There is no pressure on the daily rides, Faber explains, as there is no time limit set for everyone to reach the day's destination. "People would start riding at 3:30 a.m. before it got really hot, and the last people wouldn't leave until 6:00 a.m.," she says.

Leaving early can sometimes backfire, Kahrl says. "The Salt Flats of Utah are 40 miles of flat ground with no shade, and we were scared that the sun would fry us, so we got up at 4:30 a.m. and started to ride," he says. "There were headwinds and it was freezing cold, and instead of worrying about sunburn, we were worrying about frostbite."

Although there is usually no water along the route, as the towns can be 60 miles apart, each trip has two Support and Gear (SAG) vehicles, which drive back and forth among the riders and carry gear, food supplies, water and fruit for during the ride, Faber says.

Kahrl says that the SAG vehicles patrol the riders from front to back, and each rider usually sees a SAG vehicle every hour. "You can get in the SAG if you are hurt or tired," he says.

On different days, riders may choose to cycle alone or in groups, depending on mood and on the day. "Everyone always got where we were going," Kahrl says, "although getting lost became a regular thing."

Accommodations along the route vary from night to night, Faber says. "We stayed in churches, YMCA's and high schools, and we camped out in tents if there were no other options," she says. "The people in the towns we went through knew it was a fundraising trip for hunger, and churches would give us huge potluck dinners."

"Even though there was a big drought and we only had two days of rain all summer, the people in the farm towns were still very generous and prepared big meals for us," Faber says. "In Minnesota, there was a farm family, and even though their farm was about to be foreclosed they let all 20 of us stay and cooked for us. They even brought us to a farm crisis meeting."

The routes have been used before, so the group can call established contacts three days before its arrival to make sure there is no problem. "If there were problems, we contacted the main office at Stanford, [one of two regional ODN offices] and they helped us work things out," Faber says.

Throughout the trip, the bikers found people friendly. "In a small town in Kansas, a man at a potluck dinner asked us about our next day's route. When it turned out he lived along the way, 17 miles out of town, he offered to cook us a big breakfast the next morning," Collins says.

In each of the towns they pass through, the riders share information about their cause. "We tried to get audiences and we would either do a skit to demonstrate the problems of world hunger or just share facts and experiences about our trip," Kahrl says.

The skits took time to develop, Faber says, but once they were planned out, they were more effective than videos and plain discussions. "After the skit, everyone usually had questions," she says. Faber's group used a skit showing peasants in India who need a system to save water. The peasants hear that the United States government is giving aid, but then the riders act out a sequence showing that when money is given through governments, it is used along the way and never actually gets to the peasants. The peasants are told to apply to ODN, and then they get the money for a well directly, Faber explains.

`Dollar Bill Campaign'

The riders also hold a "dollar bill campaign" across the country, collecting small donations to give to a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., where all the groups meet at the end of the trips. "People signed their dollar bills, and we gave them to the shelter where we all stayed at the end," Collins says.

Each member of the group contributed to a food fund, and the bikers bought food together, Faber says. However, most of the trips' food was donated along the way.

"We would beg for food at restaurants and grocery stores," Kahrl says. "We told them what we were doing and said `Can you give us food?' It was something none of us had ever done before. They would give us food that was stale-dated, and one place in Utah gave us 70 pounds of vegetables and fruit."