After only 20 minutes of being in Heber City, Dr. Gregory Maassen made just as many friends.
The Dutch cyclist threw himself into endless conversations with strangers at the Wasatch County Library on the sunny afternoon in mid June. He quizzed one woman outside by asking her which famous actor from the 1960s he was named after — Gregory Peck — and joked with some senior citizens by calling them patrons of the county’s “junior center.” The smile permanently etched on Maassen’s face attracted attention as much as his orange safety vest.
But the biggest conversation starter was Maassen’s e-bike, which had yellow clogs affixed to the back — his “marketing device” — and was outfitted with everything Maassen needed to survive his cross-country trek across the United States.
Maassen, who lives in Washington, D.C., after immigrating from the Netherlands, began his 5,800-mile journey in West Palm Beach, Florida, in March. He’s headed to Los Angeles, on track to arrive in about five weeks. He made a pit stop in Wasatch County on June 11 after pedaling from Duchesne County on Thursday morning.
“I went through Tabiona Valley, which is beautiful, but I forgot about the serious incline at the end. That is 4,000 feet,” he laughed.
That’s where his e-bike comes in handy, reaching speeds up to 28 mph. Maassen’s still certainly getting a workout in, burning an average of 2,500 calories per day. His e-bike, meanwhile, consumes four batteries a day and gives him a boost — one comparable to half the power of a Tour de France cyclist.
“When people say that e-biking is cheating, maybe it is, but it’s very good exercise,” Maassen said.
For some, like Maassen, e-biking is an accessible gateway into exercising. It served as a way for him to treat his peripheral neuropathy, an umbrella term for conditions that affect nerves outside of the brain or spinal cord. Maassen is biking across the country to raise awareness about these conditions.
There are many types of peripheral neuropathy and about 30 million Americans live with it, explained Dr. Ahmet Hoke, director of the Merkin Peripheral Neuropathy Research Laboratory at John Hopkins Medicine.
Some causes of peripheral neuropathy include diabetes, chemotherapy, vitamin deficiency, chronic alcohol use and some antibiotics and medications.
In Maassen’s case, he was on a hike in South Africa in 2017 when he ran into a nest of ticks and was “inundated” with larvae.
“They were so microscopic, so small, those things that were on my skin, including my derriere,” he said. “My wife had to become a surgeon. I think we counted more than 80.”
Some time after the ticks were removed, Maassen’s body began to burn all over as if he had severe sunburns. His vocal cords began to hurt and it became difficult to speak. He was pushed from doctor to doctor who could not explain his condition. Some chalked it up to mental illness.
“Because of all the neurological stuff that was happening to me, I got those sensations for free. I became very depressed, and I became very anxious about the fact that no one could help me. There you are, this very active, healthy person, and for all I know, I could have been institutionalized,” he said.
Maassen was “bedridden” by the time he was finally referred to Dr. Hoke in 2019, who diagnosed him with peripheral neuropathy. That’s when Hoke told Maassen his condition could be treated with exercise.
“Gregory had an unusual type of neuropathy. His was that his own immune system literally attacked his nerves after an infection. But that doesn’t continue. It’s not a progressive type of neuropathy. So, once the damage was done, the immune system resets itself, and then, it’s going to take some time for the nerves to regenerate,” Hoke said. “One thing we knew was that if the patients exercise during that time, their recovery is faster and more complete, and that’s what Gregory took to heart.”
Maassen started e-biking. His quality of life was so changed by the exercise that he later came up with the idea to partner with John Hopkins Medicine on a cross-country e-biking tour to raise awareness about peripheral neuropathy, making stops at universities, speaking to the media or simply striking up conversation with strangers.
The hope is that increased awareness leads to increased government funding for peripheral neuropathy research, which Hoke said is “extremely limited” despite the prevalence of the conditions.
Hoke said diabetic peripheral neuropathy is most common, followed by peripheral neuropathies with unknown causes. These idiopathic conditions make up 30% of all peripheral neuropathies.
“We suspect the majority of them have complex genetic mechanisms, either unknown new genes or perhaps subtle mutations in two or three genes that bring it out, so we’ve just started sequencing the whole genome of these patients,” Hoke said.
Sequencing the genome of one patient costs several thousand dollars, he added.
“The diseases that kill people get a lot of attention, and there’s often good advocates for these diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s,” Hoke said. “Peripheral neuropathy doesn’t kill, but it makes people’s lives miserable.”
Maassen did his first e-bike cross-country tour for peripheral neuropathy in 2022.
He stopped in Wasatch County then, too, eating at Cafe Galleria in Midway, riding the Heber Creeper and biking on U.S. 40 all the way to Sundance and back, just for fun.
This tour, however, he spent much of his weekend biking to Salt Lake City and back to appear on a podcast.
Surprisingly, Maassen has not gotten into traffic accidents or even close calls on either tour.
This year, his biggest fiascos were in Pueblo, Colorado, where someone tried to steal his bike, and he had a late-night campsite run-in with a skunk hungry for scraps of his chicken dinner.
“When a skunk visits you in the tent, you stay very silent. You don’t move. But it was very cold, and I urgently needed to address the pressure of my bladder,” Maassen said, gravely. “So, there I am. The skunk is chewing on my stuff. I cannot move, and I urgently need to go to the toilet. I was stuck.”
There have also been many cockroaches and “exploding toilets” on the trip. If Maassen cannot find a campground with electricity to charge his e-bike batteries, he spends the night at a motel, preferably cheap, whose owners won’t make a fuss if he brings an e-bike into his room.
He stayed at Mac’s Motel in Heber City over the weekend, a three-star motel that exceeded his low standards.
What has kept Maassen going on this trip has been the prospect of coming to Utah. He called Wasatch County “cycling paradise” on Thursday and was looking forward to taking in the views on a stretch of U.S. 50, “The Loneliest Highway,” between Delta — which he biked to on Monday — and Baker, Nevada.
Beyond the views, the most gratifying part of both tours has been meeting others with peripheral neuropathy and reassuring them that they are not alone.
“My idea is to inject a lot of humor and hope into this program,” he said. “If you are afflicted with a condition like mine, it’s not always easy to be optimistic.”
Learn more about Maassen’s journey, follow the route and donate to peripheral neuropathy research at ebiketour.org.