British police officers on a mission stop in Waynesboro

A group of bike-riding British bobbies spent one of the final evenings of a 28-day charity tour across the United States as guests of their counterparts at the Waynesboro Police Department on Wednesday.
Four British police officers from the Suffolk Constabulary, accompanied by one West Coast cop, an American friend familiar with the route, and a driver for the team’s rented recreational vehicle began their cross-country odyssey in Coos Bay, Oregon on May 31, according to the “Bobby on a Bike” Web site.
Split into two shifts, each participant has ridden about 100 miles a day since the start, with the team as a whole covering about 200 miles per day, said Neil Smith, the group’s founder.
Proceeds from this year’s ride benefit The Prostate Cancer Charity, East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices and Break the Pattern, an organization dedicated to stopping domestic violence. Donations are accepted at www.bobbyonabike.com.
Half of the team rolled into Waynesboro in the recreational vehicle at around 6:00 p.m. Wednesday. The other three members were still biking about 50 miles behind, Smith said.
Waynesboro police provided the team with a chicken dinner, a place to park their RV overnight with water access – and, of course, the opportunity for some cross-cultural job-related conversation.
“Put police together and they always talk work,” said Laura Hicks, 25, the youngest member of the team, who was participating in her first “Bobby on a Bike” ride.
The organization has undertaken two previous charity bike tours in North America, riding from Canada to Mexico in 2002 and 2005, raising a total of $63,098 for charity, according to the site. But Smith said his original plan when he dreamed up the first “Bobby on a Bike” event was always a coast-to-coast ride.
The much longer distance involved has made this year’s adventure the most challenging outing to date, despite the two-shift approach, he said. It has been an amazing experience, he said, but exhaustion is definitely setting in.
“We don’t want it to end, because we [will] have to get back to work and normalcy,” Smith said. “But at the same time we just kind of want to get it done.”
The team is scheduled to wrap the ride up in Yorktown, Va. on Friday – rounding the trip out by dipping their tires into the Atlantic Ocean, as they did in the Pacific, Smith said. As to the possibility of future “Bobby on a Bike” rides, Smith said they were unlikely.
“But my friends all say, ‘Yeah, we’ve heard that before,’ ” he said.