Eric B.: rain, misery and miracles

YAKIMA, Wash. — Eric Bruntjen has grit. And maybe a guardian angel as well.

Just when things seem to be at their worst for the 38-year-old Yakima man riding in the 2,780-mile Tour Divide mountain bike race from the Canadian Rockies to the U.S.-Mexico border, something good happens. He finds an out-of-the-way inn where he thought he’d be camping in the rain in grizzly bear country … or finds a tiny motel that’s closed or full, but the night clerk lets him in anyway and finds him a room … or, in last night’s case, a night clerk who actually loans Eric his own car so he can go back and try to find some gear that fell off his bike who knows how many miles ago.

Maybe when a guy is doing something truly difficult for all the right reasons, as Eric is — riding to generate per-mile pledges toward the purchase of an all-terrain wheelchair for injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie — maybe he’s got some kind of aura about him that make people want to reach a hand out to help. Yeah, I know that sounds like something out of a Disney movie. But Eric’s made a believer out of me and a lot of other people, so why shouldn’t people he encounters along the way during his great adventure become believers as well?

OK, I’ll shut up now and let Eric talk. Here’s what he had to say when he called in from Kremmling, Colo., at 10:43 p.m. his time last night.

Hi, Eric Bruntjen calling in from Kremmling, Colorado. Been running in some rain today; came over Lynx Pass and really got hammered by a thunderstorm. That was on top of a tough morning getting out of Steamboat. The guys at Steamboat Bike & Ski really gave me the NASCAR treatment: new drive train, new brake pads, gave me a good tune-up, but it took most of the morning.

Ended up undoing a lot of that good work on the way down Links Pass. I lost my rear brake pads. Mud and the rain just slows everything down. Combined with my late start, I ended up pulling into Kremmling around 8:30 with only about 88 miles for the day. I probably could have kept going, but somewhere on the other side of Lynx Pass, I’d broken a snap on my rear rack and lost my tent and my sleeping bag and my dry clothes. I was in a pretty rough spot at that point, but Reid, the clerk at the hotel here, immediately offered me his car. So I jumped back back in his car and drove back to where I’d come from, up Links Pass … wasn’t really optimistic, but did end up finding my gear bag on the side of the road. And it was completely soaked, so I had to keep the hotel room, but at least I’m dry and my gear is drying and I have my gear, which is really good news.

So it’s been tough. The rain and the mud just wrecks everything. It slows me down, makes me cold and saps my energy, but I’m hanging in there, and I’m hoping for a bigger, better day tomorrow.

To see how Eric’s day is going hour-by-hour, you can check out his leaderboard page on the Tour Divide site. He’s already gone more than 1,650 miles since this race started on two weeks ago (June 12). Pledges to his tourdechair@gmail.com have slowed down just a bit, though, and there’s still a ways to go before the “Evan Mettie Donation” fund at U.S. Bank will have reached the more than $10,000 necessary to purchase that all-terrain wheelchair.

I’m optimistic, though, about Evan receiving the wheelchair that would allow him to experience more of the great outdoors he loved so much before a suicide bomber in Iraq changed his entire life. The reason for that optimism is that good people keep joining in the campaign to support Eric’s arduous campaign. Last week I wrote about how the good folks at Northwest Farm Credit Services had joined in with generous support. This week, a fellow named Bill Duerr, who lives in the historic Barge-Chestnut part of Yakima, learned that Eric Bruntjen lives in that district as well. And Bill, who has been following Eric’s campaign with great interest and admiration, pretty much decided: Hey, if people who don’t even know this guy can step up to the plate and support his effort in this worthy cause, we as neighbors should be doing the same.

So he and Paul Nagle McNaughton, who edits a newsletter that goes out to members of the Barge-Chestnut Neighborhood Association, put together a tremendous appeal for pledges in this week’s newsletter under a “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” headline, with the subhead, “Making A Difference for an Injured Veteran & YOU Can Help Too.”

Way to go, people. I applaud you. Hearing things like that make my whole day … just like those little miracle-makers along the road, like Reid the motel night clerk, make Eric Bruntjen’s day.

– Scott Sandsberry