Ex-Las Vegas couple take a long ride for the troops

For 16 years when they lived near Nellis Air Force Base, Alex and Helen LaVoie got an earful of jet noise when warplanes took off for training exercises.

While the horrific thunder from fighter jets sometimes bothered visitors at their Las Vegas home, the LaVoies, who immigrated from Canada, didn’t mind it.

The sound brought a sense of safety and security in 2003, when the U.S. military led the invasion in Iraq, Helen said Tuesday, explaining why her husband decided to ride a bicycle from St. Augustine, Fla., to Seattle “for a cause”: the Wounded Warrior Project.

“It’s the feeling to know that we live in a country where we didn’t have to worry about planes flying over and bombing us,” she said.

That is why Alex, a welder-turned-maintenance-mechanic for the Mormon church, decided to give something back in appreciation for his U.S. citizenship when he retired.

They both had been working as corrections officers in British Columbia, a mile north of the U.S. border. On a whim and because “Canada was getting too socialistic,” Helen said, they entered a worldwide immigration lottery in 1989 and won a chance to come to the United States to apply for citizenship. They chose to live in Las Vegas, a half mile south of Nellis.

“We got to know a lot of people that worked on the base,” Alex said, sitting inside their motor home at Sam’s Town RV Park, the one that Helen drives to follow him on the cross-county trip. “We got to be very friendly and very supportive of the troops.”

Alex will be on the road 8 a.m. Saturday riding his recumbent bicycle from Summerlin’s Paseo Park to Blue Diamond to garner donations for his cause to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. The mission of the nonprofit organization is to raise awareness and enlist the public’s aid for the needs of injured service members and to help them assist each other.

“I was pleased to do it for an organization that uses the funds for the warriors, not the administration,” he said.

For a $20 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project or to joinalex.com, bicyclists can join Alex and local Boy Scouts on the ride to Blue Diamond.

So far the couple have raised an estimated $10,000 in cash that they’ve donated to the Wounded Warrior Project not counting an untold amount that donors have made directly to it after seeing or hearing about their cross-country campaign.

The LaVoies sold their Las Vegas home in 2007 and moved to the Richland, Wash., area. Helen, 67, had worked for the city of Henderson for more than six years .

They had been living off their retirement, but when Alex turned 70, and while he still has good health, he decided to embark on the cross-country bicycle journey to become a citizen soldier supporting the Wounded Warrior army.

So they sold their house in Washington state early this year, bought their motor home and drove to Florida. For a few months, Alex trained like a pedaling truck driver shifting the bike’s 27 gears that help him “take advantage of my old legs.”

“I didn’t look too far long range or anything. I just wanted to maintain my 50 to 60 miles a day. I had no problems doing that,” he said.

“As you add all these up and don’t get too excited about ‘It’s 4,000 miles away.’ You don’t talk about that. You talk about the daily things that come about. Then you add them all up, and we’re here,” Alex said.

From when they left Florida on Feb. 23 to when they arrived in Las Vegas on April 17, the LaVoies have for the most part enjoyed a serene adventure although it was occasionally punctuated by high winds, driving rains and slow leaks in the bike’s back tire. Amazingly there hasn’t been a flat or a blowout.

And, except for 300 miles of treacherous roads with dangerous traffic, Alex so far has covered 2,600 miles on his bike across parts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas — “it took two weeks” — New Mexico, Arizona — “we met Gov. Jan Brewer” — and Nevada.

“It’s a nice way to see the country at 15 miles per hour,” Alex said. “You can hear the alligators crunch and whatever.”

One highlight Helen recalled was meeting her three “Apache sisters” in Arizona who made donations.

“They were the sweetest ladies. One was a veteran herself, and the other says, ‘Well I’m a vet’s mother.’ ”

After Saturday’s fundraiser ride to Blue Diamond, they will be back on the road Monday heading toward Mesquite and north to Utah. They plan to cross Idaho and head to northern Oregon to cross the Columbia River into Washington.

They expect to cross a finish line outside Seattle by the third week of June, Alex said.