From Florida to Maine, Glencoe man peddled the entire way
Twelve years old and at summer camp, Dale McCrea Jr., of Glencoe, and Sonny Rasmussen first met each other; a year later, they went to the South Dakota School for the Deaf.
Fast forward to April 4 of this year, and the bicyclists began their journey riding the Atlantic Coast Trail, logging 2,400 miles across the nation from Key West, Fla. — the southernmost part of the country — to Lubec, Maine — the easternmost point.
Rasmussen got his nearly-lifelong friend into biking in the early-90s, and from there, McCrea rode in the multiple sclerosis tour five times — four of them with Rasmussen. Rasmussen has been riding since he was young, and embarked on the Trans-America Trail Tour two years ago but only got halfway through before he suffered from heat exhaustion and had to stop.
Heat exhaustion was just the beginning for Rasmussen’s unfortunate medical woes while riding, but neither of the riders were spared from misfortune throughout the trail. When they took off from Key West, McCrea and Rasmussen were only able to make it 11 days, to Jesup, Ga., before Rasmussen was hospitalized and diagnosed with diverticulitis, small pouch-like structures that form in the digestive tract, and was told by his doctor that he couldn’t finish the ride.
So they rented a car, drove it home and slapped a “TBD” on the second frame of their bicycling. Four months later, on August 30, they started again from Savannah, Ga., not too far from where they paused. Seemingly, the riders’ bad fortune switched seats and sat plump on McCrea’s lap.
McCrea encountered so many flat tires he lost count; Rasmussen didn’t endure even one. While in Maryland and in the middle of heavy traffic, McCrea came within a foot of getting side-swiped by a bus. Yes, a bus. From there, the two took a train to Washington D.C. As if that wasn’t enough, the bicyclists narrowly missed Hurricane Florence as they moved by Wilmington, South Carolina. Again, they had to hop on a train to stay out of danger.
(For the complete story, see the Oct. 31 print edition of The Chronicle.)
