Art professor to bike with brother
from Lombard to Fairbanks for charity

by Mark McGowan

Dreams are stubborn things, especially when life gets in the way.

Ask Todd Buck, an assistant professor in the NIU School of Art. Buck took a nasty header off his bike last August, landing on his noggin and making good friends with the neighborhood chiropractor. His older brother, Bob, an NIU alum, once was an avid bicyclist who hasn’t pedaled seriously in a quarter-century.

But there is that itch the two share – to embark on a long-distance ride on their bicycles – and it seems nothing will stop them from scratching.

The Buck brothers will leave Todd’s Lombard home Sunday, May 22, and pedal 4,500 miles to Fairbanks, Ala., arriving the first week of August. The trip will span 10 weeks at a pace of 75 miles a day, six days a week.

“Chicago to Seattle, you’re halfway there. That kind of puts it into perspective,” Buck says. “It’s a lot of time to think, a lot of hours in the saddle, a lot of daydreaming. It’s a whole different experience of seeing the countryside. You feel the hills. You feel the wind. You feel the rain. You smell the roadkill. Your endorphins are pumping. Everything seems more magnificent.”

Yet an entire summer on two wheels is also “a pretty selfish endeavor,” he says, noting the time away from wives and families and jobs.

This trip, however, has “more of a purpose than selfish wanderlust.”

The Bucks hope to raise $30,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions. The foundation typically spends about $5,000 per wish, Buck says, so the brothers are striving to emulate the fictional genies who grant three wishes each.

“We’re living our dream so we can help these kids live their dreams,” he says. “It’s an awesome charity. We believe in their mission. It’s a special kind of medicine to these kids who are sick – a break from reality.”

Long bike trips are nothing new for the 39-year-old Buck, who has pedaled the 1,000 miles from Connecticut to Chicago, logged 800 miles in Alaska and rode 400 miles up the west coast of Ireland.

Buck’s passion for the outdoors runs in the family. His father was a landscape architect for the Cook County Forest Preserve District who helped to design Busse Woods. His mother was an elementary school P.E. teacher and guidance counselor in Barrington, where the family lived, who fueled the love for long-distance biking and other outdoor sports.

This summer’s excursion will include camping and plenty of opportunities for fishing.

The brothers are carrying their tents, sleeping bags, clothes, collapsible fishing poles, tackle and one day’s food in panniers, custom-made bags that lay across the front and back of each cycle and snap to the sides. The panniers add between 40 and 50 pounds to each bike.

But the summer also brings a tinge of anxiety.

Buck, whose August accident caused a bulging disc in his cervical spine, still sees his chiropractor for the pain.

Bob, who is 45 and lives in Holmen, Wis., near LaCrosse, had gained some weight over the years. Bob has turned things around, though, with two hours a day on the basement training cycle throughout the winter. “Now the guy’s just kicking butt,” Todd says.

They’re both preparing with short trips – Todd on his Bianchi touring bike, Bob on his Trek – as they pack the panniers with books to simulate the load.

“We know if we wait another 10 years, we’ll never get it done,” Todd says. “People usually say it sounds crazy, but we’ve had a lot of positive feedback, that there’s someone in the family who was a Make-A-Wish recipient. I didn’t know it hit so many families close to home. Is this trip necessary? No. Is this trip necessary for these kids? No – but it will offer a sense of relief for these kids.”

Buck joined the School of Art last fall. It’s the first teaching job for the formerly full-time freelance medical illustrator who “needed to get out of the studio. I needed to go out and bump elbows and exchange ideas.”

He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and pre-medical illustration from Iowa State University – he was among the first six or seven graduates of the program – and a master’s degree in medical illustration from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Buck had planned to become a high school biology teacher when he decided to combine his love of drawing with science. He now juggles NIU with his freelance business, and is currently drawing the cover for the next issue of American Family Physician magazine.

The summer will present two other opportunities for creative expression – writing and photography – as the Bucks maintain a blog complete with photos from the road with help from Todd’s wife, Janet, an NIU alumna.

Visitors to www.buckbrothersbiketour.typepad.com also can download donation forms.

“We’re just going to experience North America,” he says, “at a much, much slower pace.”

4-25-05