Big guy’s biking trip across the United States
He had no job, no car, no home of his own. He weighed 257kg, and his wife had left him. So Eric Hites started riding a bike from coast to coast
Eric Hites hit rock bottom earlier this year. At the age of 40, after having worked as a disc jockey, roadie, telemarketer, pizza delivery man and bartender, he found himself unemployed, and collection agencies were on his tail. His wife, who had left him in July 2014, was living with another man.
His weight reached 257kg. He told himself he had a choice: Rot away in Danville, Indiana, where he had been living with his parents, or do something drastic to save his life and marriage. He considered a gastric bypass, but while listening to the Proclaimers’ hit I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), he had another idea.
The narrator of that rousing 1988 song vows to walk 500 miles (and 500 more) to prove his devotion to the one he loves. Hites figured he would not be able to walk such a distance, given that, in addition to carrying so much weight, he was a heavy smoker.
But maybe he could make it that far on a bicycle. Maybe he could even pedal more than 4,828km, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He could see the country, lose some kilogrammes, get a book deal out of it and show the woman he loved that he could change.
In March, he created a blog called Fat Guy Across America. He started exercising. He called his estranged wife and told her he was about to do something that would blow her mind. She was sceptical.
He bought a used Mongoose mountain bike from friends in Terre Haute, Indiana, for US$17. When he took it for a test drive, he was out of breath after 100m.
On June 7, he set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for his epic plan; the balance now stands at $11,447 (410,929 baht) with donations from 383 people. The next week his father drove him east, to the coastal town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, and he wept when he dropped his son off at the side of a road. Hites had $200. Hitched to the bike was a trailer stocked with a tent and 136kg of supplies.
Four months later, having shed about 32kg during a zigzag journey that has moved along in fits and starts, Hites reached New York.
At this point he had roughly 23,000 Facebook followers and numerous online detractors, who traced his slow progress and posted comments suggesting his trip was some kind of elaborate scam. They called him a digital panhandler and worse.
During his New York stop, Hites faced reporters and photographers from WYNY-TV, the Daily News, the New York Post and the New Tang Dynasty Television network, as well as students from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. In Times Square he took selfies among furry mascots, gawking tourists and the Naked Cowboy, who composed a song in his honour on the spot.
“I wasn’t expecting it whatsoever,” Hites said of the circus that has sprang up around him. “I was hoping for a book deal and then I’d get an advance and we’d be able to use that money to travel across the country. People think I was trying to get famous from it. This was an accident, really.”
At 6pm on Sept 20, Hites was in the Bronx, New York, pedalling south toward Yankee Stadium. His wife, Angie, 37, was waiting for him, at the wheel of a red Pontiac Grand Prix parked near a fire hydrant on 176th Street.
She was no longer estranged from him, having joined him in Rhode Island, where, she said, they rekindled their love. To give him extra motivation, she said, she is going by her original last name, Atterbury, until he makes it to the Pacific. Only then will she go back to using Hites.
For a time after their reunion, his wife biked alongside him until she passed out one morning and was taken to an emergency room. The diagnosis was heatstroke and a panic attack.
Since then she has been accompanying him in the Pontiac, riding her bike alongside him only occasionally.
“We find out where his next resting site is going to be, and that’s where I meet him,” she said in the parked car. “Section by section, we will take America, you know?”
She got out of the vehicle and looked north on the Grand Concourse. Hites was nowhere in sight. “His bones are superduper dense,” she said. “He’s just an ox. He’s a huge bear. Kids climb all over him.”
A man appeared and asked if she was OK. “I’m waiting on my husband,” she said. “Oh, I thought you might be looking for the hospital.”
After 20 minutes, she spotted him. “There he is. The Bronx, baby!” They both recorded his arrival, Hites with a GoPro camera mounted on his helmet, Atterbury with her mobile phone. “I need a drink,” he said, hitting the brakes. “I’ve been out awhile. I love you, though.”
“I love you, too,” she said, handing him a plastic water bottle filled with Crystal Light.
He took a long swig. “I had kids yelling at me, ‘You can do it,’ and I’m going, ‘You don’t even know who I am, but thank you.’ People see that I’m a big guy riding a bicycle, and you’re either going to get a laugh or support. Usually, I get the support.”
He caught his breath. “A lot of people don’t understand the trip is not just a cycling trip,” he said. “We’re seeing the sights while we’re doing it. That’s why I’m not rushing straight across, in a straight line. I try to explain that every day because everybody always says, ‘I thought you’re trying to get across the United States.’ I am. But I didn’t say I was racing.”
A lot of people don’t understand the trip is not just a cycling trip