Maine to Florida seemed to be the best for the time and money that the three had at their disposal.
The fact that the East Coast includes so many large cities also contributed to the decision.
Riggs said the three could always find gas stations if they ran into trouble and, overall, the route was convenient.
“We’d go to these gas stations, fill up these 54-oz. drinks for 69 cents and just drink them right there,” Riggs said.
Of course, the three faced a few obstacles prior to the trip. They worried about finding a way to get there, a way to get back and places to sleep every night.
Then they had to think about money.
The group decided that they would each come up with a way to provide all the necessary gear, along with $1,000 for miscellaneous expenses.
Even those calculations proved to be too low.
To raise funds, Riggs put together a sketch comedy show held in W.D. Powell Theatre last semester, which raised about $600.
He used those funds to purchase an iPad Mini. The three used the device to document the entire trip through photos and blog posts.
Each cyclist told stories and wrote about experiences from the seven-week trip. The three also spent a short time working in a lumber yard.
This income paid for the gas it took to get to Maine. However, people they met along the way essentially paid for three-fourths of the trip, Riggs said.
“I don’t think I expected it as much as it happened,” Riggs said of the help the group received from complete strangers during the journey.
“It got to a point where we’d start the day and we’d not worry about where we were going to stay or what we were going to eat that night,” Riggs said. “We almost started to assume it at the end. Without fail, God took care of us.”
The three stayed overnight with friends, friends of friends, Union students, churches, strangers and fellow cyclists.
Burke said getting help was challenging sometimes.
“People wanted to help, but you kind of had to force yourself to get help from them, almost to the point of being annoying,” Burke said. “Then they finally meet us, and they’re super glad they helped us.”
Riggs added, “Then they loved us; they’d buy us dinner that night and hook us up with a place to stay the next night.”
The students enjoyed the bigger cities that the coast had to offer. Although those cities were sometimes stressful to cycle in, the three did not tire of the ride because it was faster than walking.
Riggs said he was pleasantly surprised by the physical ease he experienced. The group did not train prior to the trip.
“I thought it was going to be more physically demanding than it was,” Riggs said.
“We didn’t train at all, but I read all these terrible stories on blogs. At some point, everything hurt on me, but never all at once.”
The first day, when they departed from Bar Harbor, the three biked 25 miles. Eventually, they worked their way up to biking 150 miles by the final day of the trip.
“The first half took twice as long as the second half,” Bullis said. “We planned for the whole thing to take nine weeks, but it only took seven.”
The trio biked through cold, heat and rain.
“We got rained on in every state … we had a week where it rained every day,” Bullis said.
Riggs added, “It’s dangerous to bike in the rain … but you can’t stop; you’ve got to keep going. We’d still be there if we sat out on rainy days.”
The final day of the journey, the group trekked from Miami to Key West, Fla.
“We were racing to beat the sun, and it was really cool because we showed up right at sunset,” Riggs said.
“It was really cool when we showed up at the end,” Riggs said. “There was a big tourist-y spot. As we bike up, there was this crowd of people. They just started clapping; without us saying anything, they could tell it was the end.
“We didn’t know any of them. A bunch of them took pictures with us,” Riggs said.
“We always imagined we’d party at the end, but we were so tired,” he said. “It was really cool that those people brought the energy.”
Then it was back to reality.
“We got back and we were like, ‘OK, so we’ve got to find a job, a place to stay and get ready for school,’” Burke said.
The three now bike to class daily, Burke and Riggs from about 10 miles away.
“Absolutely, I’d do it again,” Bullis said. “The only thing that would keep me from doing it again would be the money and the time commitment. We’re talking about doing the Outer Banks over spring break.”
The Outer Banks is a 200-mile long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina.
Burke said he wants to be even further challenged for future trips.
“I want to do a grueling one where you don’t talk to anyone and bike, like, 6,000 miles,” he said.
Riggs said he survived on comic relief.
“You’ll start biking, and you’ll just forget. You’ll end up in Florida,” he said. “It was a fun trip because the three of us like to make each other laugh.”
