By
Brett Erickson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
For 23 years now I've been living my life, learning countless lessons along the way. Sharing was covered in kindergarten, manners in grade school and time management sometime after that.
But this summer, I learned two more lessons that will undoubtedly stick with me and 70 other college students for the remainder of our lives - sacrifice and loss.
On June 11, I and 70 other members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity from colleges and universities throughout the country kicked off a 63-day, 3,900-mile bicycle trip from San Francisco to Washington D.C. The trek, called the Journey of Hope, raises money and awareness for people with disabilities.
For the first 57 days of the trip, things could not have gone any better. After six days on the road, we split into two teams - one headed north over the Rocky Mountains and across the Plains, while my team veered south through Arizona, Texas, and the Bible Belt. Even divided, we shared a mission.
It was the true definition of sacrifice. We gave up summer jobs, being with our family and friends and the chance to graduate earlier in order to make this journey.
We cycled about 75 miles each day and found shelter in high schools, churches and, on rare occasions, hotels. Along with mountain passes and triple-digit temperatures, the actual riding was one of the tougher challenges we faced. What I soon discovered, though, is that I was capable of pushing myself so much further than expected because of the support from my teammates. Tough 60-mile days soon became as easy as . . . well . . . riding a bike.
While on the road, our main focus was raising awareness for people with disabilities through many different events. In many of the cities we stopped in, including Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Birmingham and Charlotte, we had "friendship visits" at local facilities that served people with disabilities.
It was at these incredible places where the purpose of the Journey of Hope shined most brightly, and the purpose behind our sacrifices became clearly visible. The smiles we saw from the people we visited were so genuine that they would stay with us for days. I didn't realize at first why the people we visited were so happy to see us, but it soon dawned on me that people with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy aren't treated like "normal" people very often. And our main goal was so simple that it seems ridiculous to say - to treat the people we interacted with like real people. Make them forget, even if only for two hours, that they have a disability.
As the trip rolled on and we began to rack up the miles, the disabilities began blending together in my mind, and they no longer really mattered. By early July, I was telling my teammates and parents about an amazing talk I had with Kiara Brown, not about some conversation I had with a boy from Dallas with autistic-like behaviors.
So, considering the fact that we'd also raised $330,000 for people with disabilities, the trip was a huge success on all levels. But on Aug. 7, just five days from our arrival in D.C., a tragedy struck our team that left a dark cloud hanging over an otherwise perfect summer.
Todd Porterfield, a senior from the University of Washington and one of the greatest guys you have or have not met, was hit and killed by a truck pulling a horse trailer about 30 miles south of Greensboro, N.C. As usual, Todd was leading the pack when the truck cut him off, and thus cut his brilliant life far too short.
I have never felt more helpless than when I was sitting alongside the highway on that sunny afternoon. My initial reaction of disbelief, anger and incredible sadness lasted for the remaining five days of the trip, but those emotions gradually gave way to respect and pride at Todd's funeral in Seattle last Monday. There, 10 of us from the trip learned - although we pretty much already knew from the 58 days we had known Todd - that he touched so many people's lives, and continued to do so up until the minute he died.
Shortly after Todd's death, one of the cyclists - Todd's lifelong best friend - was flipping through his journal and came across a quote near the back that Todd had copied down. It was from Vince Lombardi and read, "I firmly believe that any man's finest hour is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."
Todd certainly did just that, and the thousands of people he helped us reach out to this summer will never forget him.
Neither will I.
