The emergency room physician cycled around the perimeter of the United States

Two days into his planned 12,000-mile bike ride around the periphery of the U.S., John Hall's left knee throbbed with pain. During one stretch in Southern California, he could pedal only with his right leg for two hours because of the pain.

Hall kept pedaling and the pain subsided, but after a week on the road he said he was exhausted. "I was 10 pounds heavier than I had ever been," said Hall, 62. "I got real scared that second day thinking I was going to have to quit. I didn't start out well."

Hall, however, finished very well. He left behind his problems that first week in April and, on July 31, this emergency room physician from Anchorage, Alaska, rolled into Lompoc, Calif., at the end of a 12,016-mile journey. Hall averaged 100 miles a day for the trip. More importantly, he raised more than $1,000 a day for charity, $130,000 in all. Hall basically rode himself into shape on the trip. He biked down the west coast, across Texas to Baton Rouge, then to Florida, and up the eastern seaboard to Machias, Maine, and then across to Seattle.

Hall's first two weeks were grueling, but he hit another bump in Florida when he ran over a U-shaped metal clamp in the road. It locked on his wheel and Hall flipped over his handle bars and separated his shoulder.

After a stop in a familiar place, an emergency room, his wife made Hall ride a stationary bike to prove he could continue the trek. He could, and did, keep riding.

"I did not solve any of the problems of the world, but I thought about a lot of different things," Hall said. "The first two weeks on the bike I thought about death and dying, because I was so tired and I remembered how tired my mother was when she died from cancer.

"By the time I got to Florida, I was feeling good. I wanted to do this for some good causes but also because everybody said I couldn't do 100 miles a day."