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Eddie's wife biked
across America
07/06/2006 10:57 PM
Ed and I, along with our granddaughter, Miss Taylor,
had occasion to drive to Miller a couple of weeks ago to meet my
sister-in-law (Eddie's wife,) Diane, aka Linda, Stallman, who is riding her
bicycle from Washington state to Washington,
D.C. along with 730 other cyclists as a national fundraiser for the American
Lung Association. What a sight! Bicycles
everywhere you looked.
Diane was so happy to see a familiar face and
immediately asked if we could go to a restaurant for a bacon, lettuce and tomato
sandwich! They had been on the road since the middle of June (eating in a
tent/mess hall and sleeping on the ground) and will arrive in DC the middle of
August. They average 80 miles a day, depending on the distance from town to town
and how many towns they can pass in a day.
Diane, resident of Row F, Space 6, (her 8'x8' square
piece of land every night, during the trip) starts her day at about 5 a.m.
before the sun is up. She shared this experience with us. One morning she
reached into her backpack and got out her sunscreen and started rubbing it on.
She rubbed and rubbed and it wasn't going in as it should have been, so, upon
closer
examination, she discovered she was rubbing her toothpaste into her skin. What
did she learn from this? Toothpaste works very well as a sunscreen!
We were given a tour of the campsite at Miller, which
Diane told us was the nicest place they had stayed since the trip started.
What a setup! Semis were in there, one unloading cases
and cases of bottles of Splash. One semi was the showers trailer with men and
women brushing their teeth and shaving on the outside while others showered
inside. One semi hauled the food from stop to stop while another served as the
kitchen and another as the buffet line. One semi carried personal belongings and
tents. A huge tent was in the center where everyone ate. Three tents were set
up: one for medical attention, one for bike repairs and I forget what the other
one was for.
As we were leaving the park we see a very ingenious
fellow who had set up a "bike servicing" shop. For ten bucks a
pop, he was cleaning, greasing, etc., the bikes and had enough bikes piled up to
keep him going until midnight! Diane said he was the first one she had seen.
Just think of it ...what a way to vacation all across the nation. He could have
gone on to Huron,
then to DeSmet and to the next stop, and on and on. I wonder if he did.
The oldest rider on the trip was an 86 year old man.
Diane said he started the same day everyone else did and was doing just fine.
The youngest rider was a 17 year old boy. There was a paraplegic who maneuvered
his bike (a three-wheeler) by hand power, one man with only one leg, and a man
who drug his cello along behind him and entertained during the stops.
Every evening when their next destination was reached
the lines formed at the showers truck, then the chow line and it was off to
searching through the semi for your tent and any other item you may need that
evening. Diane said that was probably the toughest part ...hunting down your
tent, dragging it to your "space" and setting it up.
So, what is a 40 year old woman doing on a trip like
this? I asked Diane. She said she saw the story about the trip on TV on the
night of the anniversary of the death of her mother, who had died from emphysema
and she wanted to do this for her mother. She called for the details and learned
that each rider had to not only ride a bicycle across the nation, but had to
raise $6,000 to do so! The fundraising started and her high school science
students got involved and the money was raised and off she went.
"After the first couple of weeks out, the hypothermia
in Montana, winds and tornadoes in western South Dakota and sweltering heat, I
wondered what the heck I was doing," she said. "Some mornings I didn't think I
could get up and go again, but I can't let my students down."
Mrs. Stallman's Big Ride is on the Internet
complete with a map showing the progress of the trip. I read her message last
Friday and it said the ride is getting easier now that they are in Wisconsin.
What a woman!
I asked Eddie why Diane's page referred to her as
Linda and he explained that her first name was Linda, "but I call her Rosie", he
said.
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