US:Fifty-five gardaí from the west of Ireland arrived back home yesterday after spending 10 days riding the famous Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. The 3,940km (2,448-mile) trip which raised €350,000 for HIV-infected children in Mozambique, took 10 days.
The group was welcomed in LA over the weekend by the actor Martin Sheen at a party in their honour. He had launched the Unicef Ireland project in Galway last November while a student at University College Galway.
The trip was organised by Galway-based Det Insp Derek Gannon after he spent six weeks at an orphanage in Mozambique last summer. The gardaí hired 55 Harley-Davidson motorbikes in Chicago.
Garda John Durkan from Castlebar took part, as did his Galway-based Garda son Sean. They were struck by the beauty of the landscape, as well as the poverty along the now-largely untravelled Route 66.
"We saw aspects of America I'd say most Americans never see," said Garda Casey. "In some of the towns, nothing was open, shops were boarded up, almost nobody was on the street. But the people we did meet were very polite to us."
"We rode 390 miles across the Mojave desert in a single day," said Garda Gabriel Folan. "It was one of the most desolate and isolated places I've ever encountered in my life."
One garda from Mayo, Declan Casey, was joined in Las Vegas by his wife who surprised him with a pre-arranged Vegas wedding, where they renewed their vows dressed in biker gear. The couple originally married in Mayo in 1998.
The money raised by the trip will be used to set up communities in Mozambique to help orphaned children.