Cross-country construction on two wheels

Hurley and Pennington will ride from Portland, Maine to Santa Barbara, Calif., working at 12 build sites along the way, two of them in Ohio—one in Columbus and one in Yellow Springs.

Wright State University students Chrissy Hurley and Corey Pennington are taking a unique road trip this summer. After graduation, the two plan to bicycle across America with an organization called Bike and Build, stretching their muscles on home construction sites in partnership with affordable housing groups like Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together.

Hurley and Pennington will ride from Portland, Maine to Santa Barbara, Calif., working at 12 build sites along the way, two of them in Ohio—one in Columbus and one in Yellow Springs.

“This is a great way to spend the summer after graduating,” says Pennington.

“You’re not just taking the summer off to go biking,” adds Hurley. You’re also helping people.”

Hurley and Pennington are keenly aware of the need for affordable housing in their own hometowns as well as the Dayton area, and are eager to help across the nation. Hurley has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Tiffin, Ohio. Pennington, who is from New Richmond, southeast of Cincinnati, saw Habitat for Humanity help rebuild his town after the 1987 flood.

Hurley, a nursing major, participated in a community nursing program. She says that some of the homes she saw in Dayton made it clear to her that there was a need for affordable housing.

“You kind of take it for granted,” she says. “Dayton, Ohio. Everyone is fine, right? But some of the stuff I saw really puts it in perspective.”

When they’re not building or biking, participants are still engaged in helping the communities they visit. “We give bike safety presentations to kids on the road,” says Hurley.

Every rider is responsible for preparing these presentations, which are offered as community meeting-type seminars in the towns that host the Bike and Build riders each night.

“Pretty much any day you don’t build a house, you do [presentations] at night,” Pennington says.

Riders are also responsible for raising $4,000 to defray their own costs (including a brand new road bike) and to fund the grants that Bike and Build donates to affordable housing organizations.

Of that $4,000, every rider is designated a grant of $500 to give to the affordable housing cause of their choice, and the group as a whole chooses one organization to receive a larger grant.

The fundraising goals and the schedule might sound grueling—raise $4,000, ride an average of 70 miles a day, build a house a week and remain coherent and cheerful for nightly bike safety presentations. Still, Hurley can’t stop smiling while she talks about it. “I’m just really excited,” she keeps saying.

Hurley, a nursing major, says she thinks that her experience with Bike and Build will help her once she returns to work at Dayton Children’s Hospital.“ A lot of people don’t really think about it, but nursing is a lot of leadership,” she says.

“You have to come into a community and you have to assess it. What’s going on, what are their needs, what do they need to learn about?” she says. “That’s kind of what nursing is too. You’re constantly assessing people. What do they need? What do I need to teach them, so that they can be successful and go home and not come back?”

Pennington, an accounting major, says that he is looking forward to the trip more as an opportunity for personal, rather than professional, growth. “I think we take our simple, daily lives for granted,” he says, and this trip will be a way to help bring attention to the needs of Americans who are less fortunate.

He also says that biking across the country will be a unique experience he will cherish for years to come.

“I think it’s going to be hard to tell how we’re going to grow now,” he says. “By the end of the summer, it will change us.”

Both Hurley and Pennington are still taking donations and will be until June 18, the kickoff date for the Portland–Santa Barbara ride. For more information, or to make a donation, contact them at pennington.22@wright.edu or hurley.22@wright.edu