Yakima rider’s trip will benefit injured veteran Mettie

YAKIMA, Wash. — Eric Bruntjen’s e-mail to some friends was simple, direct and humorous.

“Just letting you know that I’ve truly lost my mind,” he wrote.

The evidence supporting this contention: At the age of 38, this otherwise sane, outdoors-oriented information-technology specialist from Yakima had entered next month’s 2009 Tour Divide, a mountain bike race along the Continental Divide from the Canadian Rockies to the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico.

Eric Bruntjen is preparing for a nearly 2,800-mile bicycle race called the Tour Divide, which will begin in Banff, Alberta, and finish along the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico. Bruntjen’s training regularly takes him high above Moxee near Konnowac Pass. (KRIS HOLLAND/Yakima Herald-Republic)

“I’m too old to be doing this sort of thing,” Bruntjen says with a laugh. His wife, Melanee, totally disagrees.

“He’s the most hardcore guy I know,” she says. “He’s perfect for it. It’s almost like the more uncomfortable it is, the more fine he is with it.”

Well, that’s good, because a6-foot-6, 225-pound man traveling 2,780 miles almost exclusively alone on a mountain bike — over snow-capped mountain passes and through desert, on trail and rutted dirt road, without a support vehicle — is in for a rough go.

Hey, no problem. If the undertaking proves too huge, he could always just quit along the way, right?

Well, not exactly. The Bruntjens had read about injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie and the Mettie family’s desire to purchase an all-terrain wheelchair that would enable him to enjoy the great outdoors again. That struck a chord with the Bruntjens, and Eric thought perhaps they might be able to buy the wheelchair for Evan.

Uh, not quite.

“I looked them up online, and the ones I found were $10,000 or more,” says Bruntjen, who then decided to do something to make “this insane project worthwhile.”

He challenged friends in his e-mail circle to pledge money toward the purchase of Evan Mettie’s wheelchair on a per-mile basis. It was also a challenge to himself, because that meant every mile he didn’t complete was taking money away from the wheelchair fund.

Eric Bruntjen

“But there’s one more twist to this tale,” Bruntjen said in his explanatory e-mail to friends. “For the first person to sponsor me at $1 per mile I agree to cover the difference between what I end up riding and the total race distance at $1 per mile myself. In other words; if I drop out at mile 1,000 then that wonderful donor would pay $1,000 and I’d chip in $1,780 toward Evan’s new chair. Think of it as an arrogance tax. If you think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, that I’m in way over my head, then bet that $1 per mile and make me pay.

“Make me pay, I dare you!”

But then the stakes got even higher. One of those friends forwarded Bruntjen’s e-mail to the local newspaper. Now it’s out there. What was once an intriguing subject among friends — Did ya hear what Eric’s doing? Are you gonna pledge? — now becomes a challenge he can’t back away from.

“Before when I hadn’t really mentioned it except to some close friends, I had a little cushion where if I didn’t make it, no big deal,” he says. “But this opportunity with Evan came up, and I thought this will give me a little incentive.

“I’m very nervous. I may get there and I may be in way over my head.”

Still, he won’t back away from the personal challenge. He’s had people offer to give him $200, and Bruntjen says No, but I’ll calculate that down to an exact cents-per-mile pledge.

He laughs about using that extra incentive. “There’s a couple mountain passes in Montana and Colorado where I might be counting money-per-mile on the way up: I’m gonna make it over that pass.”

Bruntjen’s lone caveat to his personal challenge to the first $1-per-mile pledger — to pay the buck for every mile he doesn’t complete — is that the deal is off if he injures himself before the Tour’s June 12 start. But while he’s had some tendinitis in his left ankle, he’s undaunted. He fully intends to be one of about 30 starters, from 14 states and five countries, who will take off from Banff in this year’s Tour.

“Three weeks ago I’d have thought, ‘Oh no, this is terrible,’” Bruntjen says of the ankle pain. “But now that I’ve decided to raise money for that wheelchair, it’s like it doesn’t bother me as much.”

That’s because Eric Bruntjen has a goal, and it’s 2,780 miles — and, hopefully, more than $10,000 — down the road. He’s riding so that Evan Mettie can ride.

Go ahead: Make him pay.

He dares you.