Damascus Native Wil Armstrong Completes Cross Country Bike Ride For ALS
72 days after commencing his cross country, against the wind bike ride for ALS, Damascus native Will Armstrong has completed his trip. He started on June 26th from Rehoboth Beach, DE, and finished September 6th in First Beach La Push, Washington.
Throughout this journey, Wil updated his daily blog with his progress, experiences, and related statistics. Inspired by his mentor and former basketball coach, Rodney Lapp who has ALS, Will dedicated his cross-country journey to ALS and crowdfunded for the ALS Association.
Over the past 73 days, Wil has ridden and camped in various weather conditions. Riding in the haziness of the Canadian Wildfires in Minnesota, Montana, and North Dakota was strenuous work. He would wear a mask while riding to avoid breathing in the smoke.
After camping out in storms, Wil faced another one of Mother Nature’s obstacles, a heat wave in Montana. Morning temperatures were about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and would rise to 100+ degrees Fahrenheit by 2:00. To avoid as much of the heat wave as possible he started to wake up between at 3:30/4:00am to get going before the heat and wind picked up after noon.
He ran off of 6 packs of bagels for weeks, ate over 200 different kinds of bars (fruit bars, nature valley bars etc), and ran an impressive banana and apple count (86 bananas and 74 apples in his second month). Audio books, music playlists and educational podcasts (on crypto currency and economic theory) helped him pass time keeping his mind busy as he peddled his way through. A special shout out goes to the Home Depot theme song, he would loop the song from the commercial almost every day. He even got to apply for jobs and write up cover letters at camp.
Throughout the trip, Wil has been met with the overwhelming kindness of friends, families, and strangers. From getting to know and exchanging stories with strangers, to sleeping on strangers boats, sleeping arrangements (hotels and motels) paid by individuals along the way, camping in strangers back yards, and couch crashing.
To learn more about his daily encounters through out this trip his website is linked HERE. ALS Research donations can be found HERE. To learn more about his ride you can check out our previous article HERE.
Photo Curtesy of @wilsride Instagram
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