I’m excited to announce that Coast to Coast for Hope’s 2009 campaign has officially launched.  This year’s team will be riding in support of the Zachary DeRidder Foundation and their "ZHOPE Coast to Coast Ride".  The team will be working to grow a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and a handful of other charities. 

Zach DeRidder’s battle against liver cancer is an inspiring story and the 2009 team is wholly dedicated to the cause Zach sought to advance.  We’ve setup the 2009 team’s fundraising page and are in the planning stages for the 2009 Ride.  Check back soon for more updates on the 2009 team’s campaign and for information on how you can help the team hit the road.

- Brian

Click here to read more about the Zachary DeRidder Foundation

The $12,000.00 (wow!) that the team raised for the struggle against cancer is currently at work helping folks in Vermont and Northern New York State.  The team wanted to give back to the community where they had spent time as undergraduates (at Champlain College and the University of Vermont), so the Vermont Cancer Center was a great match. 

Specifically, the donation was made to the Vermont Cancer Center’s Research and Education Fund.  This fund will be used to address the most urgent needs at the Center. 

Congratulations once again to the 2007 team for all that they accomplished.  It’s good to see that their ride, which reached out to so many communities across the country, was able to make a significant local impact back in the area where they first organized their trip. 

"Coming into Valdez was spectacular though with HUGE glaciers, SNOW, then cruising into the temperate rain forest with 300 ft. waterfalls and turquoise rivers sweeping down the valley. We took the ferry from Valdez to Whittier and saw the mountains that truly meet the sea, with icebergs from the melting glaciers and sea lions covering the rocks. A good trip, and we are EQUALLY excited to be done."

Pictures to follow.

-Brian

Our team has been helped by some very generous donations thus far - let’s keep the support coming and help the team in their campaign for Multiple Sclerosis!

Yet another bike trek for Coast to Coast for Hope. Ryan and I are spinning our wheels for multiple sclerosis all the way up to Alaska! After recently meeting and becoming close friends with Mardene Morykwas, who is diagnosed with MS, we decided to help expand Coast to Coast for Hope’s charity base and focus our ride on MS.

Starting in Whitefish, MT the two of us will bike through the Canadian Rockies up into the Yukon and eventually end up in Anchorage, AK. After Ryan’s first tour across the country, new terrain is in store and I feel lucky to experience this with him. We are hoping to complete the trip in about 35 days and then fly back to Jackson where we currently live. Ryan is the director of the Adaptive Ski School at Jackson Hole Mountain. Resort. As for myself, I work for the Nordic Ski School and lead groups out to the resort’s yurt for overnight trips.

A little bit about MS. . . . Multiple sclerosis is one of the most common neurological disorders currently being diagnosed in young adults. Today there are over 400,000 Americans with MS and 200 more are diagnosed every week. MS is described as an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. Myelin, the fatty coating that protects axons in the central nervous system, is degraded because the immune system loses the ability to distinguish normal healthy cells from bad ones.

Cheers,

Molly Gove

Molly Gove and Ryan Burke
P.O. Box 8393
Jackson, WY 83002

mjgove@gmail.com
307-699-0989

Ryanburke11@yahoo.com
307-699-0803

If you are interested in donating or finding out more about our bike trek please contact Ryan or me.  For more info on MS check out National MS Society’s web site:

www.nationalmssociety.org

Maybe that title is a bit of an exaggeration.  Winter doesn’t necessarily mean that people cease all physical activity.  Nonetheless, as we slide past Thanksgiving and toward the New Year, most people spend a little less time "doing stuff" and a bit more time taking it easy.  The days are short.  Food is hearty.  Your bicycle may have gained a cobweb or two.  Perhaps you are very ambitious and have it set up on a trainer.  I know that I don’t…

The next time you are walking outside in the cold, on a cloudy/frosty day, perhaps feeling a bit sluggish, stop and think for a moment:

What are you doing next summer?

Are you approaching a period of transition?  Maybe you are graduating from college.  Perhaps you will be switching jobs, or taking some time off.  Maybe you sit on the precipice of retirement. 

In periods of transition, we often try and map out a blueprint for what we intend to do next.  There often isn’t  a blueprint for plans to hop on your bicycle and pedal for a few thousand miles.  Then again, there isn’t really a blueprint when it comes to cancer or any life threatening illness for that matter.  And that’s a compelling reason to consider taking the journey of your life and bicycling for a good cause.

Six to seven months from now, you may find yourself halfway across the country, racing the setting summer sun to fit in a couple more miles before you make camp.  Your water bottles empty, you drink an entire liter of Gatorade that you buy from a country store and think about how excited you are to enter a new state tomorrow.   The next morning, you pass another group of riders heading in the opposite direction.  They tell you how lucky you are to be heading in the direction that they just came from because the land is so stunning.  But you secretly smile, knowing full well how beautiful the ride that they have ahead of them is going to be.  You get a call from your folks; you’ve just exceeded your fundraising goal thanks to a large, anonymous internet donation.  You imagine yourself handing an oversized check to the Hope Lodge that you are riding for.  Do they really make those oversize checks or is that just something from movies?

Don’t stop imaging.  Take a moment and consider this bicycle ride before you decide to let the thought pass.  Maybe the time will be right, maybe the plan will start to present itself.  You never really know what’s around the next corner.

What are you doing next summer?

-Brian

Photo Upload Phase: Part Two (of three) is 90% complete. Click here to see our updates.

A cold, wet day in my New Jersey backyard

It is tough to remember exactly where each picture was taken, let alone pinpoint each picture to a specific location on a map that is viewed overhead and taken from a satellite! If you don’t believe me, try an locate highway WW in Missouri - a lonely dirt road in the maze of the Ozark Mountain range.

Highway WW, a time-saving shortcut turned dirt road extension

Still, we continue to improve our progress and upload as many pictures as we can onto our flickr.com interactive map. Each picture is pinpointed to, or as close to, their actual location to give the viewer a better grasp of what we saw, who we met and what we accomplished during our 2007 cross-country bicycle ride.

The last stop for this section of the journey is West Yellowstone Montana. Next stop, the Oregon coast!

- Kurt

We will be updating the entire trip with more photos and comments. For starters, we have added some photos from the first leg of the trip, ending after crossing the Mississippi River at Chester, Illinois.

Example of the Coast to Coast for Hope interactive map

Use the zoom tool to focus in on individual locations, zoom out to see the grand scale of the trip and use the Satellite or Hybrid mode to see the countryside from above. Each mark on the map pinpoints where the respective photograph was taken, giving you a better understanding of our route and the amazing trip that we completed just months ago.

Make sure to check back regularly to see updates to the Coast to Coast for Hope interactive map.

We would like to extend our gratitude to all those who supported each individual on the 2007 team and to those who aided our cause. Without you, none of this would be possible. We will continue to get some behind-the-scene work wrapped up as we inch closer to acquiring a matching grant for the funds raised during the 2007 Trip, so stay tuned…

 
Bullet holes and turning highways

In the mean time, keep checking back to see our progress. This is a critical step in what Coast to Coast for Hope does as a charitable non-profit organization. It may not be as glamorous as bicycling through 11 states in 2 months, but it’s a necessary part of the equation.

We would also like to give a special thanks to Kris Surette, for her press release and media relations work, and Kevin Leary for his web and technical work. Your contributions and advice are truly appreciated. Thank you.

- Kurt