CUMBERLAND — While he is at the moment a one-man convoy biking cross-country, Gregory Maassen’s coast-to-coast journey appeared unthinkable just some years earlier.
Maassen, a Washington resident who hails from the Netherlands, started a 3,400 mile cross-country trek on his electrical bike on Saturday. He’s driving in increments of roughly 55 miles a day, although some stretches are longer, and can finish the primary leg of the journey in Pittsburgh on Sunday. All informed, the journey can be divided into 10 segments and is slated to finish July 31 in San Francisco.
Maassen’s trip isn’t with out function. He’s utilizing the journey to lift funds and consciousness for the Illinois-based Foundation for Peripheral Neuropathy. Patrons donate 1 cent per mile to assist the trigger.
Peripheral neuropathy is a continual situation that causes numbness, weak point and ache within the physique because of nerve injury. Neuropathy is widespread, and may be attributed to causes starting from sickness to harm and chemotherapy. Some instances are idiopathic, that means they do not have a transparent trigger.
While there are a lot of types of neuropathy affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals, Maassen mentioned, the illness isn’t but effectively understood. Maassen is aware of firsthand the anxiousness and melancholy that always accompany the analysis, as he skilled it himself.
Maassen, who previously labored with the United States Agency for International Development, mentioned that whereas working in South Africa he fell unwell after a horde of larval ticks adhered to him on a wildlife hike.
“I didn’t think much about it, but then my entire body started to burn like it had a severe sunburn,” Maassen mentioned. “Then slowly, but surely, I became really ill to a point where it became career-ending.”
Maassen was granted a inexperienced card for emergency medical functions, he mentioned, and commenced remedy at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
“I just felt like I was burning all over for two years. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t lie down,” Maassen mentioned, till his doctor, Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. Ahmet Hoke, correctly identified him in 2019. Hoke’s chief remedy suggestion, Maassen recalled, was train.
“He said ‘You need to do one thing, and that’s exercise,” Maassen mentioned. “I said ‘Are you out of your mind? I can hardly get out of bed.'”
He took issues gradual at first, and when his signs appeared to dissipate a bit determined to begin exercising slowly, Maassen mentioned. Eventually, he found his ardour for e-biking when he joined a D.C. biking membership. He was instantly intrigued by the small motors on the bikes, and requested about it.
“I bought one the next day,” Maassen mentioned.
Exercise has helped Maassen regain a way of neighborhood that he’d missed earlier than, he mentioned. Since first discovering e-bikes, he has began his personal curiosity group, E-Bike Lovers, which Maassen mentioned has 520 members. While he travels, he is additionally utilizing a hospitality service for cyclists known as Warmshowers that is allowed him to search out housing with like-minded people alongside his path to San Francisco.
“In 2019, when I started to feel better, I just wanted to get out of the house,” Maassen mentioned. “After coming back to the United States after 20 years overseas, I didn’t have a social network, so I decided to create it myself.”
Maassen began coaching for his journey final yr, often training on the hilly terrain round Frederick to acclimate himself to driving at a excessive elevation on difficult floor. It served him effectively, he mentioned, when he made his manner from Little Orleans to Cumberland on Wednesday.
His journey that day did not fairly go as deliberate. Rain waylaid him for some time, as did slick situations and downed timber.
The steep hills proved difficult, Maassen mentioned, provided that his setup weighs virtually 420 kilos between himself, his belongings and the bike.
Ultimately, Maassen and his yellow e-bike arrived in downtown Cumberland within the late afternoon, stopping for meals and libations earlier than persevering with to his LaVale resort. On Thursday, he journeyed to Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, which represented the second-to-last a part of the journey’s first leg.
Despite the problem, he mentioned, he was thrilled to be on the journey within the first place. That he is embarked on the journey in any respect, Maassen mentioned, is proof that his story is certainly one of hope.
“I’m not out of it, and I’m still not 100%, but I’m going across the United States,” Maassen mentioned. “It’s a total miracle that I’m sitting here with you.”