John Maus, a former wildland firefighter, embarked on a cross-country bicycle journey of over 4,000 miles for charity last month, raising money for the Save a Heart Foundation to benefit children born with congenital heart disease. The most common birth defect in the nation, the disease requires lifelong medical care.
Maus is currently preparing to begin his second career as a physical therapist, studying in the Exercise Science program at Central Michigan University. He recently opened up to us about his love of cycling, the outdoors, and the wonder that is the human body.
Q: How long have you been cycling and what got you started started?
A: As a young teen, it didn’t take me long to realise that I could ride 30 miles on a bike, which meant I had my own transportation to go hang out with my friends. After graduating high school, though, I put the hobby on the shelf for a while and didn’t rediscover my passion for riding until adulthood.
Q: What inspired you to make this idea of riding across America a reality?
A: I didn’t pick riding back up until after my experiences firefighting. I then felt the desire to get on a bike and ride across the country. I spent a couple of years talking about the idea with an older friend of mine, who wished he had made the trip while he was still young enough. Last year, he passed away from pancreatic cancer. That loss and the regret he had expressed to me over not attempting to reach his goal while he had the chance really pushed me to commit to going through with the idea.
Q: Why did you choose the Save a Heart Foundation to support with your efforts?
A: The Save a Heart Foundation is an organization for children with congenital heart disease, located at the Mott Children’s Hospital. I have been given the gift of such a healthy body, I wanted to help these kids have a chance to thrive too. I have a friend whose son who passed away from this disease and he raises money for Save a Heart, so I wanted to help support them as well.
Q: Were there unexpected challenges that popped up on this journey? What kept you going through it all?
A: A lot of unexpected challenges came up along the way. Thankfully, they mainly just came down to logistics. There were hard times, but when it felt like it was all getting too hard to handle I made sure to take the time to rest. Then, I got up and continued to work towards my goal. My commitment to myself to see this project through kept me going, along with meeting so many special people along the way, who gave me inspiration through their generosity and their stories.
Q: Do you plan to continue taking part in this type of fundraising in the future?
A: I absolutely want to do as many more things like this for charity as I can. It’s truly an awesome way to help rally folks to give back. I have been shown that giving back and paying kindness forward is such an amazing experience and I want to do as much of that as possible. I want to encourage anyone who is interested in giving back to the community to visit my crowdsourcing page and make a donation to the Save a Heart Foundation.
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