Two brothers from Greenbank are a year into a round-the-world trip for charity, and they’re still on their feet.
And despite illness, bad food, damaged and stolen equipment, enough rain to last a lifetime and maybe 100 flat tires, not to mention beautiful scenery, delightful people and delicious cuisine, their feet are still on the pedals.
“Travel is an education, and I hope I’ll someday be able to say, like Melville, that a bicycle was my Yale and my Harvard,” Randall Leese said via e-mail this week from Rome.
Leese, 22, and his brother Andrew, 30, left South Whidbey early last April on a 25,000-mile bike trip through 25 countries to raise money for an orphanage in India.
The trip was mapped out to take two years, but it may take three or more, if the money and the energy hold out, the brothers say. So far, they’ve pedaled some 12,700 miles, about half the circumference of the globe.
They’ve ridden their custom cycles down the West Coast, across the southern states and up to New York. They’ve ridden through France, England, Wales, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Italy, spending Easter this past Sunday in Rome.
They plan to tour eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, with friends and supporters continuing to monitor their progress via social media, before heading south to India and a visit to the orphanage that is the focal point of the entire endeavor.
The brothers are paying their own way, so everything raised through pledges will go to the Servi Domini Orphanage in Palayamkottai, India.
The orphanage cares for more than 30 orphans and elderly people rescued from the streets. But it’s a grain of sand on a beach; there are 25 million orphans in India, Randall said.
Before they started, the brothers had hoped the adventure would raise $10,000 to $25,000 for the orphanage. Pledges so far have been about $30,000, Randall said.
“The trials I’ve borne on the orphans’ behalf over the last year have strengthened my personal motivation to help them as much as possible,” he wrote.
“And we’re only less than half finished,” Andrew added.
After an extended stay at the orphanage, they plan to tour Thailand, Laos and China, travel by boat to Japan, and then fly home. If they’re up to it, they may take in South America, too.
Randall, a 2006 graduate of South Whidbey High School, lives at the family farm in Greenbank. Before leaving for his latest adventure, he commuted by bicycle a few days a week, an average of 20 miles, rain or shine, to Useless Bay Coffee Co. in Langley, where he worked as a barista and coffee roaster.
Andrew, who before the trip worked as a barber in Bellingham and is a computer-science graduate of Western Washington University, is no stranger to Europe and Southeast Asia, and no stranger to long-distance biking and backpacking.
The brothers estimated that the trip would cost them about $30,000, but it likely will cost more, mostly due to broken and stolen equipment.
“I might have to take a short break to earn some extra cash,” Randall said.
They hope to be home by sometime in 2012.
Some highlights so far?
Andrew: “Riding through the French countryside in the summer, through so many forgotten villages far off the beaten track.”
Randall: “The satisfaction of successfully carrying approximately 132 pounds of gear up a mountainside and roughing it through the rest of the Cabo de Gato National Park, in Spain.”
Randall again: “Playing chicken with the French automobiles around the Arc de Triomph in Paris, smelling the wine-drenched air as I cycled into the town of Lesparre-Médoc in France, Steak Tartare in Nord-Pas-de-Calais.”
Lowlights?
Andrew: “Losing my Leatherman, my mobile phone, my favorite rosary, my T-shirt and Randall’s laptop all in the same month, not to mention the theft of my first mobile phone and a solar panel in July.”
Randall: “Overstimulation about nine months into the trip on my way to Lisbon — I hit a real depression, and felt like quitting.” But staying with friends over Christmas in Sintra, Portugal cheered him up.
The food?
“It’s been altogether delicious, though even tree bark might be palatable when you’re burning some
10,000 calories per day,” Randall said. “With the exception of the food in the UK, it lived up to its reputation pretty well.”
Health?
Andrew: “Generally good. Four colds and one flu, and mild food poisoning twice (once in France, once in Morocco). Muscles and joints are holding up beautifully.”
Randall: “Food-poisoning twice: once on the Camino de Santiago in Spain from old French cheese, which left me crawling along through windy, sub-zero conditions for three days retching piteously. The other was in Meknes, Morocco, from the grungiest restaurant food I’ve ever eaten.”
The people?
Andrew: “Delightful, except for a guy in France who followed us with blows and kicks off his property. We thought it was a camping area and it was after dark.”
Randall: “Nearly everyone we meet is kind, helpful. Of course, there are always exceptions. I had an unpleasant experience with a foul-mouthed hustler in Rabat, Morocco.”
Randall Leese, who has a literary bent, borrowed from author Mark Twain to sum up his adventure so far: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”
Next stop, Greece.
To follow the brothers on their trip, visit OrphanRide.org, or e-mail info@orphan
ride.org.
