Peddling For Hope
Edgewood teacher takes bike ride over 2,200 miles for children
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
Two years ago, the Edgewood Middle School U.S. history teacher watched a Netflix movie titled “Ride the Divide.” It followed 10 bike riders 2,700 miles from Banff, Alberta, Canada, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico.
“The whole thing is just a race. A guy set the record at 16 days and 16-some odd hours from start to finish,” Devlin said. “It seemed more like a bucket list dream than reality at the time. As time went by, I watched the movie five times and realized that maybe this is something I potentially could pursue. Maybe it’s a little more than a bucket list item.”
Six months later, jokingly, Devlin asked David Wildman if he would ever do the ride. Being the director of 2nd Mile Adventures, Wildman told Devlin, “You read my mind,” and said they should go for it.
“From that point on, to see God open doors, to make this something that wasn’t just about us, but something about a much greater purpose, it was clearly something that was out of our control at that point,” Devlin said.
Once they committed, Devlin wrote a grant request to the Eli Lilly Foundation, about 13 months ago, at the urging of fellow teacher Nate Howett. The grant-writing process took about three months of writing and rewriting, then he waited three months to hear back.
“Without the $10,000, we were going to make it happen, but it would have been a stretch,” Devlin said.
In February, he found out he was awarded the grant.
“That gave me, basically, five months to put this thing together. We began ordering supplies once I got the grant,” Devlin said.
Right about that time Mason Geiger started his non-profit, Film for the Maker. Again jokingly, Devlin told Geiger he should go along with them and film the whole ride. Geiger was in and brought his wife, Lia. They purchased a van and carried all their equipment with them.
“We were able to have blogs about the entire journey,” Devlin said. “We kept everything live and updated every day. On top of that, we were able to use technology called the Spot Tracker. It’s a GPS that will pinpoint your location within a foot at any given point. People could track us at any given point when we had the device on.”
As many as 40 to 50 people a day were following them, watching them as they rode and encouraging them, Devlin said. It was all posted on Facebook and FilmfortheMaker.com
“But really the whole direction of the entire trip was when we partnered with 2nd Mile Missions. That’s the sister company to 2nd Mile Adventures,” Devlin said. “2nd Mile Missions is directed by Rod Wildman and his wife, Nancy. Over the past five years, starting from scratch, they built a school, 860 kids attending. There’s now a trade school there. There’s a free medical clinic for the people living in the town of Bavaro, Dominican Republic. They have brought light to an extremely impoverished community with no hope. They’ve changed the face of that place.”
On one end of the town are resorts; on the other end just over the fence is “sheer poverty,” he said.
The fundraising for 2nd Mile Missions’ House Of Hope started in December.
“We made our goal $25,000, which seemed insane,” Devlin said. “And after we received donations from a few private donors and then some larger organizations stepped forward and gave some matching dollar-for-dollar donations, we found ourselves at $25,000 in a matter of four months. We ended up totaling just above $30,000, and all proceeds went directly toward the House Of Hope, which ended up being a good portion of the amount that needed to be raised. It was a significant amount needed to build the building.”
Devlin said about 150 people raced in the bike ride, but he and David Wildman were the only ones who did it for a cause. They were featured in the Grace College magazine and bicycling publications. Family and friends donated, but strangers also sent in money. Warsaw Community Church Pastor Denny Wilson’s wife, Cookie, had a garage sale for them which raised over $2,000, Devlin said.
“It was pretty wild how the community came together for something that they’re 3,000 miles away from. So to see the heart of Warsaw be manifested in something as simple as a bike ride really speaks volumes for the quality of people we have here,” he said.
School let out June 7. Devlin and David Wildman started riding June 9 in New Mexico.
The first 70 miles went off without a hitch. All of a sudden, however, David Wildman started feeling sick.
“The first day, that is not something you want to hear, especially when you’re riding in 110 degrees, sun is beating down on you. You think you’re consuming enough water, but everything he was experiencing – he had chills, cold sweats, dizziness, dry heaving – all of those signs pointed toward some sort of heatstroke or heat exhaustion or dehydration,” Devlin recalled.
