After cycling through 10 provinces in 72 days and clocking 7,911 clicks on his bike, Campbell River’s Jacob Koomen is back home with a generous donation ready for the Canadian Cancer Society and a life time of stories.
Koomen says his adventure, which helped him raise more than $19,000 and counting for cancer research, was the trip of a lifetime – though he admits he’d never do it again.
“If I was 25, I probably would do it again but at 69, no,” Koomen says. “And also it wouldn’t be the same. It’s a journey of a lifetime and I can say I enjoyed it.
“I didn’t have any accidents,” he adds with a grin.
But he did have plenty of mishaps.
While visiting his son in Ontario, three raccoons pried open the cooler he and his wife Jannie, who made the trek with Koomen, had left outside. The bandits made off with everything, including Koomen’s energy bars and oatmeal.
Koomen also lost his wedding ring somewhere along the way.
“We were having lunch and I realized it was gone. I said, ‘I lost my wedding ring, after 52 years.’ Jannie said to me, ‘you’re not going to get rid of me that easily,’” Koomen recalls.
Then there were the two flat bicycle tires he suffered while on the highway in northern Ontario in an area with no cell phone service. A kind stranger stopped for Koomen, and drove him the three kilometres down the highway to where Jannie had pulled over their van and trailer to wait for him to catch up. But the ordeal was far from over.
“Jannie went to start the van and we heard, ‘click, click, click.’ The battery had died while she was on the side of the road waiting for me,” Koomen says. “Luckily, we had two batteries in the Woody (their small trailer) and we gave ourselves a boost.”
And if that wasn’t enough, there were the black flies and horse flies through the prairies and Ontario that Koomen had to contend with.
“The big monster horseflies – those suckers fly right beside you, trying to get into your helmet – and they try to take big chunks of meat out of your legs,” he says.
But then there were the good moments that made the other parts easier to forget. At one point along the way, the Koomens had to take their van in for an oil change. When they got their vehicle back, they found a $10 bill and note pinned to the steering wheel. As it turned out, the mechanic was a cancer survivor and when he found out what Koomen was doing, he wanted to donate to the cause.
As a champion in the battle against cancer, Koomen took on the cross-Canada cycle tour as a challenge for himself and to raise funds for the Canadian Cancer Society. He rode under the banner of the Ride2Survive – a one day, 400-kilometre bicycle ride from Kelown to Delta that he has participated in for the past five years. He departed Campbell River on June 2 with a community send-off at Spirit Square. A few members of the River City Cycle, to which he belongs, rode with him at the beginning but peeled off at different points along the way. One woman made it as far as Nanoose. After cycling for 64 days (averaging 123.6 km a day), taking eight rest days and only having six days of rain, Koomen reached the final point of his destination – Cape Spear on the eastern tip of Canada in Newfoundland – on Aug. 12 where he ceremoniously dipped his bike into the Atlantic. Jannie, who brought water from the Pacific Ocean, dumped it into the Atlantic to mark the end of the journey. The pair returned home to Campbell River on Sept. 13 after 104 days on the road. On the way back, Koomen rode in the van with Jannie but the couple made a pit stop in Ohio to visit their son and take part in a 70-km ride. Being the avid cyclist that he is, Koomen also tackled a 100-km race in Ontario.
During his cross-country tour, Koomen got the chance to meet with cancer patients at a cancer hospital in Regina, Sask. as well as several cancer survivors and sufferers he and Jannie met at campsites and hotels they stayed in along the way.
“The people we met on the trip were fantastic,” Koomen says. “At one campsite, we met a lady next to us that was on chemotherapy. There was another couple, it was very emotional, the lady told us her daughter is dealing with a bad case of cancer and she has three-year-old twins and she hopes she will pull through.”
Koomen says his only wish with all the fundraising he has done for the Cancer Society over the years is that someone will be helped because of his efforts.
“I tell people, ‘it’s not about me, it’s about the people I’m riding for,’” Koomen says. “It really hits you hard, when you meet people who are dying of cancer.”
Koomen says at a fundraiser he attended recently for the Cops for Cancer Tour de Valley, that a group of roughly 300 people were told to look around the room and one out of two of those people will be affected by cancer at some point in their lifetime, whether it be themself or a family member or close friend diagnosed with cancer.
Koomen himself has seen two former co-workers lose their battles with cancer – within just months of each other – while Jannie has lost her brother and a former student of hers to the ugly disease.
When Koomen rides, he carries all of their spirits with him and all of the physical challenges he puts himself through when cycling up grueling hills and across great distances is worth it, he says, if it helps even just one person.
But the job isn’t done yet. Koomen is still collecting donations for the Cancer Society online. Anyone who would like to donate can visit, ride2survive.ca or Koomen’s blog at: cycle4cancer.wordpress.com
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