This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
When Carri Lyons was diagnosed with endometrial cancer almost a year after her newborn son died following preterm labor, she almost couldn't take it.
"It just dragged every ounce of hope I had away," she says.
But two years later, hope has returned for Lyons and her husband, Edwin — and it's riding two wheels halfway across the country.
The couple plan to bicycle 1,000 miles from their home in Salt Lake City to their hometown of Omaha, Neb., starting Thursday, to raise money to pay for the adoption of a child from Ethiopia and to support the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Call it a personal twist on the worldwide trend of using sports to raise money for charity.
"We hope that we can inspire people along the way," Carri says.
The idea took root while Carri was receiving treatment for her cancer at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, when she was able to stop "drowning in my own despair" and decide that "I'm not going to let cancer take me down."
Afterward, she joined the institute's Hometown Heroes running program and raised $3,000 by running both the Salt Lake City Marathon and the Ogden Marathon last year.
"That just saved my life," she says, "getting to know those runners."
Armed with both a desire to help support the institute that was so instrumental in her recovery — Carri had a full hysterectomy and will never be able to bear children — and the unexpected need to pay for an adoption in order to start a family, the Lyonses spent nearly a year plotting their course.
It wasn't easy.
First, they had to decide what to do and where to go. They initially considered walking, but that would take too long. Then they had to figure out the logistics of covering all those miles of open road and discover who was willing to help — and how.
And, of course, there's the ride itself. A thousand miles in 13 days isn't going to be easy on anybody's backside.
"We're not your primo, extreme athletes," Carri says. "We're just ordinary people."
In the end, the Lyonses settled on a route that will take them from one home to another — "The event of a lifetime," Edwin says — and managed to persuade quite a few friends and family members to join them at various points along the way, both as cyclists and drivers of a support vehicle.
Businesses such as Revolution Bicycles and Blackbottoms Cyclewear in Sandy have contributed gear to the effort, and others have offered free lodging at the couple's nightly stops in places such as Vernal, Fort Collins, Colo., and Holdrege, Neb.
Friends can track their progress at fromhealingtohope.blogspot.com.
The goal is to raise $28,000 — they're already more than halfway there — with 20 percent going to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. The rest will go toward the adoption, something the couple never imagined it would face before that horrible day three years ago when they lost their son.
Two years from now, they hope, they will finally have a family again.
"Through all this sadness," Carri says, "that really is the light at the end of the tunnel."