Pedaling into our 7th year

By: Melissa Merrill

As the year comes to a close I wanted to take a little time to look back on what we’ve accomplished.  What better way than to make a spreadsheet? (Or at least that’s what I remember from engineering school!)  Even if you don’t like numbers as much as I do, it still turned out pretty cool.

Here’s what 2013 looked like in numbers (and a few pictures):

• 80 cyclists joined us on either the Spring or Summer ride. 66 of them biked for at least a week.  
• They ranged in age from 14 to 85, and on the Spring ride we even had 3 generations of the same family biking together.  
• The Spring ride took us 400 miles down the NatchezTrace, and the summer route covered almost 3,700 miles from Savannah, GA to Vancouver, BC.   
• If you add up all the miles each rider pedaled it totals more than 80,000 (that’s like biking more than 3 times around the earth’s equator!).  
• We biked through 15 states and 1 Canadian province.

Crossing into our 13th state for the year.

• We ate about 120 pounds of peanut butter and drank at least 200 gallons of sqwincher (I don’t think anyone was counting ounces of chamois butter… but I’m sure it was impressive!).  
• 0 flat tires!  OK, not really… just making sure you’re still paying attention.
• We slept soundly on the floor at 55 churches, schools, and community halls, on cots in 1 community center, on bunk beds in 1 volunteer center, and in the most comfortable beds we’ve ever experienced during 1 generously donated hotel stay.  
• Together we raised more than $140,000 bringing the Bike Adventure grand total to $825,000.

Replacing an entire roof in a day in Americus, GA.

• We were able to lend a "hand up" to 20 families across the country during our 7 build days, and helped countless others with the funds and awareness we raised along the way.  

We also looked back a little further in Bike Adventure history and recorded a few memories.  You can take the tour of our 6 years of history–the routes we biked, the jerseys we wore, and a few more numbers–on our website here. 

We’ve accomplished an awful lot… and by "we" I actually mean all of you! 

Together we’ve made the Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure into so much more than a bike ride.  Whether you biked, donated, hosted, fed, read our blog, liked our Facebook posts, or said a prayer, you helped turn this bike ride into a mission that’s making a big difference for people in need of decent place to live and changing the lives of unsuspecting cyclists along the way.

So, congratulations on a successful 2013, and here’s to many more miles, adventures and simple, decent homes in the years to come!

If you’ve read this far you must really be interested!  

Come, be a part of the adventure in 2014.