9,700 miles traveled — on a bicycle

Peter Hoogenboom woke up Thursday morning in Lehi, just a few minutes south of his home in Salt Lake City if he were traveling by car.

He hasn't seen home since March 18, when he pedaled away for a 48-state, 9,700-mile bike ride, with his wife Pat driving the support vehicle on their joint venture into Peter's dream.

On Thursday afternoon, Hoogenboom, 46, was greeted by dozens of family members and friends as he turned off Arapeen in Research Park and rode down a red carpet and through a white paper finish line.

Hoogenboom has been a cyclist for 22 years. He's known he was diabetic for a decade longer than that, although he spent years in denial after he learned he had Type 1 diabetes at age 14, he says. In his early 20s, he decided he'd better get control of his blood sugar. He's been refining that control for years.

These days, he says, he has it well in hand, and that's one reason he dared apply to the 2005 Bayer Ascensia Dream Fund to back his "dream tour."

Hoogenboom also wanted to raise awareness about the fact that a diagnosis of diabetes is not an end to life or athletic prowess or dreaming. Exercise is, in fact, one of the most important things someone who has diabetes needs to do.

Once he learned how to monitor his blood-sugar levels and control them, it hasn't slowed him down, he says. Not too long ago, he got an insulin pump, which was helpful for the bike ride. He traveled about about 65 miles a day, although on at least one occasion, he pedaled 127 miles in a day.

He's stayed in 150 different towns and about that many hotels. He's also used the trip — he got to decide his own route — as a chance to get together with some uncles, aunts and cousins in far-flung states.

The only thing as exciting as heading out on a dream, he says, is that first night back in your own bed.

So he was pumped as he rounded the curve into the parking lot at the University of Utah's Diabetes Center, where a crowd of well-wishers waved arms and tiny flags and cheered like crazy. Many of them had been tracking his trip online since he left.

You don't have to ride nearly 10,000 miles, he says, "to know there's no warmer welcome than you get from family and friends when you come home."

Hoogenboom, who works for University of Utah Healthcare as an information-technology staffer, has kept up a travelogue online at uuhsc.utah.edu/dreamtour/. Information on the Bayer Ascensia Dream Fund is at www.AscensiaDreamFund.com.

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E-mail: lois@desnews.com