Spring is here and, as usual, people who can't ride year-round are dragging their bikes out of storage to ride for fun, or as a means of transportation, or — sometimes - to make an important statement. Next month, anotherdemocrat will be riding her bike in Austin’s Hill Country Ride for AIDS; in June, sfbob will ride from San Francisco to LA in AIDS/LifeCycle.
Last week’s WGLB diary was such a very serious affair (and rightly so). This week tried to lighten the mood just a bit. Both of this week's diarists have been really swamped with work so this diary MAY contain recycled material. Recycling's a good thing, right?
If you continue beyond the fold we’ll give you more information about this whole AIDS bike-riding thing we’re doing. We’ll also give you a list of the many similar AIDS charity rides in the US and elsewhere, in case you want to participate in one yourself. And of course, we’d be remiss if you didn’t give you an opportunity to throw some donations our way.
To summarize briefly, after some locally-oriented bike-a-thons in the mid 1980’s, endurance bike rides to raise funds for AIDS service organizations kicked off in earnest in 1994 when about 500 cyclists pedaled from San Francisco to Los Angeles on the first California AIDS Ride. That ride was reproduced in a number of other places with varying degrees of success, most of them staged by a for-profit production company. All of these rides were fairly large-scale operations (up to 3,000 riders or more at the height of the California AIDS Ride in 1999 and 2000), all of them lasted from four to seven days and - to a greater or lesser extent - they all promoted safe cycling while emphasizing a sense of community among participants. The recession of 2000-2001, the events surrounding 9/11, and some internal issues served to close down most of the original multi-day rides.
Anotherdemocrat talks about The Hill Country Ride For AIDS
This is the eleventh year for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. Ten AIDS service organizations came together in 1999 to create a cycling event to raise money to support people living with AIDS. In the Spring of 2000, the first Hill Country Ride for AIDS was a success, not only for the money it raised, but also for the community spirit that quickly made it a favorite event in Central Texas. (And it was crazy fun.) Many of these AIDS service organizations had been involved with the nationally produced Texas AIDS Ride in 1997. While it was a logistical success, the Austin agencies were disappointed that only 15% of the money raised was returned by the Ride organizers to the service organizations. The Austin agencies knew that they could create an event that raises money, captures our incredible community spirit, is fun, safe, and still return the money to support people living with AIDS. By word of mouth, our riders have more than quintupled from our first year. The Hill Country Ride for AIDS 2008 had a record number of riders who raised a record $637,000. The Wise Giving Alliance, a program of the Better Business Bureau states that events should "return at least 60% of money raised for program activities." The Hill Country Ride for AIDS returns an average of 76%. With your support, we hope to return even more in 2010. The Ride has evolved over the years, and is now a 1-day event with various ride distances. The main route is around 50 miles, with the choice of the Olympic Extension, which adds an additional 20-ish miles, and now this year, a century Ride - 100 miles for the most experienced cyclists. There is also the choice of a shorter 10 mile route, that lets you choose how far you want to ride. I have done every one of these rides, even back when it was a 2-day 125 mile ride. I haven't ridden every inch of any one of them - I like to think of myself as the person who gives the SAG vehicles something to do. But I'm there every time and some day, I will ride every bit of it. At the end of one of the Rides a couple of years ago, I was interviewed by the newspaper, and I said that I'll be doing these until we don't need to do them anymore, and I paraphrased the bump ersticker you've all seen: "Someday AIDS agencies will have all the money they need and the Air Force will have to have a bike ride to buy a bomber."
Here's a pic of me before a previous year's ride:
This ride is so much fun, I can't even tell you. Everyone is so warm & helpful - everyone supports each other. I have seen people actually pushing fellow riders up a hill. Even the Saturday morning training rides are fun. OK, they are fun apart from the getting up at the crack of dawn part. But, what I want you to know about the Ride itself is that for that day, we who participate get to experience the world as it should be. You are there, doing something for yourself and for others, everyone is happy to be there, and to see you. There is nothing but warmth and support. I have never heard any whining or meanness on the Ride. I have seen people literally pushing other riders up a hill. Here is a video that gives somewhat of a feel about the Ride:
But participants are also there because we have made a commitment to help our neighbors. Every year I say it, but in this economy, with the earthquakes and the primary season just past, it has never been as true - we are helping people who really need it. The Ride is behind where it was last year in fundraising, and they really need to raise more than last year. When I was driving home from this year's kick off party back in January, I listened to I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, one of the songs from U2's latest album and it struck me as perfectly about the Ride. Let me explain as I go through some of the lyrics. And because I am just that much of a fangirl:
So, Bob and others who ride through actual mountains will mock me for this, but for a plump, non-fit person like me, the chorus of this song is striking -
It's not a hill, it's a mountain
As you start out the climb
They don't call this ride the Hill Country Ride for nothing. There are lots & lots of hills, some of them steep enough to make you cry, especially if you're not in the best of shape, like me. There's one nicknamed "the ski slope." It makes me cry, or ask for the SAG vehicle.
