Bizgnus – The bike ride to honor the fallen and help their families

Chris Kolenda went for a bike ride this autumn. But not the usual around the block thing… Mr. Kolenda rode his bicycle for nearly 1,700 miles – from a cemetery in Nebraska to the nation’s most prominent cemetery – Arlington. A retired Army Colonel, Chris wanted to honor the memories of six men killed in action while under his command in Afghanistan in 2007.

Kolenda also used his ride to call attention to the problem of suicide among military veterans. One estimate says 22 veterans take their own lives every day.

He points to another problem: communicaitons.

“One of the challenges we’ve had is we on the veteran side don’t communicate very well with society about our experiences,” he says. “There’s this sort of expectation that veterans don’t talk about their experiences. And then on the society part, we don’t know how to ask veterans about their experiences.”