Milwaukee fundraising cyclist seriously hurt on trek across country
A Milwaukee bicyclist on a crosscountry trek to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association remained hospitalized in intensive care Saturday two days after being struck by a vehicle on a rural road in Michigan.
Jon Olson and fellow cyclist Mark Johnson were seriously injured Thursday morning when they were struck by a driver in Eaton Rapids, about 30 minutes south of Lansing, according to Olson’s wife, Julia Vosper.
She said Olson, whose trip was featured in a Journal Sentinel column this month, suffered fractured cervical vertebrae, a fractured sacrum, a cracked rib and a lacerated kidney. Johnson, a friend from Michigan who had joined him for that stretch of the trip, will require at least two surgeries for a badly broken leg, she said.
“I was told they were both knocked out, hit so hard ... they each lost a shoe,” Vosper said by telephone from a Lansing hospital Saturday morning. “Mark’s wife and I are grateful they are alive.”
Olson, 61, was about 2,600 miles into the ride when the cyclists were hit.
Diagnosed in 2012 with a form of muscular dystrophy, he had raised about $10,000 in donations through the coast-to-coast ride. A former Journal Sentinel reporter and copy editor, he was blogging about the trip at justalittlebitcranky.blogspot.com.
Vosper said the men were struck from behind and that the driver stayed at the scene.
The driver told authorities she did not see the cyclists, according to a story in the Lansing State Journal. It said neither drugs nor alcohol appeared to be factors in the crash.