indigoiis
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These folks are amazing. Pricilla weighed 300 lbs at the beginning of their trip. They are biking the perimeter of the U.S. Amazing!
Here is their website: - leave them a message of support!
Here is a story from a local paper about their stop in Rhode Island:
Couple's bike trek carries message of staying fit
By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff
Priscilla Houliston, half of a long-distance bicycle team from Key West, Fla., celebrated her 44th birthday Friday in Newport.
"This is the most fantastic place," she said. "I couldn't have chosen a more beautiful place to celebrate my birthday."
She and her husband, Morton, 40, left Key West on Jan. 1 and plan to travel the perimeter of the United States during a two-year journey that will bring them back to Florida by Jan. 1, 2009. They are making the more than 16,000-mile trip to raise awareness about the importance of exercise, and to show that anybody can do it.
"I always thought I was way too fat to do something like this," she said.
Houliston said she weighed almost 400 pounds last year. She said she dropped about 50 pounds before January and weighed 343 pounds when the bike trip began. Her husband weighed 199 pounds. After riding an average of 30 miles a day for the past four months, she is down to 270 pounds and he is at 175.
They have been mainly camping along the way - in wildlife refuges, church basements and even behind billboards, Houliston said. But people also have generously donated accommodations and meals during their adventure, she said.
They lucked out in Newport County.
Danny Alexander, owner of the Narragansett Cafe in Jamestown, saw them soon after they rode over the Jamestown-Verrazzano Bridge and provided them with a meal of quesadillas and them put them up in his house Thursday night.
Houliston said the Las Palmas Inn on Collins Street offered to put them up Friday night and tonight. The Rose Island Lighthouse has provided space for Sunday night, and Monday morning the couple expects to continue on the next leg of their journey toward Cape Cod. They plan to ride out to Provincetown before heading for Boston and the Maine-Canada border.
They have no set plan or timetable for the trip, except their projected finish date.
"We're letting life happen," she said.
Houliston has a background in Web design and she and her husband are chronicling their trip with daily blogs and photos at .
She said the Web site is receiving between 300,000 and 400,000 hits a day. They are funding the trip through the sale of T-shirts online. They earn $2 for each T-shirt sold, and people also are making cash donations at the Web site.
Houliston said she spends about four hours a day on her laptop, updating the Web site and answering e-mails.
She originally is from Gettysburg, Pa., and her husband is from Edinburgh, Scotland. They were running an arts and crafts shop in Edinburgh until about a year ago, when they came back to the United States because Priscilla's mother suffered a stroke. She said her mother was about 100 pounds overweight and she saw her mother's fate as her own, unless she did something drastic to change her life.
"I was looking into a crystal ball," she said.
She and her husband each pull a 60-pound trailer with their bicycles. The trailers hold their camping equipment, changes of clothes and other supplies.
Houliston said she is burning several thousand calories a day, and most days getting by on cans of tuna, canned fruit and canned vegetables, as well as crackers and pretzels.
By the end of the trip, she is pretty sure her weight will be in the 160-pound range.
Here is their website: - leave them a message of support!
Here is a story from a local paper about their stop in Rhode Island:
Couple's bike trek carries message of staying fit
By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff
Priscilla Houliston, half of a long-distance bicycle team from Key West, Fla., celebrated her 44th birthday Friday in Newport.
"This is the most fantastic place," she said. "I couldn't have chosen a more beautiful place to celebrate my birthday."
She and her husband, Morton, 40, left Key West on Jan. 1 and plan to travel the perimeter of the United States during a two-year journey that will bring them back to Florida by Jan. 1, 2009. They are making the more than 16,000-mile trip to raise awareness about the importance of exercise, and to show that anybody can do it.
"I always thought I was way too fat to do something like this," she said.
Houliston said she weighed almost 400 pounds last year. She said she dropped about 50 pounds before January and weighed 343 pounds when the bike trip began. Her husband weighed 199 pounds. After riding an average of 30 miles a day for the past four months, she is down to 270 pounds and he is at 175.
They have been mainly camping along the way - in wildlife refuges, church basements and even behind billboards, Houliston said. But people also have generously donated accommodations and meals during their adventure, she said.
They lucked out in Newport County.
Danny Alexander, owner of the Narragansett Cafe in Jamestown, saw them soon after they rode over the Jamestown-Verrazzano Bridge and provided them with a meal of quesadillas and them put them up in his house Thursday night.
Houliston said the Las Palmas Inn on Collins Street offered to put them up Friday night and tonight. The Rose Island Lighthouse has provided space for Sunday night, and Monday morning the couple expects to continue on the next leg of their journey toward Cape Cod. They plan to ride out to Provincetown before heading for Boston and the Maine-Canada border.
They have no set plan or timetable for the trip, except their projected finish date.
"We're letting life happen," she said.
Houliston has a background in Web design and she and her husband are chronicling their trip with daily blogs and photos at .
She said the Web site is receiving between 300,000 and 400,000 hits a day. They are funding the trip through the sale of T-shirts online. They earn $2 for each T-shirt sold, and people also are making cash donations at the Web site.
Houliston said she spends about four hours a day on her laptop, updating the Web site and answering e-mails.
She originally is from Gettysburg, Pa., and her husband is from Edinburgh, Scotland. They were running an arts and crafts shop in Edinburgh until about a year ago, when they came back to the United States because Priscilla's mother suffered a stroke. She said her mother was about 100 pounds overweight and she saw her mother's fate as her own, unless she did something drastic to change her life.
"I was looking into a crystal ball," she said.
She and her husband each pull a 60-pound trailer with their bicycles. The trailers hold their camping equipment, changes of clothes and other supplies.
Houliston said she is burning several thousand calories a day, and most days getting by on cans of tuna, canned fruit and canned vegetables, as well as crackers and pretzels.
By the end of the trip, she is pretty sure her weight will be in the 160-pound range.
