Anderson and girlfriend Tracy Lyon met up with the team of fellow Salt Lake City cyclists who helped carry the message from Lyon, France, to Turin, Italy - about 190 miles away. The mayor of the 2002 Olympic host city said the trip was extremely difficult and filled with many falls, scrapes and bruises.

"We were coming down a rather steep road in the Alps with very sharp turns, and all of a sudden I hit an area where they had just freshly graveled the road," he said during a telephone interview. "I thought that was going to be the end of my riding career. My bike was all over the road and I was taking up both lanes."

The difficult, 6,000-mile journey from Salt Lake City to Italy began April 6. Mode of travel: bicycles and sailboat in keeping with the vow not to use fossil fuels.

Salt Laker Jeff Niermeyer and Park City resident Marc Wangsgard biked the message from Utah to New York City where it then was sailed to Belgium. Once there, Deputy Mayor Rocky Fluhart and wife Gretchen, along with Park City residents Bill and Celia Underwood, and Sara Wright, executive director of Utah Clean Energy, joined Anderson and Lyon and biked it to Turin.

The message-delivery tradition from Winter Olympics host city to its successor was started in 1994 by organizers in Lillehammer, Norway, when they delivered an environmentally friendly message to Nagano, Japan, before the 1998 Games. Nagano then delivered a similar message to Salt Lake City.

"We felt that it was not only important to carry on that tradition, but to expand the message," Anderson said. His goals were to raise consciousness about the need for better health services in developing countries, human-rights abuses and environmental challenges.

He said the purpose of the journey and message was to, "to stress the needs for all nations to work together peacefully and collaboratively to solve these problems. That's probably the only way these problems will be solved."

Dozens of Olympic youth volunteers ringing bells, along with more than 100 other bicyclists, joined the mayor and his team as they rode into Turin. There, Anderson presented the message to Turin Mayor Sergio Chiamparino.

"The fact that we were able to ride into Torino on the appointed day, at the appointed time with all of us sitting upright in our bicycles was a minor miracle," Anderson said.

Along the trip the mayor was nearly hit by a car in a narrow tunnel and bruised up his knees and elbows in a couple minor falls.

He said the trip was "much more difficult than I could have ever imagined."

The mayor has been able to keep up with city business by using cell phones and the Internet while in Europe and he will return to Salt Lake City on Aug. 31 after touring the Turin Olympic facilities.

mburckhalter@sltrib.com