The target for that day was 127 miles. David Wildman made it 71. Devlin got to mile 92 and it hit him, too. They piled into the van.
“All of a sudden our dreams of racing this thing were over. For all intents and purposes, we were done,” Devlin said. “We had to drop out of this race. This vision that we had that we were going to go and crush this thing was over. It was one of the hardest and saddest things I’ve ever had to go through. We had been preparing for a year and a half and our dream, everything everyone was depending on us for at home, it was shot to pieces.”
The next day, David Wildman got back on his bike and they got 20 miles in when they should have been averaging 80. The third day they just drove to a hospital to get David Wildman fluids. He was laid up in a hospital and then a hotel for a few days. He was finally done with the ride.
On the fourth day, Devlin had a huge day.
“I was so tired of sitting in a van, sitting in a hotel room, I ended up busting out 126 miles that day. I had sunburn blisters just through northern New Mexico. It was almost a day of redemption. It was at that point that I realized whatever happens is going to happen, but we’re finishing this. I’m getting through this thing,” he recalled.
About a week and a half later, David Wildman finally flew home because he realized it was going to be too much to overcome.
Brent Wildman, 62, then joined Devlin for the rest of the time. He rode about 1,500 miles. David’s brother and Brent’s son, Josh Wildman, joined them for a week and put in close to 500 miles.
“It almost becomes a team effort. What can we do to get Tim to the finish? So we just kept riding and it was beautiful,” Devlin recalled. “The further north we got, the more beautiful the country got. Big Sky Montana was unbelieveable.”
When they got into Canada, Devlin said he saw the most beautiful mountain range, the Rocky Mountains, he ever saw in his life.
Some mornings Devlin woke up and it would be 20 to 25 degrees and ice was on his sleeping bag. They had to chip the ice off to get out of the bag. The only clothes they had were what they could carry.
“We ended up dealing with some rain. The avalanche debris that we ended up having to cross in Montana – there was one area where we had six or seven avalanche debris fields, and one was the length of a football field and wider then this classroom, that we had to climb over,” Devlin said.
To get over the avalanche debris, he had to shoulder his bike and climb over the trees. After 35 minutes of climbing, they got through.
The further north they went, the more wildlife they also came across like grizzlies, black bears, moose and elk. At one point he got chased by an angry badger.
Brent Wildman and Devlin ended up finishing in Banff on July 10.
“So it took 32 days. Even though we didn’t make our 2,700-mile goal, I rode just over 2,200 miles. Despite not making our goal, I think just the redemptive story behind the ride made it worthwhile. I’ve never done anything like that before,” Devlin said. “There was a part of me that was frustrated and angry that we didn’t make that distance. But another part of me realized that we were doing something for kids that can’t back out of their position. These are kids that are stuck in the cycle of poverty. There is no hope and they’re going to remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. Where as for the bike ride, we could have ducked out of it at any point. So to realize that, it gave a greater purpose for riding.”
On July 26, Devlin married his girlfriend who, with her mom, had planned their wedding while he was biking. [[In-content Ad]]Wildman Business Group takes several trips each year to the Dominican Republic. “I love what they do with their employees. They want their employees to see what the company gives back. Wildman Business Group plays a major role in the school and the orphanage in the Dominican Republic. They try to take their employees down a couple of times a year so their employees can get that taste of poverty and need and service,” Devlin said.
On Oct. 1, Wildman had a trip planned and a group of 20 went, including Devlin. They took school supplies, clothing, shoes and other items.
“But for me, it was kind of like the cap on the ride because I obviously wasn’t traveling for Wildman Business Group, I was traveling along with them, but for the purpose of putting an exclamation mark on this trip,” Devlin said. “I wanted to see the orphanage, I wanted to see the kids that it would service and see the community that it would service.”
Mason and Lia Geiger went along to film the trip as the capstone of their documentary, which is currently untitled. Devlin said a trailer is being put together for it, and the documentary will be released in fall 2015. Any profits from the video, art gallery or related works will go toward the House Of Hope and 2nd Mile Missions, Devlin noted.
