Charitable cyclists ride monster tandem bike coast to coast
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" border="0" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; ">PICTOU — After 59 days of pedalling through mountains and enduring traffic, wildlife and weather, a four-man cycling team raising funds for their favourite charities arrived in Pictou on Monday.
Jeff Belanger, Ben Miller, Ian Bevis and Brent Seamone, who make up the Tandem Tour, left Victoria, B.C., on May 5 to pedal a specially built four-man bike to Nova Scotia.
"The support has been amazing," Seamone said. "People are honking their horns and stopping on the side of the road to take pictures. We’re almost at our fundraising goal."
The group hoped to raise $20,000, which would be divided equally among the four charities that have personal meaning to each of them.
Seamone is riding for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, because his mother was diagnosed with the disease. Belanger’s trip supports the Canadian Diabetes Association, because his brother has diabetes. Bevis, who lost a close friend to cystic fibrosis, is riding for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Miller is raising funds for the Nova Scotia non-profit Friends of Redtail Society. He wants to help the organization buy land near a Pictou County nature camp in order to keep it from being clear-cut.
Miller attended a Redtail Nature Awareness camp for six years as a child. He credits it with providing him with valuable life skills.
The team is accompanied by friends Matt Murray and Ben Gulliver, who drive the support vehicle and are filming the tour.
A fundraiser was scheduled for Pictou on Monday evening, featuring the team’s band and road stories, like their crash somewhere on the Prairies.
They were following close beside their support vehicle to shield themselves from strong headwinds when the bike clipped the back of their trailer and toppled over in the middle of the highway.
"Luckily there was no traffic," Miller said.
Then, there was the time a wheel rim "pretzeled" as they pedalled through the Rockies, Seamone said.
"It was a good thing it was on the flat," he said, adding it was one of 12 rims that split or fell apart.
And their bicycle chain broke again and again. The team members couldn’t count the number of times they changed tires and fixed spokes.
The Seattle-built bicycle is made of the strongest possible components, Seamone said.
"But there are 800 pounds of meat on the bike," he said, referring to himself and his teammates.
"We came down some of those mountain passes at 75 or 80 kilometres an hour. There was a lot of stress on the bike. It needed maintenance every day."
The team tells stories about Ontario highways with no shoulder and large transport trucks breezing past just centimetres from their shoulders, the variety of wildlife or their surprise at the amount of roadkill — including a black bear at the Cobequid Pass toll booth.
"The only thing we haven’t seen is a cougar or a lynx," Miller said.
The team leaves Pictou today for the final leg of their journey to Halifax. Their last fundraiser will be held Wednesday evening in Halifax at the Waterfront Warehouse.
More information about the team and its mission are available on the websitewww.thetandemtour.com, along with video of the trip.
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