AMHERST—– Gihan Amarasiriwardena wanted to ride his bike across America since he was young.
“My love for cycling started on a Boy Scout trip to Cape Cod. Throughout high school I started doing century (100-mile) rides to Vermont and New Hampshire, and in college I biked across England,” said Amarasiriwardena, a 2007 Amherst Regional grad. “I’d always wanted to cross the U.S.”
Seven years into working at Ministry of Supply, a Boston-based high-performance fashion brand, he found his opportunity for a five-week sabbatical.
Amarasiriwardena, 29, decided it was time to embark on a bike ride across the country, starting a life goal, but also to raise money for the Boy Scouts, which helped him find his passion for cycling and his career as an engineer through the Lemelson-MIT Program.
“It’s a foundation that focuses on invention education,” Amarasiriwardena said.
The foundation is currently collaborating with the Boy Scouts to create and expand educational programs for the invention merit badge. Amarasiriwardena volunteered for the non-profit while studying biological engineering at MIT.
Amarasiriwardena began his journey of biking across the country on May 26 in Boston. Over the course of the next 38 days, he biked a total of 3,358 miles and traveled through 15 states, arriving in San Francisco on July 2, completing his goal.
“There’s no better way to feel the country,” Amarasiriwardena said. “When every day has a mission to ride roughly 100 miles, and then for that to end, it’s an incredible feeling of accomplishment, but it leaves you with so much momentum you can’t help think, ‘What’s next?’”
On the second to last day on the trip, Amarasiriwardena proposed to his girlfriend, Karoline Skatteboe, 25, at Lake Tahoe, creating a lifelong memory towards the end of his journey. Skatteboe received a master’s of business analytics from MIT and previously ran competitively at SMU.
“I made a ring for my fiancée and then I carried it with me the whole trip,” Amarasiriwardena said. “There’s a mountain range you have to climb out of on the bike to get out of Lake Tahoe, and Karoline, she’s a strong cyclist, she was kind of waiting for me at the top and I felt like that was the right spot.”
Through the 38 days of travel, Amarasiriwardena used different options for shelter each night, such as camping and motels.
“I also had a lot of friends and family, basically from Amherst all the way to Colorado, which was great,” Amarasiriwardena said.
When it came to food, breakfast was usually Cliff Bars, lunch was typically a stop at a local sandwich shop, and dinner would be cooked personally by Amarasiriwardena if he was not staying with anyone. Eating meals with different people across America was something that was looked forward to often on the trip.
“What I found was that with meals, especially when you’re spending 12 to 14 hours a day biking, you’re looking forward to talking to people, and meals are a great thing to share with people,” Amarasiriwardena said. “One of my favorites was a truck stop diner at 6 a.m. I met so many people from the agriculture business that way before they went to work.”
Meeting many different people all over the country gave Amarasiriwardena a different perspective of America that many are not accustomed to, especially those from Western Mass. While much of the country is different, Amarasiriwardena says the feeling of home can be found anywhere in America, no matter where you are from.
“I realized that it was interesting to have this feeling of home. It very much ties to growing up in Amherst, a college town. College towns across the country have such a similar vibe,” he said. “On the one hand, it makes you realize that the culture of this country is varied so much, but you can also find those pockets that someone growing up in Amherst can feel like they’re at home somewhere else.”
The long road traveled not only gave new experiences, but also has allowed Amarasiriwardena to look at things differently, and appreciate the journey he went on and finished, just as he wanted to as a boy.
“I’m an engineer, and I realize I kind of see the world through a scientific lens. I was constantly thinking about how varied the U.S. is geologically and how much that affects me,” Amarasiriwardena said. “I had started the ride at sunrise in Boston on the Atlantic, and finishing it I was literally running through the sand to the water to catch the last silver of light during the sunset in the Pacific, which was very poignant.”