This summer, IHS student Noah Sorensen ’17 took on quite the daunting task. With only his Bianchi Volpe bike and a few essential supplies, he decided to ride alone across the entire United States—nearly 5000 miles coast-to-coast—in an effort to raise awareness about world hunger. Through the flat deserts to craggy mountains to lush forests, he’s been pushing his own limits and inspiring others along the way. His full blog is on bikingforworldhunger.weebly.com. I interviewed him halfway through his trip in order to get a firsthand account of his experiences and his ultimate goal.
During a day off with relatives in Hastings, Nebraska, Sorensen laid out his entire plan on the phone. “I started from Portland, Oregon, and I’m planning to end at Portland, Maine,” he said. “So from Portland to Portland.” Sorensen got a plane ticket to his starting point and set off on June 29, riding about eight hours a day. He rode 800 miles down the coast into California, making his way through the Redwoods before crossing over into the Nevada desert, where he had to drink three and a half gallons of water a day. After that was Utah, where he “found some pretty neat rock formations” before crossing over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. After that, he went up into Nebraska. He said he’d continue along through Iowa and Illinois to Chicago before making the last stretch into the New England area.
Sorensen talked about his cause in-depth and with great enthusiasm. “I’m raising money for World Vision, an organization to fight against world hunger. I first learned about them while working with my church, where we’d do some fundraisers for them. That kind of got me interested, and I wanted to do something… a little bigger.” His fundraising page on his blog, too, describes his motivation: “I don’t have many talents to contribute to the issue [of world hunger]. But this is why what I am doing is so exciting, because I don’t need those talents. I am using the gifts I have to do something I can do.” Sorensen frequently stopped at large cities or towns, where he would hand out small cards about his cause and take the time to talk with others. By early August he’d received 43 percent of his goal of $15,000.
Despite massive encouragement from others, Sorensen admitted he had rough days. “I’ve run out of food once… it was taken by some little animal,” he remembered. Being stuck in the middle of Nevada then, he was forced to ride 220 miles without rest to the next town for fear of completely running out of energy. He has mental setbacks, too, as he occasionally reflects on the slight absurdity of his goal. “I think that there’s a point every day at which I just think why am I doing this?” he laughed. “But it helps to remember that I’m not doing this for myself; it’s for a good cause… I just kinda suck it up, and in a few days I pretty much forget about it. It won’t affect me in the long run.”
He had some pretty cool experiences too, the most memorable being an encounter in the redwood forests of California. “I was going up this little path, walking my bike up. I was going along and I turned a corner, and I saw an elk. A big, giant, male elk the size of a truck just standing there,” he recounted. Trying to maintain eye contact, Sorensen slowly backed away while managing to take some pictures, when to his horror the huge animal began lumbering towards him. “I started sprinting the other way… I lost my footing on the side of the trail and fell off, landing in some bushes. The elk just stopped around where I’d fallen and looked around a little bit before leaving.”
Finally, Sorensen spoke about how the ride changed his own perceptions, thanking the overwhelming support he had received since he started planning last October. “It’s helped me a lot, getting to see the rest of the country like this, and what’s more I’ve been able to help out in the lives of others through my actions. And that’s just a really good feeling.”
If you want to take a look at Sorensen’s entire adventure, definitely check out his blog.