Visiting the Dominican Republic took Devlin out of his comfort zone more than anything else he’s experienced in his life.
On the first night, there was a church service. The church and school sit inside the same compound on about 10 acres. It’s completely surrounded by stone walls that are 10 to 14 feet high with razor wire.
“That’s not to keep us in, but to keep the bad out,” Devlin explained.
When the sun sets, the music begins blaring. All the little clubs surrounding the compound come alive, including prostitutes who are just 12- or 13-year-old girls, up to their 20s.
“To think that that pays better than other employment options, which there aren’t many employment options out there, what other choices out there do they have? So that’s where the House Of Hope comes in. Right now they can house 12 girls, with a maximum of 20. They will range in ages from 12 to 17, 18. We’re just waiting on government approval,” Devlin said.
The girls – who don’t have parents and live on their own, and are at high risk for being abducted into the slave trade, or whose parents are prostitutes themselves – would live in the House Of Hope. It’s an effort to break the cycle of poverty and prostitution for the girls.
“The church down there honored me with a little award. I was truly humbled by it,” Devlin said. “It was nothing I deserved. It was for the ride, but the teachers are the unsung heroes. They’re teaching in classrooms that are tiny, maybe 30 feet by 30 feet, and they have 30 kids inside. They have some books, not a lot. They don’t have computers. There’s no technology in the classrooms.”
From there, the students go on to the trade school and learn skills to get hired by the tourist industry.
During the trip to the Dominican, Devlin said they were able to go to the small town of Monteverde. It’s a few miles away from the school, but several hundred kids walked to and from the town to the school daily. They wore bright white uniforms with “2nd Mile” on them, and were clean, smiled brightly and looked their best.
“But then you go to Monteverde where they live, and you see an 8-foot by 8-foot shack made out of sheet metal and the kid has one change of clothes. They don’t have clean water to drink. They’re bathing out in the open in dirty water that they can find. They might have one meal a day, maybe every two days. It was just a stark contrast between what was inside the premises of that school and where these kids were actually living,” Devlin said.
One kid, Roger, 17, has been living on his own for four years. He lives in the community, trying to make something of himself. He speaks four languages and works as a translator, but lives in a shack and goes to school every day because he knows that is the only way out of poverty. His story is just one of many, Devlin said.
“We played soccer one day with a whole bunch of kids and they’re in their bare feet, running across a baseball field, which used to be the community trash heap. They cleaned it up, and I use that word roughly. There’s broken glass bottles and they’re running over corral reef in their bare feet,” Devlin said.
The House Of Hope is the one place providing hope for the future, he said.
On the last day of the trip, on the last night before flying out, Devlin ended up getting sunburnt and badly ill. He was dehydrated, had a fever of 104.5 and started hallucinating. Around 6 a.m., he started losing feeling in his arms and legs. His fists clenched and he couldn’t release. He was taken to a small clinic, but they couldn’t even give him an IV there.
“It was pretty wild. Leslie Wildman prayed over me, and immediately my hands released. I started getting feeling back, but they ended up rushing me to the hospital because I was still throwing up. It was awful,” Devlin recalled.
He was in and out of consciousness, but was given fluids until he could fly home and be taken care of at Kosciusko Community Hospital.
“With all things considered, to make that the final event that happened in the crazy journey, it’s funny that I would end up dehydrated the same way David started the journey. It kind of came full circle so I could finally empathize,” he said.
Looking back on the whole process, Devlin said it seems like none of it ever happened. It was like a dream.
“I’ve never looked at my job of teaching as anything other than teaching until I saw the whole grander picture of living it out and literally enriching the lives of others,” he said. “The idea of serving other people ... you feel good, you know? You feel complete when you have an opportunity to save a life or provide hope to someone who doesn’t have it.”
