Bicyclists are spreading culture coast to coast
Contributing writer
Three young bicyclists camped Tuesday evening in the Tampa city park. They are Sarah Sandman and Melissa Small from Rhode Island and Jack Marrie from Kentucky. They ate breakfast at the Tampa Café, where a number of local people had a chance to visit with them.
The young women, graduate students at the Rhode Island School of Design, are part of a project called "gift cycle." They carry work of local artists as gifts to artists in the next town, who trade their own work for a piece of art they want to own. They left Providence, R.I., June 14 with a load of artwork to present to artists in Brooklyn. When they reach Seattle, Wash., Aug. 30 they will take art they collect there back to Providence. "By train!" said Small, "I'm not about to cycle across the country again."
When they stopped in Lawrence to visit old friends of Sandman, who did her undergraduate work at Kansas University, they met Marrie and joined forces with him. He had been riding west from Kentucky and plans to go clear to the West Coast.
"Kansas has been really kind," Sarah said. "People slow down for you." The hardest stretch of the journey was in the hilly country in southern Indiana, where the roads had no shoulders and truckers braked for nobody.
All the bikers said they had found many towns, including Tampa, where they thought, "I'm just going to stay and live here."
Sandman remarked, "I was never exactly a cynic before, but the nicest thing about this trip is my faith in humanity has definitely been restored."
The young women tried to take long bike rides around their homes in preparation for the journey, but admit they had no idea what they were getting into.
When someone asked how long it took them to get over sore muscles in the morning, Small flashed her winning smile and said, "I'm still waiting." However, she added, "The aches and pains are a lot less now. The first week was brutal."
Referring to their biking adventures before the trip, Sandman said, "Camping gives a whole new slant to the experience, because you don't get the same kind of sleep."
In spite of all the hardships, the young people agree that it is a great way to really see the scenes they are moving through. The Great Allegheny Passage from Cumberland, Md., to Pittsburgh, Pa., was phenomenal.
For Tampa residents the opportunity to chat with these lively and adventurous young people was pretty phenomenal, too.
