Wyoming Catholic prays for peace in solo bike ride across country

Published: 2004-11-09

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Fifty-eight-year-old Mark Wicks, who just finished a bike ride across the country to pray for peace, is not a biker. In fact, prior to this ride, he didn't even own a bike. What he did have going for him, he said, is that he was used to spending time alone in prayer. "Twenty years of house painting got me to this point," he said after his 1,489-mile ride, noting that the years he spent alone painting taught him to pray. Wicks, a father of grown children who with his wife belongs to St. Matthew's Parish in Gillette, Wyo., left his home Oct. 4 and arrived at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington Nov. 2. He stopped at numerous Catholic churches and shrines along the way. The ride, which he dubbed "Pedaling for Peace," was not something he had planned for a long time, but instead was an idea that only recently came to him while praying about the war in Iraq and the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

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