In the summer of 1993, I biked from Seattle to Asbury Park, New Jersey, raising money for the National Organization of Albinism & Hypopigmentation (NOAH).  Following are excerpts from an essay written for their newsletter.

Day 4 (Chelan to Grand Coulee)

For the firs time, I had to go it alone, and it had to be fast.  I left the restaurant, jammed two Cokes into my rear duffle bag, hopped on my Trek 750, and pedaled off into the desolate, rolling hills of Washington’s Columbia Plateau.

Forty-four miles of hot sun and empty road lay ahead.

I didn’t leave Lake Chelan (the previous night’s camp) until 9:30 that morning, two hours after the 38 other cyclists, because I sat for my first-ever radio interview.  The KOZI announcer started by asking me why I had written (in a pres release) that the word “albino” was as offensive to me as racial epithets might be to a member of a minority group.

It took only a second for me to see the difference having ideas, and telling them from the high stool to people I couldn’t see.  Still, I was energized.
When I finally left, and began the twisting five miles of McNeil Canyon-the trek’s steepest climb-I felt like flying, but had to stop at every rise for my riding partner.

Now, outside the restaurant, I had to push because a newspaper in Grand Coulee also wanted to talk.  It was a race to create the best of the 48 days: 69 miles of hard road between two interviews, a canyon ascent, and the point in which I made my own way, whizzing over an interminable gritty loneliness.
When I descended into Grand Coulee, set up my tent, and sat at a table under a tree with a reporter from the Star, I was grateful to be on the road for NOAH, talking about words, whales, and goals.  The trip was already a success.

Day 15 (Malta to Fort Peck, MT)

Ninety-three miles, 95 degrees, 35-mile-per-hour headwinds, impossible to crawl along U.S. 2 (the wasteland that parallels the Canadian border) any faster than six miles an hour.

Not only did I make it all the way to Fort Peck (one of only 19 riders to bike the whole way) but I wore long black tights and my yellow long-sleeved Boston Marathon t-shirt (my bee costume, as one rider put it).

Everyone was amazed.  Wasn’t I hot?  No.  Keeping covered, I learned, is the best type of sun block: it keeps the heat out, and eliminates the stigma of riding into camp glazed with gnats.

Day 20 (New Town to Max, N.D.)

I lug my laundry to where we are “camped” in the halls.  Al and Stan, two of the 13 riders who were over age 50, stop me.  They’d read that release I’d written about albinism, which I gave (privately, I thought) to Tim Kneeland, whose Seattle company ran the tour.

Kneeland put it in the daily route guide folder for all to read.

Talking to a newspaper was easy-my fellow trekkers and I are off before it runs.  Now, I was nervous.  How would Al, a root canal specialist from Brookline, Massachusetts, and Stan, a factory worker form Shropshire, England respond to my angry ramblings on Moby Dick, Lethal Weapon, and name calling?

Both gave me warm handshakes, said it was the first thing they had ever read on albinism, and Al promised a contribution.

Day 35 (Chicago to Valparaiso, Ind.)

After the most tedious and dangerous day, with 85 miles of nonstop red lights, I walk into a Valparaiso University dorm.  As I take my room key, I see that a documentary on the late stuntman Darr Robinson is on a nearby TV.

They were showing his backward plunge from the movie Stick in which Robinson plays Moke, a murderous albino who works for a drug lord.

I walk over to the two people standing near the set and, though they were not people I had talked to very much on the tour, I said, “That was an awful movie with a horrid portrayal of albinism.”

I had never so bluntly expressed my hate for the injustice such films perpetrate on those with albinism.  It felt good to be so bold, but I was again nervous, feeling that maybe I had no right to castigate the program with my opinion to those who might not care.

But one said, “I know exactly what you mean.  Did you see The Firm?”

I was grateful for his understanding and we talked about this issue.

The Firm was a hot summer movie seen by many during the trek.  But no one ever mentioned the hit man “with albinism” to me until then.

Day 36 (Monticello, Ind.)

I step into a batting cage at Indiana Beach Amusement Park and clobber most of the 12 pitches fired at me.  A friend says, “Man, Andrew, you’re legally blind and you’re hitting the ball better than me.”

Day 48 (Asbury Park, N.J.)

The trip, for which I took for my personal them the Bruce Springsteen song “Better Days,” ends on the boardwalk near the crumbling parks that once inspired the Boss.  My girlfriend Carolyn greets me with some surprise guests-NOAH President Jan Knuth, Treasurer John Civitella, and Secretary Barbara Cliggett.  The NOAH people had driven three hours from Philadelphia to see me finish.  Their support and the wonderful plaque they handed me brought the trek to a wonderful close.

The trip was one of many firsts for me, and of countless lasting images.

Besides my first radio interview, I had (on the same day) my first whitewater rafting trip and my first helicopter ride in Glacier National Park.  I went to my first toga party in Williston, North Dakota.  I rode my first roller coaster at Indiana Beach, and fixed my first flat tire outside Richmond, Indiana.

My most cherished accomplishments include being first into camp four times, guiding myself through Spokane and Columbus, and going 1-1 as a pinch hitter (barreling into the first baseman, making him drop the ball) in the annual softball game in Malta, Montana.

My most lasting image: biking the six miles up St. Mary’s Ridge on a sunny morning to cross the Continental Divide, and realizing, as I wafted down the spiraling hill on the other side onto the immense lunar landscape of the plains, that I had put the Rockies, and, it seemed, the entire west into the stuff sack of my leaning shadow.

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