During the summer of 2007, I climbed onto my bicycle in Austin, Texas, and didn't stop for more than a day until I reached Anchorage, Alaska. I had spent the previous 8 months planning and fundraising for the trip. I travelled with 39 others through sun, rain, wind, mountains, valleys, and bear attacks. I cried a lot, for the people we met and the people we'd never get to meet; we rode for those who had suffered and were suffering from cancer, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars the team raised will be donated through the american cancer society to cancer research. I laughed a lot--my faith was restored in the basic goodness underlying human nature as strangers came to our aid time and again, and my teammates turned into family members. I rode 4400 miles; it was hard, but it was fun.
While I was on the road, I documented my travels on the Texas 4000 web site as a series of daily summary posts, and have merged and edited those individual daily journal entries into an illustrated narrative of our trip on this site.
- before we left
- week 1
- week 2
- week 3
- week 4
- week 5
- week 6
- week 7
- week 8
- week 9
- week 10
- the aftermath
I have some supplementary writings to what I wrote about in my official trip reports. This might eventually be merged into the primary narrative of the journal entries above, but until then, it is available here as separate pages. Please be warned, I am entirely frank about what some would consider delicate subject matter, so read on at your own risk (particularly the body function entry!).
You're welcome to email me: gently@gmail.com.
This document was last modified in 2016 (email address fix).