Do you believe me, or are you doubting
We're gonna make it all the way to the light
But I know I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight
This year, the Ride's goal is $700,000. And my personal goal is $10,000. That amount is, at the very least, a leap of faith in this economy, but like the man said, we're gonna make it all the way to the light. When the economy is as crappy as it is, the need for services like those provided by AIDS Services of Austin becomes much more critical. But I have faith that people will come through, and we will not only meet that goal but will surpass it. And I set my goal insanely high on purpose. Sure, I want to be the top fundraiser for the Ride, but I want that because I want them to surpass their goal. (you can help me reach my goal by donating at my Hill Country Ride page.
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear?
The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear
Oh, but a change of heart comes slow
The love that this ride generates - among the riders, the crew, the volunteers & the donors - is so amazing that I have no fear they'll miss the goal. $700,000 is a lot of money to try to raise any time, but this year the economy sucks, there are primaries coming up, and many have given a lot of money to earthquake relief in Haiti. But I really think that love & goodness generate more of themselves, and the Ride will blow past that $700,000 goal like a pro cyclist crossing the finish line after a sprint. You can help by donating at my Hill Country Ride page.
And about that "right to be ridiculous" -- we wear costumes, decorate our helmets & handlebars, and we have fun - check out these pictures.
and if anyone has any good ideas for me to decorate my helmet & bike, keeping in mind that I am not at all arty or crafty, I'd really appreciate it. I know there are arty & creative people here - if any of you can think of how I should decorate my helmet, I'll send you a gigantic hug.
It's not a hill, it's a mountain
As you start out the climb
Listen for me, I'll be shouting
We're gonna make it all the way to the light
But you now I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight
Baby, baby, baby, I know I'm not alone
Baby, baby, baby, I know I'm not alone
So I'm going to be training, riding up some hills, so I don't cry (too much) at the base of (most of) the steep hills. I know I'm not alone when I ride -- I take all the donors with me, and all the loved ones they donate for - all the uncles, brothers, husbands, partners and friends. I'll take all of them with me.
It's not a hill, it's a mountain
As we start out the climb
Listen for me, I'll be shouting
Shouting to the darkness, squeeze out sparks of light
About the shouting - I have to tell you about how fantastic the volunteers are. When you have been riding for hours, and you see yet another hill and start to despair, you also see a volunteer at the top of it, calling out to you that you can do it, you can make it. These people truly squeeze sparks of light out of the darkness, they are amazing & wonderful.
Oh oh
Slowly now
Oh oh
I ride really slowly, and I walk a lot, too - because I'm really not in good shape. But I'm there every year, and always will be. Please donate if you can.
Sfbob discusses AIDS/LifeCycle
One of my fellow AIDS/LifeCycle riders has produced a slideshow that eloquently combines the challenges--both personal and political--that face those who live with HIV in today’s world with some glimpses of the experience of participating in our ride...
The first California AIDS Ride took place in 1994 and raised money for the LA Gay and Lesbian Center’s Jeffrey Goodman Clinic. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation signed on as an additional beneficiary the following year. The two organizations decided after the 2001 event that it was time to separate themselves from the production company that had run the event, and started AIDS/LifeCycle, but the event that takes place now is very similar to the original one. It still goes from San Francisco to LA over the course of seven days. There are some folks who’ve participated every single year since the beginning. Last year for the first time, a day’s riding had to be canceled because of inclement weather when the first riders were already fifteen miles along. CHP pulled one of our permits out of concern for our safety. One woman had ridden every single official mile since 1994. She rode that day too.
Nobody complained when we lost a day of riding. Transporting over 2000 bikes from one place to another wasn’t really one of the things in the ride’s daily plan. We always have a couple of buses on hand to carry the people who can’t do a full day’s ride but they weren’t nearly enough so more had to be hired. Folks chipped in to cover the added cost. The wait was long but everyone made the best of it. The trucks that normally carry our gear were unloaded and sent back over to help out. As each group of bikes arrived, whoever was around at the time pitched in to offload and park them so the truck to turn around and get more. Drivers, riders and crew worked until almost midnight getting all of the bikes sorted out and nobody complained. Is it any wonder I love spending a week each year (not to mention every weekend from October onwards doing training rides) with these folks? They’re a good influence.
