The planned nearly 11,000-mile road trip was gaining national attention, and Lalla had gone through some of the worst stretches early on in the trip: riding through rain and hills after departing from Seattle, a detour around a mudslide in California, traversing Arizona's Sonoran Desert, and braving blizzard conditions from New Mexico through the Kenosha Pass in the Rocky Mountains on the way to Denver. He finally was about to reach one the easier legs of his trek when his when it all came literally to a screeching halt on June 15.