Four years ago, Joe Sapere had nothing but open road and clear skies in front of him.
The Chesapeake, Va., man was twice retired -- as an Air Force colonel in 1989, then as a fourth-grade teacher in 1998. He had sold his home, bought a 35-foot travel trailer and set his sights on the world.
Then it all came crashing down.
Sapere had his left foot amputated after a skydiving accident in February 2000. That's when he came up with a new vision: a bike ride across America.
"The idea was just a goal that I set when I was lying in my hospital bed four years ago," said Sapere, 64, a founding member of Amputees Across America, organized under the nonprofit Alabama Association for the Physically Challenged.
Sapere and three other riders -- Linda Holt, 48, of Georgia, Kip Peavy, 54, of Montgomery, Ala., and James Thayer, 42, of Peabody, Mass. -- will pedal into Pittsburgh this week. The 4,700-mile transcontinental journey started June 2 in San Francisco and will end Aug. 6 at New York City's Rockefeller Center.
On Wednesday, the group will visit HealthSouth facilities in Harmarville at 10 a.m. and in Sewickley at 4 p.m. At 10 a.m. Thursday, the cyclists will visit a HealthSouth facility in Monroeville before heading on to Altoona, Blair County.
Sapere coordinates the cross-country trip, which is now in its third year and aimed at demonstrating to people who have lost limbs due to accidents, injuries or illnesses that they didn't leave the rest of their lives back on the operating table.
The jaunt last week included a parachute jump just outside of Chicago.
"Skydiving is something I never thought I'd do, and it was a thrill, but I don't really think I'm ever going to skydive again," said Holt, 48, the first woman on the tour.
Holt was dropping her 5-year-old daughter off at day care in Baltimore when the two were struck by a car. Her daughter, now 18, suffered some scrapes and a cut.
Holt wasn't so lucky. Her ankle was mangled to the point where she lived in pain and went through a number of unsuccessful surgeries before deciding that her prospects for pain-free living would be better with a prosthesis.
"For 12 years I felt very handicapped, but not anymore," Holt said. "Amputation does not mean your life is over. As in my case, it sometimes means you get your life back."
Asked if he ever envisioned himself biking across the country, Peavy quipped, "I still can't."
But when Amputees Across America rolled through Montgomery last year, he expressed interest in joining them. When his application was accepted, Peavy said, he couldn't turn it down.
Peavy lost a leg five years ago when the car in which he was riding was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler.
He recalled feeling uneasy as he climbed onto a bicycle for the first time in years.
"I got about a half-mile from my house and said 'How am I going to get back?'" Peavy said. "But this has been the most incredible and awesome thing I've ever done -- not just the bike rides but the visitations."
Sapere keeps telling his charges -- each of whom will have pedaled about 1,500 miles over a two-month period -- that the trip through Pittsburgh will be entirely downhill.
"Of course, he's been saying that since we got out of Colorado," said Thayer, who also was recruited last year when the tour came through Wichita, Kan., where he had been a motorcycle police officer until a near-fatal accident seven years ago.
"The most important part of the story is getting to meet with other new amputees," Thayer said. "For some people, their lives are a daily struggle."
