This country is vast and wonderful

In Providence, bicyclist’s cross-country trek finishes to a hero’s welcome
By Donita Naylor
Journal Staff Writer
Posted Aug 29, 2018 at 10:05 PM Updated Aug 29, 2018 at 10:52 PM

One reason Judy Davis, 52, made the 3,700-mile trip was to raise money for an Aquatics Endowment at the Providence Boys & Girls Clubs.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — On her last day of pedaling across the continent, lawyer Judy Davis, 52, stopped about 15 miles from her Providence destination, where a crowd was gathering to give her a hero’s welcome at the Fox Point Boys & Girls Club.

Boys and girls played in the club’s pool and gym on the last day of their summer session as Davis reflected on her 3,700-mile adventure and wrote a last blog entry before it ended. One reason Davis made the trip was to raise money for an Aquatics Endowment at the Providence clubs.

As she waited for well-wishers to arrive, Mary Anne Stchur, director of philanthropy for the Providence clubs, said “what’s nice” about Davis’ trip is it showed “there’s a lot of good out there.”

Among the first to arrive at the air-conditioned Fox Point clubhouse were Davis’ fellow golfers Gale Hanna, 74, of Rumford; Nancy Chaffee, 74, of Warren; and Sharon Volpe, 67, along with Nancy Tsonos, one of her three sisters.

From Chepachet, Davis was writing on judesjargon.com: “Well I’m on my last pit-stop of this adventure,” she wrote. “Getting a last snack and cooling off a bit for the homestretch. Figured it would be a good time to assess how I’m feeling about this day.”

Saying “the last two days have been pretty brutal,” Davis wrote that on Monday she rode 80 miles from Herkimer, New York, to Clifton Park. “It may have been the easiest ride of the tour, flat and fast, did it in about 5.5 hours, like I said, fast!”

In Providence, the other sisters arrived, as did lawyer friends from Davis’ years working at the attorney general’s office, and chef/owner Nick Rabar of Avenue N American Kitchen, who was Davis’ running partner until she took up swimming at the Boys & Girls Club.

Determined to log 90 miles on Tuesday, Davis wrote, she did the Berkshires in 94-degree heat and high humidity. “The Berkshires are certainly nothing like the Rockies or the Cascades,” she wrote, “but hills are hills!” Tuesday, which ended in Springfield, Massachusetts, left her “Totally beat and beat up but mission accomplished!”

Suzanne Gorham, 65, entered the clubhouse lobby and introduced herself as Davis’ second-grade reading teacher at Wilson School in East Providence. “I was 21 years old at the time,” she said. Yes, Davis was a good reader, Gorham said, and judging by her blog, “She’s a great writer!”

“So what am I feeling right now as this grand odyssey draws to a close?” Davis was writing from Chepachet. “Hard to wrap my head around it but in a few words: relieved, happy, fulfilled, grateful, awestruck, in a state of disbelief.... People have asked me what my favorite part of the journey has been and that has been hard to answer .... I suspect, however, that the answer to that lies 15 miles ahead of me in Providence at the corner of Ives and Wickenden Sts.”

The party there moved outside when Davis texted that she was 20 minutes away. Children lined the sidewalk, some holding signs they made: “4,000 miles” one said. “For 4,000 smiles” the next one said. Another pair said: “Hip Hip Hooray!“and “Judy is back today!”

Ribbon shakers and noisemakers were handed out, turning the club’s front plaza on Ives Street into what sounded like an enthusiastic goose orchestra with no maestro.

Then a bright red spot appeared on Wickenden Street. As it got closer, and bigger, the spot resolved into a woman on a bike, coasting downhill. Davis, shiny with sweat, turned Crazy Horse, her bicycle, onto Ives and rolled past the cheering children, under the banner and into the plaza, then turned to face her welcomers. She took off her helmet.

All sizes of kids gathered around her in matching blue T-shirts. A television cameraman began asking her questions and the children raced to get behind her and on TV.

Then they noticed the ice cream truck’s window was open, and the mass of blue moved toward it. Davis accepted a cold bottle of Gatorade. She dismounted from Crazy Horse. “Somebody just take this bike,” she said to those nearby. “I’ve had enough of it.”

Davis greeted her golf buddies, then Rabar came forward with a fist-bump and a question: “We going running tomorrow or what?” Davis fell, grinning, into his big hug.

As she moved to say hello to her lawyer and prosecutor friends, Chaffee, one of the golfers, observed, “She looks so strong. I’ll tell you, she’s going to hit that golf ball 300 yards.”

Nicole Dufresne, chief executive officer of the Providence clubs, announced from the microphone that the total raised so far for the Aquatics Endowment was just under $53,000. (The endowment helps programs that teach children to swim.) She thanked sponsors and yielded the podium to Davis, who said she felt like she had just been dropped from a dream back into her Rhode Island life.

“This country is vast and wonderful,” she said. “And, despite what everybody says, it’s a great place to live.”

Davis knelt to accept a bouquet of flowers from the club and pose with the two small people who presented it. “I don’t know if I can get up,” said the woman who crossed the Cascades, the Rockies, the Plains, the Midwest, and the Berkshires. But she did.

— dnaylor@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7411

On Twitter: @donita22
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