FORT EUSTIS, Va. –
Bike riding may have saved Spc. Dwayne Garrison's life.
The former Marine and current Soldier returned to the states last year after his fifth tour of duty in the Middle East with brain injuries after the vehicle he was riding in got bombed and rolled outside Camp Taji (two hours from Baghdad). His head was split open in the accident.
Garrison said he was combating depression when he got back stateside, but soon found a way to work off the anxiety and get pumped up for a cause.
It's called Ride 2 Recovery, a series of cycling challenges produced by the Fitness Challenge Foundation in partnership with the military and Veterans Administration Volunteer Service Office. The initiative, founded by Olympic and professional cyclist John Wordin, is meant to benefit mental and physical rehabilitation programs for America's wounded veterans through bicycling rides across America, and abroad.
Garrison, along with seven other Soldiers from the Fort Eustis Warrior Transition Unit, will finish Ride 2 Recovery's latest race - the 9/11American Challenge - Sunday.
The ride started Sept. 11 at Liberty State Park, in view of Ground Zero and the newly opened 9/11 Memorial, and covers 530 miles, including a trek west to the United Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., finishing at the Pentagon Memorial in Northern Virginia. Along the way, the challenge's 350 participants, many of whom are wounded warriors, will cross the Delaware River at Washington's Crossing, stop in Philadelphia, ride through Valley Forge and Gettysburg and many other historical American sites.
The day before the ride, the Fort Eustis contingent traveled to New York City to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the site of the World Trade Center bombings 10 years ago.
This is Garrison's second full ride. When he started training with Staff Sgt. Remus Jones of the WTU, he could barely do 20 miles a day.
"It about killed me," Garrison said. After he rode alongside veterans with one leg, or other extensive injuries, he knew he could do it.
He also likes the support people along the route give the riders.
When you get back from your tour, you receive an ocean of greetings and well-wishes, Garrison said, but, as the months roll by, "you don't feel needed anymore."
"On that ride, you get that back," Garrison said.
Plus, you make new friends, he said, who now has many cell-phone numbers programmed into his phone after riding in the Great Lakes Challenge in Minnesota.
"It's a great friendship-building environment," he added.
Jones has watched the Ride 2 Recovery reach more and more folks who have either served or are still serving in the armed forces. The 9/11 American Challenge cut off enrollment at 350 cyclists. Other challenges are unlimited in the number of riders that can be accepted.
Jones wasn't a cyclist before a coworker got him involved with Ride 2 Recovery a couple years ago. He's been running the program on Fort Eustis, at the WTU, ever since, often asking people, "You ever ridden a bike before?" He gets a lot of funny looks in response.
"I try to inspire people to look into the program, to try to do this," he said, because "it's making a difference in the lives of wounded warriors.
"Once people go on it, it changes their lives - it gives them the opportunity to do something 'they didn't think they'd be able to do,'" said Jones, who completed seven deployments overseas while working for Fort Hood's transportation unit.
The riders get plenty of support along the 530-mile route, and stop nightly at hotels to rest, Jones said.
"It's not a race, it's a ride, that's our motto," said Garrison.