Team Jesse Cyclists Nearing Ground Zero
Continued coverage of Team Jesse by Guy Kovner in The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, CA Kevin Mincio, a 40-year-old Iraq war veteran, mingled with other tourists on Friday at Valley Forge, where Gen. George Washington's Continental Army endured the cold, wet winter of 1777-78.
En route to the historic site near Philadelphia, Mincio and his traveling teammate, Matt Sauri, passed the 4,000-mile mark of their cross-county bicycle journey that began 86 days earlier in Santa Rosa.
Specifically, the two cyclists departed on June 9 from the Santa Rosa Memorial Park gravesite of Army Staff Sgt. Jesse Williams, a Bronze Medal recipient who was killed in Iraq in 2007.
They are now within days and less than 200 miles of their goal, Ground Zero in Manhattan, where Mincio and Sauri, 41, intend to arrive on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
“We are exactly where we said we'd be,” Mincio said Friday in a telephone interview.
Wearing red, white and blue cycling uniforms, Mincio and Sauri are riding under the banner of the Team Jesse Foundation, a nonprofit formed last year to raise money for the families of fallen soldiers.