Cross Country Trips

Riders traveling on the "New Freedom Bus" stopped at sites in Long Beach on Tuesday as part of their monthlong cross-country campaign against welfare reform and poverty called Economic Human Rights Campaign '98. "We know you can't change things in one day," said Long Beach activist Pamela Foster of the Barton Hills Neighborhood Organization. "But we want to just shake things up a bit."

A trip billed as the nation's first cross-country trek in an electric car began Tuesday in downtown Los Angeles after the driver got his vehicle charged at the Department of Water and Power. Kris Trexler, a Hollywood film editor, took off on his 3,000-mile trek following a celebration send-off that included dignitaries and politicians. "I am excited that an L.A.

Here is the tally for two men on the world's longest contiguous bike ride: 6,000 miles behind them, 24 days of pouring rain, six tire blowouts. And 10,000 miles to go. (Add to the tally: one caribou herd sighting, one badly scraped elbow, one 3-inch leg gash.) Boston-area cyclists Spike Ramsden, 31, and Wayne Ross, 30, spent the night at a friend's house in Newport Beach on Wednesday on their "Cycle the Americas for Multiple Sclerosis" fund-raising trip through 14 countries.

With a medicine pouch around his neck, a bottle of water over his shoulder and a staff adorned with eagle feathers in his hand, Greg Sutterlict was ready for his journey across America. Sutterlict was among 22 runners, most Native Americans, who prepared Thursday to leave from Huntington Beach near the mouth of the Santa Ana River for a 2,600-mile trip across the country in the 105-day "Sacred Run."

For Michael Landrigan, being accepted to the graduate mathematics program at UCI was the easy part. Getting to the Irvine campus was a bit more difficult. An exhausted Landrigan arrived at the campus Thursday on the mountain bike he had pedaled 3,600 miles from his hometown of Sunapee, N.H., across plains, mountains and deserts. Landrigan, 24, rode up to the Physical Sciences Building at 11:15 a.m., two months and eight days after he said goodbye to friends and family in New England.

After a freak accident left a friend's legs paralyzed, former paraplegic Ken Coleman decided to use his own legs for her benefit. That explains why a polio victim who himself was paralyzed for nearly five years will pedal off Sunday on a cross-country bicycle ride designed to raise money for Carol Yellam, who uses a wheelchair. Doctors had warned him that he would never have any feeling in his legs. So Coleman, 70, of Hermosa Beach, says he can feel for Yellam.

As a child, Lloyd Howard dreamed of piloting an airplane across the country. Several decades later, the Lake County Illinois Urban League member realized his dream Tuesday when he arrived at Hawthorne Municipal Airport as part of the Lake County group's Fly-for-Education campaign, which so far has raised $60,000 for educational programs in Illinois. "My childhood dream came true and I was able to help kids by raising money for their educations," Howard said after landing his white Cessna.

WHEN Lizzie Post crammed into a Volkswagen Jetta last year for a three-day, cross-country road trip with a good friend and her cousin, plus a chinchilla named Bea and a cat named Denim, she knew far more was at stake than choosing the right fork or making proper introductions. She had no doubt that road-trip etiquette could mean the difference between arriving at the destination still speaking to everyone or fantasizing about ditching a nettlesome passenger at the next rest stop.

She is 90 and has arthritis, emphysema and a bunion on her left big toe, but on Tuesday, Doris "Granny D" Haddock completed a 14-month, 3,200-mile trek across America to agitate for campaign finance reform. Hundreds gathered to cheer the final steps of her arduous journey, which began Jan. 1, 1999, at the Rose Parade in Pasadena, and ended with a rally on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol. There the Dublin, N.H.