Student rides 800 miles to collect books for schools

Skyler Myers will soon take to the open road so young students will have more opportunity to open books.

Myers, a Rockhurst University Graduate student, plans to ride solo on his bicycle for about 800 miles to reach the Continental Divide at Poudre Pass, Colo.

His goal is that his journey will prompt 9,800 book donations for the Kansas City Missouri School District.

This summer will be the second time Myers has made a solo bicycle trip to Colorado. Inspired by the book “The Last Cattle Drive” by Robert Day, he decided to make a journey from Lawrence, Kan., to Fort Collins, Colo.

“I thought I could do something similar this year, but do it for a cause,” he said.

Myers is studying to become a teacher, so he wanted to find a way to help the Kansas City, Mo., School District, near where he lives, he said.

“It is a school district and it has a lot of great students,” Myers said. “I don’t know if that is in the press as much as it should be. I wanted to bring that to the forefront.”

The school district has a student population of about 18,000 students within its 52 K-12 school buildings, said Grace Bridgeford, library coordinator.

If Myers reaches his book-collecting goal, it will provide books for every library in the district, and essentially two books for every student, she said.

“That is really good,” Bridgeford said. “They are going to be new books and that is excellent. We are going to be going for purchasing books that are in high demand.”

Bridgeford the district will be able to add fiction and non-fiction books meant for all ages, especially books that are in high demand.

In school Myers said he was always drawn to biographies. The book he read most was a Magic Johnson biography.

“Just reading about his growing up and his work ethic and dedication, it always inspired me to go out and try a little bit harder,” Myers said.

These days Myers rides his bike about 100 miles per week. He runs and plans to add 75 mile bike rides into his schedule before he leaves Aug. 1.

On his way to Colorado, he will ride about 100 miles every day. No friends will accompany him and no mp3 player will entertain him on the road, he said.

“Western Kansas, I think, kind of has a bad rap,” Myers said. “I like the scenery and the vastness of it all.”

But he also has tricks to keep his mind occupied.

“There are times when for 30 minutes at a time I just look at the ground and watch my feet go up and down and the road passing beneath me,” Myers said. “To look ahead you feel like you are going nowhere.”

Only one minor aspect of Myers’ donation leaves her disappointed, Bridgeford said – her students will not know about his contribution until his trip is over and they return to school. She said she hopes Myer will come speak to students about his journey.

“He will be a living testimony to what people can do if they really put their mind to it,” Bridgeford said. “Hopefully their students will be able to say, ‘I may not be able to ride a bicycle up a mountain, but there are things I can do.’”

It was the help of others, while on his journey last year that also helped inspire Myers’s idea, he said. While traveling in east Colorado, his bicycle broke down. Several strangers helped provide him food, transportation and helped him find a place to repair his bike, he said.

“I was just blown away with how willing people were to help in any way they could,” Myers said. “It got me thinking in terms of charity.”

Myers and Bridgeford worked together to find how to make donations best fit the needs of students. They developed a Web site with the help of a library book vendor where individuals can make a donation to help purchase books. The library-bound books will be strong enough for heavy circulation and ready to shelve as soon as they arrive, Bridgeford said. 

“When I realized what he was really talking about trying to do I thought, ‘My God, this kid,’ you know?” Bridgeford said. “Even in my 20s, on my very best of days I never would have thought of doing something like that.”

Once Myers completes his 800 mile journey, he will be at an altitude of about 9,000 feet, which is how he decided on his goal of collecting 9,800 books.

To make a donation to the book drive, visit www.childrensplusinc.com and click on the icon titled “Up 9,000 ft., across 800 miles, for 9,800 books.”

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