Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 31, 1993 TAG: 9307310015
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Rehana, who is skating his way across the United States, responded by asking if Brian or his friends gathered by the road had seen any other skaters that day.
They hadn't.
"Then I must be in first place," Rehana told them.
And he was off again, pushing a 60-pound three-wheeled baby jogger with his travel supplies before him and chanting the old choo-choo-train rhyme in time to his side-to-side skating rhythm: "I think I can, I think I can . . . ."
Soon he would be at the top, where he could start the faster downhill cadence: "I knew I could, I knew I could . . . ."
He knew he could because he has been going up and down such hills since May 5, when he left Santa Monica, Calif., to skate from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
And he knew he was in the lead, because he is the only one in the race.
Rehana, 23, is a part-time student from Los Angeles who works for Adventure 16, an outdoor-equipment retail store.
Ever since high school, he has been an advocate of traveling by other means than the internal-combustion engine. He has hiked trails throughout America and seen the country directly instead of through a car window.
Last year he was in Europe and wanted to try skating over 800 miles of it. But he managed only 300 miles.
"I wanted to give it another shot," he said. So he decided to go across the United States on a pair of in-line skates.
"It's not just a one-time deal for me. It's a way of life," said Rehana, who weighed 150 pounds at the start of his trip and is now down to just over 130.
"I just want to say, `Hey, look, America, if I can do it, you could do it,' " he said of traveling by bicycle, skates or simply on foot. "You don't have to go across the country, but you can sure go to the grocery store."
But his schedule was interrupted in Wytheville when a state trooper pulled him over.
Rehana was told that he would have to make the rest of his trip on foot because skates were not allowed on Virginia roads meant for vehicular travel. This came as a shock, considering that he had made it all the way to the last state on his itinerary, with Virginia Beach as his goal.
He appealed to the Town of Wytheville and the Wytheville-Wythe-Bland Chamber of Commerce where Kitty Grady, the town's public information director, decided to start at the top. She called the office of Gov. Douglas Wilder.
A secretary there referred her to the state police and state public safety officials. "They were extremely helpful. They said, `Let us work on it, and we'll call you back in 20 minutes,' and they did."
They told Grady that Rehana could be on his way "and skate to his heart's content," she said. "I didn't ask how everything got figured out."
"I'm not sure exactly what phone calls were made. I just made a cry for help to finish this trip," said Rehana, who spent Wednesday night camping in the town's Elizabeth Brown Park and sported a Wytheville Recreation Department shirt given to him by the town.
"To be that close to finishing and have to stop. . . . No way!"
by CNB