For more information on 2nd Mile Adventures, visit www.goanewdistance.com; 2nd Mile Missions, visit www.2ndMileMissions.org; and Film for the Maker, www.filmforthemaker.com
Two years ago, the Edgewood Middle School U.S. history teacher watched a Netflix movie titled “Ride the Divide.” It followed 10 bike riders 2,700 miles from Banff, Alberta, Canada, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico.
“The whole thing is just a race. A guy set the record at 16 days and 16-some odd hours from start to finish,” Devlin said. “It seemed more like a bucket list dream than reality at the time. As time went by, I watched the movie five times and realized that maybe this is something I potentially could pursue. Maybe it’s a little more than a bucket list item.”
Six months later, jokingly, Devlin asked David Wildman if he would ever do the ride. Being the director of 2nd Mile Adventures, Wildman told Devlin, “You read my mind,” and said they should go for it.
“From that point on, to see God open doors, to make this something that wasn’t just about us, but something about a much greater purpose, it was clearly something that was out of our control at that point,” Devlin said.
Once they committed, Devlin wrote a grant request to the Eli Lilly Foundation, about 13 months ago, at the urging of fellow teacher Nate Howett. The grant-writing process took about three months of writing and rewriting, then he waited three months to hear back.
“Without the $10,000, we were going to make it happen, but it would have been a stretch,” Devlin said.
In February, he found out he was awarded the grant.
“That gave me, basically, five months to put this thing together. We began ordering supplies once I got the grant,” Devlin said.
Right about that time Mason Geiger started his non-profit, Film for the Maker. Again jokingly, Devlin told Geiger he should go along with them and film the whole ride. Geiger was in and brought his wife, Lia. They purchased a van and carried all their equipment with them.
“We were able to have blogs about the entire journey,” Devlin said. “We kept everything live and updated every day. On top of that, we were able to use technology called the Spot Tracker. It’s a GPS that will pinpoint your location within a foot at any given point. People could track us at any given point when we had the device on.”
As many as 40 to 50 people a day were following them, watching them as they rode and encouraging them, Devlin said. It was all posted on Facebook and FilmfortheMaker.com
“But really the whole direction of the entire trip was when we partnered with 2nd Mile Missions. That’s the sister company to 2nd Mile Adventures,” Devlin said. “2nd Mile Missions is directed by Rod Wildman and his wife, Nancy. Over the past five years, starting from scratch, they built a school, 860 kids attending. There’s now a trade school there. There’s a free medical clinic for the people living in the town of Bavaro, Dominican Republic. They have brought light to an extremely impoverished community with no hope. They’ve changed the face of that place.”
On one end of the town are resorts; on the other end just over the fence is “sheer poverty,” he said.
The fundraising for 2nd Mile Missions’ House Of Hope started in December.
“We made our goal $25,000, which seemed insane,” Devlin said. “And after we received donations from a few private donors and then some larger organizations stepped forward and gave some matching dollar-for-dollar donations, we found ourselves at $25,000 in a matter of four months. We ended up totaling just above $30,000, and all proceeds went directly toward the House Of Hope, which ended up being a good portion of the amount that needed to be raised. It was a significant amount needed to build the building.”
Devlin said about 150 people raced in the bike ride, but he and David Wildman were the only ones who did it for a cause. They were featured in the Grace College magazine and bicycling publications. Family and friends donated, but strangers also sent in money. Warsaw Community Church Pastor Denny Wilson’s wife, Cookie, had a garage sale for them which raised over $2,000, Devlin said.
“It was pretty wild how the community came together for something that they’re 3,000 miles away from. So to see the heart of Warsaw be manifested in something as simple as a bike ride really speaks volumes for the quality of people we have here,” he said.
School let out June 7. Devlin and David Wildman started riding June 9 in New Mexico.
The first 70 miles went off without a hitch. All of a sudden, however, David Wildman started feeling sick.
“The first day, that is not something you want to hear, especially when you’re riding in 110 degrees, sun is beating down on you. You think you’re consuming enough water, but everything he was experiencing – he had chills, cold sweats, dizziness, dry heaving – all of those signs pointed toward some sort of heatstroke or heat exhaustion or dehydration,” Devlin recalled.
