Daniel Morris is returning to UConn Medical Center this month as an enlightened medical student, not from a summer in a hospital or by hitting the books. Instead, he spent seven weeks on his bicycle, pedaling from California back to Connecticut, contemplating life and talking about leukemia with people he met along the way.
The East Lyme resident recently completed a cross-country bicycling tour, Coast to Coast for a Cure, to raise money and awareness for Lea’s Foundation for Leukemia Research, a Hartford-based non-profit organization formed in 1998. It provides funding for many researchers at the UConn Health Center and has started to provide limited support for patients and families affected by the disease.
“I definitely was not an avid bicycler before,” said Morris, who spent many ten-hour days on his bike, drafting or just slogging it out with two other male and two female medical students. Four of the five are UConn students; one woman is a University of Maryland medical student.
This was the third year for UConn medical students to do this ride. Two years ago, a student who had lost his mother to leukemia set up a partnership between the small foundation and the school.
Morris’ group started training with their bikes about a month before, including a ride in the White Mountains of New Hampshire to experience mountains and riding with gear.
“It’s really hard to balance with the gear on your bike,” said Morris, who lived on the road with little more than a tent, sleeping bag and pad, a fleece, rain jacket and pants. These fit into two large waterproof pannier bags over his back wheel. “You almost have to learn how to ride your bike all over again.”
On June 14, the group flew out to San Francisco, assembled their bikes in the airport and headed north, toward Sacramento and the Carson Pass through the Sierra Mountains.
They took Highway 50, “the loneliest highway in America,” across Nevada.
“There aren’t that many choices to stay out there,” he said. “We couldn’t run out of water. You have a town every 75 miles, and no services in between. There was no choice – you really had to go that distance.”
The group clocked 100+ mile days. Morris preferred mountains to flat terrain.
“The uphills are hard, but they are the most rewarding,” he said. “When you get up to the top of those mountains in California and Utah, the views are amazing.”
The toughest part was figuring out where to stay every night. The first stop in town was always the grocery store for dinner and breakfast and to start looking accommodations. Food was the biggest expense item.
“We ate a lot,” Morris said. “It was our fuel.”
Food also provided comfort, diversion and something to talk about. It reflected some of the differences across America, which Morris and others blogged about along the way.
The group didn’t pay for a single night of lodging. They camped out, particularly out West, and depended on donated hotel accommodations and the generosity of far-flung family, friends and sometimes strangers.
“One of the wonderful things was the people we met. They were so generous,” he said. One of the first nights a California bicycler invited them to camp in his back yard. A park ranger who met them early one day tracked them down hours later to give them food and water.
Near Salida, Colorado, after five or six hotels couldn’t help them, a woman offered her place. The only problem was that it was seven miles back west. Once there, the students discovered her husband was a retired urologist and bonded instantly with the family. They blogged that it was the only – and the best – seven miles that they rode westward on the entire trip.
“We met so many people who were either involved in the medical field or touched by leukemia,” he said. “It was really amazing.”
Their highest point, going over the Continental Divide, was Monarch Pass, in Colorado.
“That was the coolest thing ever,” Morris said.
Aside from about one week of the trip, when visiting family members hauled their gear, there was no support crew or van driving along with water bottles, to help fix flats or carry supplies.
“I learned a lot about myself,” he said. “When you’re on a bicycle for ten hours a day, you’re with yourself for a long time. You have a lot of time to think.”
Morris admitted that more than once he wondered if he could really make the trip, and what the heck he was doing.
“Afternoons were always the worse. You’re hot and tired, and there’s still 20 miles to go,” he said. “I tried to focus on just getting myself to where we were going that day; not that I was trying to make it all the way back to Connecticut.”
Traveling with a group helped, as did knowing that he had his family’s support. He also called good friends along the way and stayed in touch with them, pretty much as he would on a regular basis.
Morris conceded that his parents, Joel and Robin Morris, thought he was insane to take off cross-country. They were able to detour from a wedding trip to Utah to catch up with him in Denver.
The group also stayed in touch with families and friends through a GPS tracking device one of the women brought along.
“Every night when we reached our destination safely, all she had to do was push a button and leave the thing outside and it would send an email to all the parents, letting them know where we were on a Google map,” he said. They also traveled with cell phones, but didn’t have time to talk until night, and didn’t always have phone service.
Once over the mountains, they started the long, flat descent through eastern Colorado and Kansas. The bicyclers had to stay off of Interstate highways, but often biked through big cities.
They headed to St. Louis, stopping off two nights in St. Louis where Daniel’s younger brother, Josh, also an ELHS graduate, and now a student at Washington University, welcomed them.
To get across the Mississippi River they took the old chain and rocks bridge on a bike trail system north of St. Louis. After the wide open spaces of the American West, states east of the river went by quickly.
By the time they reached Pennsylvania, Morris was ready to get back into some mountains, this time the Appalachians. On August 4th, they arrived in Easton, Conn.
The last stretch of the trip for the four UConn students was from Easton to Farmington on August 5. They were joined by Dr. Keat Sanford, Dean of Admissions at the UConn medical school. After crossing the Sierras and Continental Divide, the uphill climb along the UConn Health Center drive in Farmington was a breeze, he said.
All told, the group raised about $35,000 for Lea’s Foundation from friends and families before the trip. Connecticut bike shops were some of the most supportive businesses, donating supplies. The group’s jerseys sported the name of Niantic Bay Bicycle Shop, which donated hundreds of dollars of supplies. Morris said Steve Morrissey had good advice, based on his own previous long bike trips.
Donations can still be made to Lea’s Foundation for Leukemia Research, c/o Carla Sgro, 522 Cottage Grove Road, Bloomfield, CT 06002 www.leasfoundation.org
See the group’s trip blog at www.coasttocoast2008.blogspot.com