Cyclists Ending 3,000-Mile Anti-Hunger Crusade

They've trekked across the Appalachians, the Rockies and the Cascades.

They've eaten more than 3,000 peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

And they've slept in 50 high school gymnasiums.

Meet the first international ``Tour de YEH (Youth Ending Hunger).''

With their bike helmets fastened and their knees throbbing, 75 cyclists were expected to roll into Seattle's Magnuson Park from Sultan today on the last leg of their 3,000-mile crusade to end children's starvation.

Brought together by Youth Ending Hunger, a nonprofit arm of The Hunger Project, the bikers left the White House June 3 with an official sendoff from Raisa Gorbachev and Barbara Bush.

They will help open the Goodwill Games on Saturday.

``The whole reason I'm on this tour is simple,'' said Binaifer Jesia, 19, of Bombay, India. ``Because it's not OK with me that 35,000 children die each day from hunger or hunger-related diseases.''

Jesia, who is in the United States for the first time, said she is a volunteer for The Hunger Project in Bombay and is a sophomore in college there. She volunteered for the tour as soon as she heard about it and managed to raise the $1,000 registration fee by the deadline.

She is one of 22 riders from other countries, including the Soviet Union, Kenya, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, Belize and Canada. Fifty-three are from the United States.

Sixty-eight of the riders are teen-agers, accompanied by seven

adults.

Along with another 50 Americans from a dozen states, the bikers already have raised more than $100,000 to end hunger, in cooperation with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

``But really, we're not riding for the money,'' said Jared W. Onyango, 26, a computer analyst for a medical-research group in Kenya. ``We're riding so that one more person hears what we're saying and does something so one more child somewhere gets the chance to live.''

Tagir Saidkhoujin, 22, one of a dozen from the Soviet Union, agreed, saying hunger in the Soviet Union should not be ignored.

``Our situation is not very good there,'' the senior at Moscow University said. ``It's not just the Third World countries that need help. It's everyone.''

Eric Rutar, 19, a YEH member in New Mexico, is credited with getting the wheels rolling on the ``Tour de YEH.'' With help from local individuals and organizations in dozens of towns and cities along their route, and with several van drivers, make-do chefs and ``substitute moms,'' the tour reached Sultan yesterday in one piece.

The bikers have seen Native American tribal dances in Wisconsin, a rodeo in South Dakota and fireworks at Fourth of July celebrations in Baker, Mont.

``I was flabbergasted on the Fourth of July,'' Onyango said. ``We were shouting, crying, laughing, splashing around. You just couldn't believe it.''

Saidkhoujin, whose last national anniversary was a celebration of the October Revolution in the U.S.S.R., said he could hardly believe it, either.

``It was like, the music was playing in the background, and you felt such a sense of pride. And this isn't even my country.''

The actual ride, however, may have taken less pride and patriotism than muscle and grit.

Sitting down with the ease of an arthritic, 15-year-old Lucien Ervington of British Columbia rubbed his knee and stared at the ground.

``I'll miss all my friends,'' he said. ``But I won't miss the riding.''

If 3,000 miles of biking and 50 days of sightseeing wasn't enough, three of the bikers said they plan to run a 26-mile marathon Sunday in Seattle.