An Erie native who faced a major setback during a cross-country bicycle trip is back home after receiving an outpouring of support from people across the country.<\/p>\n
Jon Craig was traveling across the United States in January when his bicycle and most of his gear were stolen in Arizona, leaving him stranded.<\/p>\n
“It was like something got torn away, my everything got torn away,” Craig said.<\/p>\n
After the theft, Craig launched a GoFundMe campaign hoping to raise enough money to purchase a new bike and make his return trip home. The response exceeded his expectations.<\/p>\n
“It’s extremely humbling,” Craig said. “There were a lot of moments when I wanted to soak in those bad feelings and just give up, but there is a lot to be said about what could happen when you just keep moving forward.”<\/p>\n
Craig reached his fundraising goal of $5,000 in just eight days, thanks to donations from supporters both locally and across the country.<\/p>\n
“To be able to just pour my heart out on social media and have a lot of people respond within two weeks was an astonishing feeling,” he said.<\/p>\n
Someone eventually located Craig’s stolen bicycle and belongings. Once they were recovered, Craig decided to pay it forward.<\/p>\n
“They recovered it and I was able to get that bike back,” Craig said. “The person who let me stay at their home in Tucson had been wanting to get into bikepacking, so I thought, how perfect is that? I got the bike back and passed it on to them, and it made a new home.”<\/p>\n
Despite the challenges, Craig said he remained determined to finish what he started.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bump in the road and then a push forward with good people,” he said. “It’s almost as if I just had to keep going. There wasn’t anything holding me back at that point.”<\/p>\n
Craig was grateful for his family, friends, and strangers for helping him complete the journey.<\/p>\n
“For something to turn from bad to good that quickly, I can’t thank anybody enough,” he said. “I really appreciate it.”<\/p>\n
Craig said he has no major trips planned in the near future and is looking forward to spending time at home with his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Erie native who faced a major setback during a cross-country bicycle trip is back home after receiving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[609,91915,66448,2347,14883,136,138,137,26972,10063,30995,91916],"class_list":["post-209338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-arizona","tag-bicycle-trip","tag-bikepacking","tag-community-support","tag-cross-country","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-generosity","tag-gofundme","tag-resilience","tag-theft-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}