A friend of mine, Lee Briggs - the husband of Melissa Jones Briggs '00 - did a similar trip with a colleague and went on to found Elifelist.com. I was inspired by his trip and started planning for it last summer. We started off in San Francisco as three, including Ben Winteroff '00, who split off in Utah because he was going to the M.B.A. program at Johns Hopkins.
I found out about Kick for Nick from a friend of mine in Boston who knows his family well. Nick Madaras was a soldier in Iraq who, before he was killed in action, began the idea of giving soccer balls to Iraqi children. I love soccer and grew up playing soccer, and I wanted to help a charity that I felt strongly about.
The most difficult part of the journey was going over a mountain pass in Utah in a snowstorm. We had to go through the storm with side gusts of 20 mph; it was challenging to stay upright in the gusts. If you're in a storm, you have to keep ridged, which is hard. You can't control the weather, so you have to learn to accept it.
If you stop, you give up. I went through it to overcome the obstacle. Besides, we had no food, and we had to get to our destination.
It was eye-opening. Everywhere I went, people were interesting. There is a disconnect between small town American and the rest of the country: they are misunderstood. People in small towns may not have seen everything and been everywhere, but they have a lot to offer, like genuine kindness.
To be on a bike six hour a day, you learn to relax. Your mind is free, and stress disappears when you don't have to focus on so many things. One thing that popped into my head during the trip was remembering Mr. Manning, my advisor, who would always quote the classics. He would cite Thoreau, but I didn't pay too much attention back then. I read Walden on my trip and, now reflecting, I see that I've learned a lot from reading the classics.
I enjoyed being able to give back by doing this trip, and I'd like to keep on adventuring. I'm looking for a job, and my plan is to find a new way to change the world through technology. One of my inspirations is Niklas Zennstrom, one of the founders of Skype. He calls himself a disruptive entrepreneur, and I like the idea of disrupting things in a positive way. I've always had a desire to make an impact on the world.
Written by Maura Power and photographs courtesy of Brett Holman. This article first appeared in the TASIS England Today magazine, Autumn 2008 issue.