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08/14/2019 08:30 AMOf those who’ve never done a long-distance bike ride, few would choose to start off with a nearly 3,600 mile trek across the country.
But perhaps Justin Hoffman isn’t like most people.
A 2010 graduate of North Haven High School, Justin, despite wanting to be a doctor, majored in psychology at Syracuse University.
“I was always thinking medicine...[but] I didn’t want to be a straight biology major and psychology always interested me,” he says. “I still got to do all the biology classes—I minored in biology. But I wanted to explore psychology and all that that entailed.”
After graduation, he worked for four years as a behavioral therapist “in schools and in group homes with kids from three to 23 with varying levels of autism or other developmental disorders,” he explains. He would help these young people with “all of their day-to-day medical issues as well as trying to teach them everyday life skills and to deal with problematic behaviors that would arise.”
Working with children on the autism spectrum can be difficult, he acknowledges.
“It’s not one-size-fits-all; you have to adjust [treatment] to every individual,” he says. “I worked with probably 65 to 75 different kids and teens individually over the course of my four years, so I got to see quite a wide variety of cases and children.”
His degree in psychology is “definitely helpful” for the career he envisions for himself, he says.
“I’m looking to go into more specific developmental and behavioral pediatrics, where I would be working with that same population, developmental disorders, getting access to all the supports that they need, getting them resources, medications that they need to succeed,” he says. “It’s really combining the medical and psychological portion and my life experiences.”
Not coming from a family of doctors has presented some unanticipated hurdles, but they’re ones that haven’t deterred Justin.
As the Association of American Medical Colleges says on its website, “Shadowing a doctor is a great way to find out if a career in medicine might be right for you. It will give you a better understanding of what a doctor’s typical day is like, and give you good experience to talk about in your applications and interviews for medical school.”
If you don’t have connections to doctors, however, finding one to shadow can be difficult. Syracuse University doesn’t have a medical school, Justin doesn’t have family connections to doctors, and his own personal doctors weren’t able to take him on, he says.
Justin volunteered in the emergency room at Middlesex Hospital for a couple of years and “from that I was able to meet a couple of doctors and reached out to them...So I got some shadowing, but it was an extra step, instead of being able to reach out to a parent or a family friend.”
A Long Ride
The ability to overcome obstacles is a crucial skill for many things, including making a bike trek across the country, as Justin discovered first hand in June.
This was the 14th annual trip as part of UConn Medical School’s tradition, Coast to Coast for a Cause, which raises money for a non-profit of the bicyclists’ choosing. Medical students get a summer break between their first and second years and the trip is presented to incoming students at orientation by the previous year’s riders. A number of students in Justin’s class were initially interested, but over time the group dwindled to a committed four. The other riders were Keanna Chang of Old Saybrook, Yoga Kammili of Danbury, and Liz Rodier of Avon.
The four, who dubbed themselves the Cyclopaths, chose to raise money for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, established by the actor Paul Newman to give children with serious illnesses a camp experience, as well as the chance to “raise a little hell.” An organization working with children was a priority for Justin and Chang, both of whom intend to focus on pediatric medicine.
According to Justin, at the start of the trip, the women—Chang and Rodier—were in better cardiovascular shape than he and Kammili were. Chang is an avid runner and rock climber; Rodier teaches spinning classes.
“For me, I definitely wasn’t a cyclist, but I had done quite a bit of outdoors stuff,” Justin explains. “I’d backpacked along the Appalachian Trail; I’ve backpacked in Machu Picchu and done quite a bit of hiking and camping trips.
“As far as the riding goes, it was just going to be getting up and doing it,” he says. “So I did train probably the most specifically toward this trip,” he says. “I did 1,000 to 1,500 miles on the spinning bike prior to the trip to make sure I wouldn’t be coming in without any experience or any training.
“I wasn’t nervous until I was flying to Seattle,” he adds. “That’s when it really became real. Prior to that, it was all talk. Planning the trip, everything is super exciting. Then reality hit: Wow, I’m actually doing this and I’m going to be biking like 3,500 miles over the next two months. I really questioned some of my life decisions that got me there.
“As soon as you get on the bike, that all fades away because you’re in the moment and you’re doing it,” he says.
