Jun. 6--VALDOSTA -- Early Thursday afternoon, two images could be seen rising out of the steaming blacktop of U.S. Highway 84 headed east into Valdosta.
As the scorching pavement pushed steam into the air, two cyclists were riding through the heat, as their journey brought them from Pensacola, Fla. to Valdosta and then beyond.
Seventeen-year-old John Ellis and his friend Jamaal Warren started their journey four days ago, leaving behind their hometown and a frightening diagnosis to Ellis. The journey will bring them 1,100 miles north and toward hope for others suffering from the same disease.
Although the physical journey started Monday, the course was set two years ago when Ellis, then 16, was diagnosed with Hepatitis B.
Up until the diagnosis of an infection in his liver, Ellis' body was rebelling. Every day after coming home from school, exhausted beyond his limits, he would have to head straight into his room for a three-hour nap.
It proved to be more than just a teenager stressed out with the rigors of high school. A visit to the doctor just two weeks before his 16th birthday, almost to the day his current journey started, revealed the enzymes in his liver were elevated.
"Of course I was really scared at first, because I didn't know what it was," Ellis said. "After they ran the second test, it was definite, and that's when I turned to the Hepatitis B Foundation Web site. It was monumental in bringing me through that."
Ellis continued to consult www.hepb.org, which started to stoke the fires of raising money for others to be assisted.
Along with research, Ellis also started taking medications to help with the disease about two weeks following his second blood test. That's when he picked up the energy to start looking after himself physically.
"I felt like I was a zombie almost," Ellis said. "But since I started on the meds, I've been a different person. I rode my bike 70 miles in one day. If that's not proof enough, I don't know what is."
One of the ways was to take to the streets on a bike. He picked up a used bicycle a year ago, and has taken it to the next level.
The next level was the trip he is now enduring, for both himself and others, through what is dubbed the 2008 Believe in the Cure Cycling Tour.
The tour may never have been lifted off of its kickstand if not for Pat Crawford, the director of the Pensacola National Public Radio station. Crawford once walked from Pensacola to Washington in order to raise money for the public broadcasting station, and Ellis' idea took shape.
"I thought if he could do that for the radio station, why can't I do that for Hepatitis B Foundation?," Ellis said.
He then thought it out loud, suggesting the idea to his mother, who replied in typical skeptical mother form.
"She was like, 'What are you an idiot, what are you thinking?,'" Ellis said. "I think she thought it would blow over, but after she saw I had my stuff together, she was very supportive."
She's so supportive that she's taking two weeks off from work, in order to ride in the support van with Ellis' grandmother, Pat Morrow-Johnson, starting today.
Ellis got the Hepatitis B Foundation on board, who then set up a Web page for the Believe in the Cure Cycling Tour, where visitors can read about Ellis, see a blog and make donations. A current thermometer on the page has almost $6,000 donated to his cause, while a donor has agreed to double anything up to $10,000.
"It all started in August 2007," said Melanie Groff, a Hepatitis B Foundation member. "That's when John sent the initial e-mail. We've been planning since January."
With the responsibility of the logistical details being shared, Ellis finished up school and recruited Warren, his best friend for the past six years, to ride with him.
"I wanted to support him and help him out," Warren said. "I thought it would be a fun trip and a nice adventure."
The two graduated four days before they took to the road, amid cheers from their former school mates.
The trip began at Tate High School, just outside Pensacola, with about 150 people and news crews gathered around the football stadium while the band played during the honorary lap around the track. Ellis and Warren then took off, complete with a police escort to the next county.
The two have been detailing their trip on a blog on the Hepatitis B Foundation Web site detailing the physical perils of their trip, along with the thoughts and things they see, such as a running list of roadside artifacts like soda cans and crushed cell phones.
"It's really amazing when you're on a bike," Ellis said. "You see things differently. Even around home, when you ride around town, it's like a different city."
The ride brought them into Valdosta from Tallahassee Thursday in what they described as the toughest day of the trip thus far.
"There wasn't much shoulder once we got into Georgia," Ellis said. "We were driving around traffic on one side and dealing with the sleep guard's stupid bumps on the other."
At 8 a.m. this morning, the two will depart for Waycross and to the coast, where they will head toward Savannah, then Charleston and then to points in North Carolina and Virginia, before reaching Baltimore and then, ultimately, Philadelphia.
Along the way, they will continue to fight dehydration, seeing new experiences and both celebrating their 18th birthdays.
"A year ago, I couldn't see myself doing this," Ellis said. "It really opened my eyes to how fragile life could be."
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