The target for that day was 127 miles. David Wildman made it 71. Devlin got to mile 92 and it hit him, too. They piled into the van.
“All of a sudden our dreams of racing this thing were over. For all intents and purposes, we were done,” Devlin said. “We had to drop out of this race. This vision that we had that we were going to go and crush this thing was over. It was one of the hardest and saddest things I’ve ever had to go through. We had been preparing for a year and a half and our dream, everything everyone was depending on us for at home, it was shot to pieces.”
The next day, David Wildman got back on his bike and they got 20 miles in when they should have been averaging 80. The third day they just drove to a hospital to get David Wildman fluids. He was laid up in a hospital and then a hotel for a few days. He was finally done with the ride.
On the fourth day, Devlin had a huge day.
“I was so tired of sitting in a van, sitting in a hotel room, I ended up busting out 126 miles that day. I had sunburn blisters just through northern New Mexico. It was almost a day of redemption. It was at that point that I realized whatever happens is going to happen, but we’re finishing this. I’m getting through this thing,” he recalled.
About a week and a half later, David Wildman finally flew home because he realized it was going to be too much to overcome.
Brent Wildman, 62, then joined Devlin for the rest of the time. He rode about 1,500 miles. David’s brother and Brent’s son, Josh Wildman, joined them for a week and put in close to 500 miles.
“It almost becomes a team effort. What can we do to get Tim to the finish? So we just kept riding and it was beautiful,” Devlin recalled. “The further north we got, the more beautiful the country got. Big Sky Montana was unbelieveable.”
When they got into Canada, Devlin said he saw the most beautiful mountain range, the Rocky Mountains, he ever saw in his life.
Some mornings Devlin woke up and it would be 20 to 25 degrees and ice was on his sleeping bag. They had to chip the ice off to get out of the bag. The only clothes they had were what they could carry.
“We ended up dealing with some rain. The avalanche debris that we ended up having to cross in Montana – there was one area where we had six or seven avalanche debris fields, and one was the length of a football field and wider then this classroom, that we had to climb over,” Devlin said.
To get over the avalanche debris, he had to shoulder his bike and climb over the trees. After 35 minutes of climbing, they got through.
The further north they went, the more wildlife they also came across like grizzlies, black bears, moose and elk. At one point he got chased by an angry badger.
Brent Wildman and Devlin ended up finishing in Banff on July 10.
“So it took 32 days. Even though we didn’t make our 2,700-mile goal, I rode just over 2,200 miles. Despite not making our goal, I think just the redemptive story behind the ride made it worthwhile. I’ve never done anything like that before,” Devlin said. “There was a part of me that was frustrated and angry that we didn’t make that distance. But another part of me realized that we were doing something for kids that can’t back out of their position. These are kids that are stuck in the cycle of poverty. There is no hope and they’re going to remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. Where as for the bike ride, we could have ducked out of it at any point. So to realize that, it gave a greater purpose for riding.”
On July 26, Devlin married his girlfriend who, with her mom, had planned their wedding while he was biking. [[In-content Ad]]Wildman Business Group takes several trips each year to the Dominican Republic. “I love what they do with their employees. They want their employees to see what the company gives back. Wildman Business Group plays a major role in the school and the orphanage in the Dominican Republic. They try to take their employees down a couple of times a year so their employees can get that taste of poverty and need and service,” Devlin said.
On Oct. 1, Wildman had a trip planned and a group of 20 went, including Devlin. They took school supplies, clothing, shoes and other items.
“But for me, it was kind of like the cap on the ride because I obviously wasn’t traveling for Wildman Business Group, I was traveling along with them, but for the purpose of putting an exclamation mark on this trip,” Devlin said. “I wanted to see the orphanage, I wanted to see the kids that it would service and see the community that it would service.”
Mason and Lia Geiger went along to film the trip as the capstone of their documentary, which is currently untitled. Devlin said a trailer is being put together for it, and the documentary will be released in fall 2015. Any profits from the video, art gallery or related works will go toward the House Of Hope and 2nd Mile Missions, Devlin noted.
