A road trip with a difference

He drove 2600km, from New York to Florida, then back again. “The first person I helped was a guy installing a boat lift on a lake,” he recalls. “I was shaking when I asked if he needed a hand. When he said, ‘Can you help me get this into the water?’ I knew it was going to be OK.”

Along the way he helped a police officer fix a barricade and spread countless cubic metres of mulch. And somewhere outside Atlanta, he met a man who was crying because his wife had recently died and he had no-one to talk to.

“For three hours we sat on his veranda,” he says. “When I left, he said, ‘Thank you. I realise now that my life will go on.’ ”