Coast to Coast USA – for a Hastings Cause
MEL STEEL
Hastings local Josh Bruton grew up in Ore, but has always had a taste for travel and adventure. Or, as he puts it, “doing cool stuff” – which is why he joined the army at 19.
Just another 2000 miles to go!
10 years later and after multiple postings in Germany, Estonia, Canada and Poland, he is now about to leave the service; but decided last year that before he quit he wanted to do something different. He hatched a somewhat hazy plan to embark on a 3,000-mile cycle ride across America, from Miami on the East Coast to San Diego on the West. He’d heard about the local veterans’ hub and Stand Easy Café recently set up in Hastings (covered in HIP 290) and resolved to make the trip a fundraiser for them. “It seemed like a good local cause,” he says.
He saved up his annual leave and flew to Miami at the end of October with a map app, a new bike, a backpack and a tent. He had no idea how long it might take. It didn’t occur to him to take a medical beforehand, and it didn’t occur to him that he might not manage it. “At that point it was sort of out of spite really,” he says. “My friend said I couldn’t do it, and I was determined to prove him wrong.”
He had a rough idea of his route but basically plotted his way day-by-day, aiming to cover at least 60-70 miles a day and sometimes managing as much as 130. He started each day at 5am and aimed for somewhere he thought he might be able to stay – sometimes pitching his tent; sometimes staying with people in their homes using an online spare room app; occasionally splashing out on a motel if he needed a bit of comfort. One day he cycled 90 miles then found himself spending the evening helping the daughter of a family with her maths homework. Another time he pitched his tent by the side of a road and realised only when he started to hear shots that he’d pitched up next to a firing range.
The trip wasn’t without incident. He went into hypothermic shock in Texas and collapsed with heatstroke in California. He kept breaking spokes, and one time had to deal with 5 punctures in the course of a day. His thermal coat was stolen and he had to replace his tent when it got ripped. He came off his bike in New Mexico and then again in Arizona, when the chain flew off and he landed on the road hard and at speed. He had to ride for the next four days with his hands wrapped in bandages.
He found himself uncomfortably close to an alligator in Florida, stumbled on a pair of black bear cubs (he didn’t hang around to see mum), nearly got attacked by a snake, and saw a mountain lion on the streets of Alpine, Texas.
He survived, he says, on energy drinks, ice creams, coca cola and Skittles.
He finally arrived in San Diego, California, on 13 December, after 44 days on the road. He sat on the beach and enjoyed the view for a while, then took the bike on a train to Los Angeles and did a bit of sightseeing before flying back to the UK. The bike remains exactly where he left it, in a hostel on Hollywood Boulevard. “They can have it,” says Josh. “I’m never riding a bike again!”
Josh has raised £500 so far for the East Sussex Veterans’ Hub, and donations are still coming in. He already has plans to do another fundraising trip for them next year, scaling a chain of 6,000m peaks in Nepal with his younger brother, also a soldier. No doubt it will be eventful!
For more information and to donate to Josh’s crowdfunder visit: gofundme.com/f/nxb62
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