Visiting the Dominican Republic took Devlin out of his comfort zone more than anything else he’s experienced in his life.
On the first night, there was a church service. The church and school sit inside the same compound on about 10 acres. It’s completely surrounded by stone walls that are 10 to 14 feet high with razor wire.
“That’s not to keep us in, but to keep the bad out,” Devlin explained.
When the sun sets, the music begins blaring. All the little clubs surrounding the compound come alive, including prostitutes who are just 12- or 13-year-old girls, up to their 20s.
“To think that that pays better than other employment options, which there aren’t many employment options out there, what other choices out there do they have? So that’s where the House Of Hope comes in. Right now they can house 12 girls, with a maximum of 20. They will range in ages from 12 to 17, 18. We’re just waiting on government approval,” Devlin said.
The girls – who don’t have parents and live on their own, and are at high risk for being abducted into the slave trade, or whose parents are prostitutes themselves – would live in the House Of Hope. It’s an effort to break the cycle of poverty and prostitution for the girls.
“The church down there honored me with a little award. I was truly humbled by it,” Devlin said. “It was nothing I deserved. It was for the ride, but the teachers are the unsung heroes. They’re teaching in classrooms that are tiny, maybe 30 feet by 30 feet, and they have 30 kids inside. They have some books, not a lot. They don’t have computers. There’s no technology in the classrooms.”
From there, the students go on to the trade school and learn skills to get hired by the tourist industry.
During the trip to the Dominican, Devlin said they were able to go to the small town of Monteverde. It’s a few miles away from the school, but several hundred kids walked to and from the town to the school daily. They wore bright white uniforms with “2nd Mile” on them, and were clean, smiled brightly and looked their best.
“But then you go to Monteverde where they live, and you see an 8-foot by 8-foot shack made out of sheet metal and the kid has one change of clothes. They don’t have clean water to drink. They’re bathing out in the open in dirty water that they can find. They might have one meal a day, maybe every two days. It was just a stark contrast between what was inside the premises of that school and where these kids were actually living,” Devlin said.
One kid, Roger, 17, has been living on his own for four years. He lives in the community, trying to make something of himself. He speaks four languages and works as a translator, but lives in a shack and goes to school every day because he knows that is the only way out of poverty. His story is just one of many, Devlin said.
“We played soccer one day with a whole bunch of kids and they’re in their bare feet, running across a baseball field, which used to be the community trash heap. They cleaned it up, and I use that word roughly. There’s broken glass bottles and they’re running over corral reef in their bare feet,” Devlin said.
The House Of Hope is the one place providing hope for the future, he said.
On the last day of the trip, on the last night before flying out, Devlin ended up getting sunburnt and badly ill. He was dehydrated, had a fever of 104.5 and started hallucinating. Around 6 a.m., he started losing feeling in his arms and legs. His fists clenched and he couldn’t release. He was taken to a small clinic, but they couldn’t even give him an IV there.
“It was pretty wild. Leslie Wildman prayed over me, and immediately my hands released. I started getting feeling back, but they ended up rushing me to the hospital because I was still throwing up. It was awful,” Devlin recalled.
He was in and out of consciousness, but was given fluids until he could fly home and be taken care of at Kosciusko Community Hospital.
“With all things considered, to make that the final event that happened in the crazy journey, it’s funny that I would end up dehydrated the same way David started the journey. It kind of came full circle so I could finally empathize,” he said.
Looking back on the whole process, Devlin said it seems like none of it ever happened. It was like a dream.
“I’ve never looked at my job of teaching as anything other than teaching until I saw the whole grander picture of living it out and literally enriching the lives of others,” he said. “The idea of serving other people ... you feel good, you know? You feel complete when you have an opportunity to save a life or provide hope to someone who doesn’t have it.”
For more information on 2nd Mile Adventures, visit www.goanewdistance.com; 2nd Mile Missions, visit www.2ndMileMissions.org; and Film for the Maker, www.filmforthemaker.com
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