While Tom Kingsbury rides across Wisconsin to raise funds for a Gulf War memorial at the The High Ground, Iraq War vet Tyler Boudreau’s cross country bike ride is not what you might expect, with a goal a little less concrete but every bit as worthwhile. From Boudreau’s website:
In its most fundamental sense, this project is about searching for what’s on “the other side” of the battlefield. It is very much about veterans who have found themselves hurled suddenly to the other side of a catastrophic injury, or Post-Traumatic Stress, or an inexplicably dysfunctional. life in the aftermath of war. But it is also about the nature of warfare itself. There is a great mythology associated with battle. Those of us who ride seek “the other side” of that mythology. We seek the other side of ourselves. We travel to “the other side” of the country to find it.
In many respects, this project is a fresh attempt at “Coming Home.” Veterans of the current wars and their communities have been struggling to find each other but are in so many ways blinded or blocked by political and cultural barriers. A major objective of this project is to get to “the other side” of those barriers and find home–possibly a better version of home…possibly as better versions of ourselves.
Boudreau is currently riding through Wisconsin.