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Nine years ago, shortly after graduating with his MBA, my brother told the company that was hiring him that he wished to start his new position after he fulfilled a dream of riding his bicycle from coast to coast. He started in Santa Monica, dipping his rear wheel in the Pacific and ended in New Jersey six weeks later. He and a buddy hauled all their own gear, often camping by the side of the road. No pick-ups shlepping their gear. One day, my brother patched his tires six times due to the shrapnel of blown out radial tires. Anyway, this article from the Brunswick News reminded me of my brother.

‘Tire-ing’ ride ends

After bicycling nearly 2,600 miles across the country, the Atlantic Ocean was a welcome sight for a group of police officers from Southern California.

With sweat dripping from their reddened faces, the six cyclists crossed the boardwalk near the Old Coast Guard Station on St. Simons Island and coasted onto East Beach around noon Wednesday.

The beach was the final destination for the riders, all officers of the Murrieta Police Department in Murrieta, Calif. Their arrival at the beach concluded a 28-day excursion, Ride Across America.

The officers organized the trip as a fundraising event for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting cancer survivors and raising awareness about the disease.

The officers left from Carlsbad, Calif., on May 3 after dipping the back tires of their road bicycles into the Pacific Ocean. To finish their cross-country ride, they dipped their front tires into the Atlantic Ocean on East Beach Wednesday.

The ride was a test of endurance for all of the riders. But for one, the trip had a special added significance.

Daryl Underwood, one of the officers participating in Ride Across America, lost his mother, Diane Underwood, to lung cancer in March. At first Underwood wasn’t sure if he should participate in the ride and leave his father to grieve alone.

“I told Mom that I might not make the ride, and she looked at me and said, ‘You need to go on that ride. It’s important’,” Underwood said.

Throughout the trip Underwood thought of his mother often. His thoughts turned solely to her when the group reached one of the most difficult parts of the cross-country trek.

“It just so happened that the toughest climb of our whole ride fell on Mother’s Day,” Underwood said.

The group hit a difficult 16-mile, uphill stretch of road that day, he said.

“So that was a special battle for me. I hit that climb really hard,” Underwood said.

Underwood and his fellow officers pedaled roughly 100 miles each day for the 28 days they were on the road, taking only three days off to rest.

Eric Acda, one of the riders, kept a daily journal and sent his written account along with pictures to his wife via e-mail at the end of each day.

“I really have to thank my wife, Mimi, for her work getting the word out about the ride,” Acda said. “Every night we’d take photos and I’d send a little diary to her, and she’d have it up on the Internet the next day so everybody would know where we were and what happened that day.”

Being away from his family for nearly one month was the most difficult part of the ride, said Acda, bicycle instructor for the police department.

Even with his bicycle experience, the 100-mile-per-day schedule was difficult, Acda said. In fact, most of the officers were not avid cyclists before the ride.

Robert Aberle, nicknamed “Quadzilla” by his fellow riders, was the most active cyclist in the group, the officers agreed. Aberle was almost sad to see the trip end.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Aberle said. “It went so fast.”

The trip required more endurance than most of Aberle’s previous rides.

“I’ve done 100-mile rides before, but not consecutively like this,” he said. “We did eight in a row, took a day off, did seven in a row. It was tough.”

All of the officers took vacation time from work to make the trip and paid for much of the expense from their own pockets. But they got support from their community and from people across the country along the way.

The officers initially set a goal of raising $5,000 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. As of Wednesday, they had raised almost $27,000, Underwood said.

Actress Cameron Diaz donated $10,000 to the group before they left California, he said. A bicycle shop in Murrieta sold them all of their cycling equipment at cost.

A Murrieta recreational vehicle dealership allowed them to use the RV that followed them free of charge for the trip, and several RV parks along the way allowed the group to stay for free and even donated money to the group, Underwood said.

The generosity the group experienced while traveling across the country didn’t stop when they reached St. Simons Island. As the officers walked their bikes back over the boardwalk toward the RV, a snow cone vendor stopped them and offered them all free snow cones.

The officers will fly back to California Friday.

Behind the spokes

The officers of the Murrieta Police Department pedaled nearly 2,600 miles across the country:

• They had 21 flat tires.
• Consumed 68 cases of water and 32 cases of Gatorade.
• Averaged 15 miles per hour, with maximum speeds of 56 mph.
• Began riding at 5 a.m. each day, finishing between 3 and 7 p.m., depending on the difficulty of the day’s ride.

Watch the VIDEO

Does anyone know the sponsoring bike shop and RV dealership in Murietta? They deserve a plug.