Coast To Coast For A Cure
Her journey from Los Angeles to Boston last spring took 49 days. It was a tribute, Harris says, not only to her parents, but to the millions of people constricted, confined, and immobilized by Parkinson’s disease.
“My dad suffered with the disease for more than a decade,” says Harris. “The physical and mental deterioration was so hard to watch.” Her mother took on the role of both caretaker, and then patient, when she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years later.
The disease sadly defined their last years, she says. “That was just when they had the time and resources to travel more freely, something they always enjoyed.”
Harris decided a coast-to-coast ride on a custom-designed carbon fiber Alchemy Helios was a fitting way to honor her parents’ lives. The ride was not Harris’ first impressive feat to support Parkinson’s research: She climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro 10 years ago and raised more than $25,000 for the cause.
“While the genetic connection to the disease is not definitively known, I have a vested interest in a cure being found,” says Harris.
Harris spent several years planning and training for for the U.S. trip. In January 2023, she worked with a coach, and then she took two months away from work for the ride.
Her family supported her solo, seven-week sojourn. One of her daughters organized a send-off dinner for her in Los Angeles. Though she was away from her husband, Ben Woloshin, for the majority of that time, he and her other daughter flew to Santa Fe, N.M., and met her at the finish line in Boston with their dog.
“I couldn’t have done this without my family’s support,” says Harris, who grew up in New York and raised her children in New Jersey. During law school, she moved to California. Harris hadn’t explored much of the middle of the country, adding to her excitement for the cross-country bike trek.
“I wanted to take the chance to get to understand the country, through the people, as much as I could,” says Harris, who achieved this by talking with people everywhere she rode.
Somehow, she found time to write daily — a habit she cultivated at Swarthmore, where she was an Honors English major. (Read her blog at barbarasbigbikeride.blogspot.com.)
On approaching an especially breathtaking vista of the red rocks of Sedona, Ariz. Harris recorded a moment when she literally cried out in joy. “I can’t explain it,” Harris wrote: “It’s something about experiencing the landscape of this great nation (yes, it is still a great nation, whatever else is going on…) on two wheels, without a motor, in the open air.”