Pedal Trans-America 2008: A Three State Day: UT, AZ, NV

A message from the Connecticut Burns Care Foundation

Ryan and Dwight hope to raise $10,000 to support the burn camp, which will host 70 children between the ages of 8 and 18. They are determined to reach the West Coast as a personal challenge as well as helping young burn survivors.

Started in 1991, the Arthur C. Luf Children's Burn Camp is located in northern Connecticut on 176 acres. Every summer, burn survivors come to the burn camp, which is a safe and fun environment that helps kids heal emotionally and physically. The Burn Camp is free to the children, who come primarily from the Northeast and some foreign counteries, but any burn survivor child anywhere is welcome. More than 70 adult counselors, primarily active and retired firefighters and burn unit nurses, occupational and physical therapists, child psychologists and even a doctor will serve as mentors for the week.

It's also our goal to promote burn awareness and fire prevention and education, which we do year around. We sponsor a burn survivor, burned in a car accident that involved speeding and drinking alcohol, who speaks to high school students throughout Connecticut. We also support the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital, helping to purchase equipment.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

A Three State Day: UT, AZ, NV

Dave and Denise

From the wonderful stay with Dave and Denise in St. George, Utah, we rode 120 miles (our biggest day yet) to Las Vegas, NV. Oh YEAH!

The whole ride was through the desert and some of the hottest and driest weather, yet (you couldn't leave your mouth open for one minute before you were choking from lack of saliva).

We had set out from St. George well rested and fed, thanks to Dave and Denise, to take on the desert and arrive in Vegas that day. It was a challenging goal but we were unexpectedly, very well assisted along the way.

I was a bit ahead of Dwight on my way south-west on route 15 to Vegas when I caught up to a car pulled over on the shoulder of the road. I first thought it was just another over-heated car but as I got closer, a man stepped out of the car with a couple water bottles and flagged me down. We talked for a bit, his name was Scott. Scott's a bicycle enthusiast and has done supported tours in the past. He was interested in our story because we were self-supported and he mentioned that he was looking forward to planning a self-supported tour in the near future. At the end of the conversation he asked where Dwight and I planned on staying that night. I told him, like normal, we didn't have anywhere specific planned to camp and that this was our normal practice. After finding out that we were roughing it, he reserved us a hotel room in northern Las Vegas. The hotel was beautiful and had a free continental breakfast we took full advantage of.

Then! If Scott wasn't enough...I ran into another two cool guys. Drew and Saul were on a road trip from Utah to the coast of Cali in their old-school VW bug. They pulled over in the same fashion as Scott did, Drew hopped out of the car with some water bottles and Saul hopped out with some energy GU. I talked for a while with both adventure enthusiasts and took some pictures. They were all about they trip and full of congratulations and pats on the back. It was great that they stopped to help me get through the desert and it was even more cool to meet two more awesome west-coast kids. It turned out that they were photographers, too! The following are the pictures they took and sent to me.