The trip began in Anacortes, Washington, on the shores of the Salish Sea. After flying and spending an evening in Seattle, the Cyclopaths made their way north to the small town and dipped their back wheels in the water. The four had settled on Old Saybrook, Chang’s home town, as their destination, the place they’d dip their front wheels to officially complete the journey.
Beginning in Washington presented immediate challenges, as their route took them through the Cascades. The first day’s ride of 66 miles brought them to Rockport, Washington, on the edge of the mountain range.
“By the end of the day, we were struggling,” Jason wrote on the Cyclopaths’ blog, which they took turns updating over the course of the trip. “Our butts were so sore from the hours on the bike and our legs were screaming at us to stop.”
After picking up food for dinner, the cyclists went on to tackle “the biggest hills of the day. Which compared to what we are facing in the next few days were nothing...but let me tell you, I was struggling real hard on those hills. After 60 miles on the bike, my legs were done and I crawled my way to the finish line.”
The finish line for Day One, anyway. Over the course of their trip, which took 57 days, the Cyclopaths encountered rainstorms, hail, flat tires and other bicycle mishaps, routing issues, minor injuries and wasp stings, a fever, bad roads, and heat. But the worst conditions the riders faced were headwinds and mosquitos, which were particularly fierce in Montana and North Dakota.
The Team Dynamic
For Justin, the most difficult challenges were internal.
“I had to get myself into shape, but after two weeks, I was in good shape. So it was just mentally dealing with every day as it came,” he says. “You’re out there, you’re in the weather, you’re dealing with it as it comes. You have to take what the day gives you.”
Also challenging at times was “the team dynamic, being with four people 24/7 for two months,” Justin says. “Everybody gets on each others’ nerves a little bit.”
It could be difficult, sometimes, “figuring out how to navigate those situations. I wanted to get across the country, but I wanted all of us to get across the country. I didn’t want anything I did to get in the way of that and I also wanted to support my teammates.”
Gestures of kindness from strangers and near-strangers were instrumental in lifting their moods. The Warm Showers network, an international community, was instrumental in getting them through. Hosts and cyclists sign up online. Along the route, cyclists contact potential hosts to ask if they’re able to put them up for a night or two. Typically, hosts feed their guests, give them a place to sleep, and yes—provide them with warm showers.
Many of the Cyclopaths’ hosts went above and beyond, sharing tips and stories, cooking hearty meals, and giving them local tours. One Idaho farm had an outdoor composting toilet that was out in the open with no walls or curtains around it. At a farm in Wisconsin, their dinner included cheese made that day with milk from their host’s dairy cow, and at the Assumption Abbey in Richardton, North Dakota, the students were hosted by monks.
The Cyclopaths befriended other bicyclists along the way, like Kevin and his young daughter, Skye, who were riding tandem along a similar route for the first part of the students’ journey. On one particularly difficult day, Kevin called to say he’d booked the group two rooms at a motel where he and Skye were staying.
“In those moments you can go from being so low to being so high with that little bit of kindness,” Justin says. “So many times, Kevin went out of his way to do something for us. Another time he just bought us ice cream. Going from being so unhappy and so uncomfortable to one little thing going in your favor turned our days around so many times...Maybe we wouldn’t have been able to get through if all the little things kept piling up and we didn’t have anything going in our favor.”
From the perspective of a few days after completing the ride, Justin is somewhat bewildered.
“It’s just one of those things where, looking back, I can’t believe that I did that,” he says. “It’s such a ridiculous accomplishment that I really don’t know how it happened. It’s one day at a time, one mile at a time. And that’s what you gotta do.
“But overall, the most rewarding thing was going to [Hole in the Wall Gang] Camp and seeing the camp and what all of this was actually for,” he says. “We put ourselves through all this physical and mental strain and getting to see that it was actually worth it, that it was actually doing something for these kids and it’s going to have a lasting impact not just on my life, but on the kids.”
The camp allows children dealing with serious illnesses “to be around other kids with similar disorders or diseases. They get to go there and be around other kids who are going through some of the same struggles that they’re going through. They’re no longer the sick kid in the wheelchair—they get to be themselves.” he says. “It lets them open up and experience things in a whole different way.”
The Cyclopaths’ blog remains online at coast2coastforacause2019.home.blog. Donations are being accepted through Labor Day at bit.ly/coast2coast2019. Twenty percent of funds raised will defray the costs of the trip; 80 percent will be donated to the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.