‘Pedaling For Peace’
John Verd was scheduled to carbo out with a free meal at Luigi’s before leaving Spokane Saturday to pedal a message around the world.
Verd, a 1984 Mead High School graduate and former Navy diver, says he wants to promote world peace from the seat of his mountain bike.
“I wanted to ride around the Earth just to do it, even without sponsorship if I had to,” Verd said. But as he trained for the last year to get his body prepared, he also searched for a cause that would help him fund the yearlong odyssey.
“I had to pick something nonpolitical so that I didn’t have a ton of enemies by the time I reached Lisbon,” he said.
“I know I’m not going to create world peace by myself, but I plan to talk to kids and spread the word one person at a time.”
He already had talked to several Spokane school classes before he left. As he travels, he plans to distribute addressed postcards to kids and urge them to write to children in other nations he has visited.
“The bicycle is such a nonthreatening way to reach people,” he said.
Although he has done some bicycle racing over the years, Verd’s longest tour has been a 300-miler from Spokane to Seattle. His round-the-world tour will be roughly 16,000 miles - a goal that will require an average of 60 miles a day, six days a week for 10 to 12 months.
He could celebrate his 30th birthday somewhere between Shanghai and Anchorage.
His only itinerary deadline is to be in New York by Aug. 8 to catch a flight to Portugal.
Through friends and relatives, Verd has helpful contacts in Italy, Russia, Japan and Alaska, where he plans to begin his final leg back to Spokane.
In some stretches, his bike will be loaded with 60 pounds of gear to make him self-sufficient.
“I’ll be on fairly narrow 80-pound tires for much of the ride, but I’ll switch to knobbies on the rough roads of Russia and China,” he said.
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MEMO: To support the ride, Verd is selling “Pedal for Peace” T-shirts for a minimum donation of $10. Write Mary Verd, 4105 Brooklyn Ave. NE, Seattle 98105.