Update: Dec. 10, 2011 — Taura and Christiana arrange with UPS to ship the tandem to Argentina; they plan to leave Phoenix on Saturday.
Looking for inspiration for this weekend's bike ride? You need go no further than looking in on a legally blind couple who are setting out on a Pan-American tandem bicycle tour.
The Arizona couple, Taura Chaw and Christiana Bruchok, plan to leave on their adventure from Usuaia, Argentina, in just a few days on their ride they've named 2Blind2Ride.
Unfortunately, the trip has been delayed by problems shipping their tandem bicycle on an AeroMexico flight. In spite of being assured on two previous occasions that they could check the tandem as luggage (with an extra fee), the airline turned them away at the ticket counter earlier this week.
Too big
Christiana told a local Phoenix television station:
“As soon as we got to the counter, they looked at the box and said, ‘Oh no, that's too big.' It's the bike that can't fly.”
The Tempe couple had already stored their belongings for 18 months of bicycle travel and showed up at the airport with the tandem and gear on Tuesday, only to be turned away. If you can suggest a solution to their problem, you can contact them at their Facebook page or the Twitter account.
Pan American
When they are free to fly with their tandem, they'll head out on a 16,000-mile trip from the continent's southern-most town, Usuaia, to Deadhorse, Alaska, one of the northern-most points in North America.
The two are legally blind, but that didn't prevent them from completing a 3,200-mile tandem ride in 72 days from California to North Carolina in 2009.
Blindness
Christiana is completely blind in her right eye and severely impaired on the left. After 13 operations to improve her eyesight, it's 20/400.
Meanwhile, Tauru, the tandem captain suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that creates tunnel vision and severe night blindness.
The couple plan to stop in at schools for the blind along the course of their bike trip to inspire children to not let their sight deficiencies be a handicap. In the video, below, Christiana says:
“By riding, we're hoping to show people that, as visually impaired
people, we can pretty much do anything that people with perfect can do.
The difference is we have to come up with some type of plan.”
This bicycle tour sounds like a very worthwhile project, and we hope AeroMexico lives up to its previous pledge so Tauru and Christiana can go on their way.
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