A former British soccer player raising money for a leukemia charity set off on Wednesday on a coast-to-coast ride across Australia on a Victorian-era bicycle that is older than the country.
Leukemia survivor Lloyd Scott dressed up as fictional British supersleuth Sherlock Holmes, complete with tweed coat, deerstalker hat and a fake mustache for the 4 350km trip from Perth to Sydney.
He donned the costume to blend in with his 1885 ”penny-farthing” bicycle with a giant front wheel and tiny back wheel, as he crosses a desert region known as the Nullarbor Plain where daytime temperatures are likely to soar to 40 degrees Celsius.
He said he hoped to wear the costume throughout his ride, but told Perth radio station 6PR, ”I must confess if there’s a couple of days across the Nullarbor when its perhaps a little bit warm and nobody’s looking, I might take the jacket off.”
Scott, a former firefighter and professional soccer player from Essex, southeast England, is no stranger to covering long distances in wildly inappropriate apparel — in 2002 he completed the New York marathon in a vintage diving suit — complete with boots and helmet — that weighed in at a hulking 59kg. He took
five days to finish.
The father of three, who survived leukemia, is making what he hopes will be a six-week trek through mountain ranges and desert plains in a bid to raise $2,7-million, for the charity Children With Leukemia.
”Everyone I’ve sort of met over here has warned me of what to look out for — road trains, cattle grids, kangaroos, emus, bulls, camels — and I’ve got a list now that’s nearly as long my arm,” Scott told 6PR. Road trains are the giant trucks that thunder along Australia’s Outback highways.
Scott said he had already wrecked one penny-farthing while learning how to operate the original 1885 version he is using for his odyssey across Australia — a country that only formally came into existence in 1901.
He is riding with a support crew including his father, brother and a physiotherapist, who plan to bunk down in mobile homes each night. – Sapa-AP