CANTON — With the practiced ease of a traffic cop, Suzie Cheatham directed more than 2,000 bicyclists off Route 108 and onto Route 140 on Friday morning.
She had help from Oxford County Deputy Sheriff Josh Wyman and two Maine State Police troopers who managed traffic for bicyclists at the busy intersection.
Cheatham is one of 700 volunteers helping in the American Lung Association’s 28th annual Trek Across Maine, a three-day, 180-mile pedaling adventure with the goal of raising $1.8 million this year.
“Thank you!” several bicyclists said as they cruised past Cheatham. “Thank you for helping us!”
“You’re most welcome; my pleasure,” Cheatham replied, a broad smile etched on her tanned face.
“More than a third of the riders have said, ‘Thank you,’ to me and the police officers. It’s very nice.”
As she volunteered, Cheatham’s husband Tom was riding in his eighth or ninth trek, she said.
“We do it because my dad died of lung cancer and I have a 52-year-old brother-in-law who’s got non-smoker’s lung cancer, so this is important to us,” Suzie Cheatham said.
At 11 a.m., trekker Crystal Collins-Littlefield of Augusta passed Cheatham, turning left onto Route 140.
Forty-five minutes earlier, Collins-Littlefield had stopped at the Ski Rack Sports bike maintenance site in the United Steelworkers Local 900 Union parking lot on Route 108 in Rumford.
It was the first rest stop of the ride, which began at 7 a.m. Friday for waves of riders leaving Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry. Day’s end after the nearly 70-mile pedal through Rumford, Peru, Canton, Jay, East Dixfield and Wilton was at the University of Maine at Farmington.
Collins-Littlefield told Lee Gagnon of Bangor she had a shifting problem. In less than five minutes, he adjusted the touring bike’s derailleur until it worked correctly.
Collins-Littlefield said she raised $2,010 for this trek, her seventh. And, despite working three jobs, she got in some practice rides.
She works at Sam’s Club on mornings, cleans at night and works at a respite for autistic children.
“I’ve had several aunts and uncles with lung issues and I just thought it was a good way to get healthy, because I’m aging,” Collins-Littlefield said.
Two years ago while training for the trek, she took a spill while crossing railroad tracks and fractured a knee less than a week before the event, she said.
“The doctor told me, ‘We don’t want you riding,’ and I said, ‘No, that’s not an option. Give me a shot. I made the Winner’s Circle and I’m riding,'” Collins-Littlefield said.
She said she had to ice her injured knee a lot, but she pedaled the distance. That knee was bothering some on Friday, she said.
But unlike two years ago, when it rained during the trek and was “really miserable,” riders had plenty of sunshine Friday, a nice breeze and temperatures in the 60s.
“You couldn’t ask for better weather for this,” Gagnon said.
He and Jeremy Smith ran the Ski Rack Sports booth, properly inflating tires, fixing flats and adjusting derailleurs.
“Pretty simple stuff for the most part,” he said, before taking rider No. 2052’s rear wheel off his bike to search for, find and remove the sharp piece of metal that flattened the tube.
He replaced the tube and remounted the fixed wheel.
“The roads in Maine aren’t great,” Gagnon said. “I mean, they should certainly sweep the roads with a sweeper before the ride, because there’s metal and there’s glass on them. So, with this many riders, there’s going to be flats.”
Trek Across Maine spokeswoman Elizabeth DiMartino said Friday morning that 2,525 riders registered for the Trek, but only 2,095 actually came. Last year, 1,900 riders raised $1.7 million.
Another rider asked Gagnon if the rest stop was the halfway point. Gagnon told him he’d only pedaled 20 miles and took him to the route map mounted behind the booth.
There checking the map were Dan McCluskey and Stephanie Rivenburgh, both of Yonkers, N.Y., and both members of the 200-member L.L. Bean team that raised $152,510.
McCluskey’s and Rivenburgh’s jerseys sported the ironed-on initials of their L.L. Bean co-worker who died last week of a heart attack.
McCluskey, a Richmond native, said he raised $650 for the Lung Association and recruited nine co-workers to join him on his third trek. Rivenburgh, who has asthma, said she raised $550.
“I hail from upstate New York and I love it up here,” she said. “I get three days of breathing this (fresher air).”
Riders are to leave Farmington for Waterville on Saturday and ride from Waterville to Belfast on Sunday.
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- Bicyclists participating in the American Lung Association’s 28th annual Trek Across Maine three-day fundraiser from Newry to Belfast, take off for Route 140 after being held up on Route 108 to allow lines of backed-up traffic to resume travel. They are riding past Trek volunteer Suzie Cheatham, far left, who is telling them to turn left onto Route 140 at the busy intersection.
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- American Lung Association Trek Across Maine volunteer Suzie Cheatham, left, indicates to bicyclists they’re turning left off Route 108 and onto Route 140 on Friday morning in Canton.
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- Lee Gagnon, left, of Ski Rack Sports in Bangor, attaches a tire pump plug to the air valve on the bike of Crystal Collins-Littlefield, watching at right, during Friday’s first leg of the American Lung Association’s 28th annual Trek Across Maine. Gagnon fixed a shifting problem for the Augusta rider at the Trek’s Rumford rest stop on Route 108, then ensured her tires were properly inflated.
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- Raymond McKnight, 7, and his father, Kelsey Sullivan of Winterport, get ready to bike 60 miles during the first day of the American Lung Association Trek Across Maine at Sunday River in Newry on Friday. They will camp two nights in a tent before finishing the trek in Belfast on Sunday. McKnight, a second-grader at Leroy H. Smith School, has asthma. That was his father’s inspiration to start the fundraising ride three years ago.
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- Using her hands and arms, American Lung Association Trek Across Maine volunteer Suzie Cheatham tells incoming bicyclists to stop along Route 108 on Friday just before the four-way intersection with Route 140 in Canton so police could release backed-up traffic. Once the roads were free, the bicyclists resumed their ride.
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- Christian Wincklhofer, center, and Gabe Blodgett, left, of Rockport start the American Lung Association Trek Across Maine on their “old-school” bicycles at Sunday River in Newry on Friday. “I think we have 21 speeds between the two of us,” Wincklhofer said. “This is what we ride at home, so why not?”
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- Cyclists begin the three-day Trek Across Maine at Sunday River in Newry on Friday.
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- Oxford County Deputy Sheriff Josh Wyman, right, and American Lung Association Trek Across Maine volunteer Suzie Cheatham, center, wait on Route 108 on Friday morning in Canton for backed-up traffic to clear, before releasing stopped riders headed for Route 140 and Jay.
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