Even when I was a kid, I loved bicycling. I biked to school, I biked around the neighborhood. When school was out my friends and I would bike around exotic Nassau County, Long Island. During the 1980 New York transit strike I biked from Jackson Heights to my job in lower Manhattan. When I moved to Washington, DC I biked into the suburbs (and once to Harpers Ferry). So riding all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles just seemed like the next logical step. Okay, not really; for quite some time I thought riding a bike over five hundred miles in a week was insane for anyone but the most hardcore of athletes, and I didn’t think of myself as an athlete at all. A number of friends who'd ridden kept trying to get me to join them. I kept shining them on until I finally ran out of excuses.
I signed up in the fall of 1998 to participate in the following year’s California AIDS Ride 6, in 1999. I rode in the next two events, then skipped the last AIDS Ride and the first AIDS/LifeCycle in 2002. I haven’t missed a ride since then. This year’s ride will be my eleventh in California and my twelfth overall.
Just like the Hill Country Ride, AIDS/LifeCycle (or ALC as we like to call it), provides an incredible experience and creates the kind of world you wish you could live in every day. But there are some big differences. ALC is a week-long event. It is truly physically challenging for anyone whose name isn’t "Lance" or "Levi." Just about every day’s riding includes a one major climb; some days have three or four. Over the course of a week we climb over 20,000 feet of hills and ride between 545 and 575 miles (the route varies just a bit from year to year; this year we'll be riding 560.5 miles). Riders register to raise funds for either the LA Gay and Lesbian Center or the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. A couple of over-achievers have obtain duplicate registrations and are raising money for both beneficiaries.
We're on the road for a full week, so the logistics for ALC is far more complex than what's one required for the Hill Country Ride. There are tents, mobile showers, cooking facilities and quite a few support vehicles; not to mention a medical crew, a massage crew, a crew to pick up the riders who can't finish the day. There's even a team of men and women on motorcycles who manage traffic for us at dangerous intersections.
With all that infrastructure, return to the beneficiaries isn't quite as high a percentage as for the Hill Country Ride. Still, for the past couple of years we've been right around 64%. This isn't bad at all, especially when you consider that in 2008, ALC raised $12,365,325 million, making it the largest single AIDS fundraiser ever. Last year, participation decreased from 2479 riders to 2158 and we raised a bit over $11 million. Despite the economic downturn, the amount raised per rider actually increased and the proportion that went to the beneficiaries after expenses remained virtually the same as before.
I managed to raise $7,004 — a personal best but nowhere near the highest individual total. I'm aiming to raise that much again but I'll be happy to break $5,000 mark as I have each of the past five years. Riders who raise that much or more receive a special-edition jersey. Each rider has to raise a minimum of $3,000; last year the average raised per rider exceeded $4,000. Crew (we call them "roadies") aren’t required to raise money in order to participate since they’re doing all of the thankless tasks behind the scenes. But some of them raise a substantial amount as well. Believe it or not, it's much harder to do many of the things the roadies do than it is to ride. They're incredibly dedicated.
The ride might be intense, but it's not all serious by a long shot. In this picture from last year, the friend I shared a tent with for five nights (and a hotel room with for one; you need a break now and again) is getting some assistance from a few kind gentlemen:
Day Two of our ride is over 100 miles, most of it through the lush Salinas Valley. For the past few years we've encountered a troup of dancing bears at one of our rest stops...
When they aren't dancing they're busy handing out Otterpops.
Our route shifts from inland to coast several times in the course of a week. Thanks to California's microclimates, we can have cold, foggy days and chilly nights, followed by intense heat. Day three features our most intense hill and the hottest weather. To cheer us up towards the end of the day, the boys of Rest Stop Four give us a little show...
What could be better for taking our minds off of how hard the ride is?
On Day Four, right after another huge climb, known as the Evil Twins, it's a long-standing tradition to get your picture taken at the halfway point of the ride...
When the the sky is clear there's an incredible view of Morro Bay and the coastline. And then we descend for seven miles.
Day Five is known as Red Dress Day. It started out with the idea of everyone wearing red to form a huge red ribbon, but we're blessed with so much fabulousness that...well...check it out...
When I was training for my very first ride, I was inspired by the generosity of those who volunteered their time by organizing and leading training rides to help folks get ready to ride. For the first few weeks, I wasn't at all sure I could make it all the way to LA, but by the following spring I was riding a hundred miles on Saturday and riding again on Sunday. So following the end of that first year of riding I volunteered to become a training ride leader myself. Each year since then I've helped shepherd newcomers through the same process I went through. It's very gratifying to watch people become better cyclists. Besides the practical part — helping people get ready to ride a long, long way - we also emphasize courtesy, safety and obeying traffic laws. While it's certainly the right thing to do, it's also crucially important in ensuring that the ride continues. In the course of a week we ride through over fifty different communities. In some cases there is simply no alternate way for us to go. One of the things we remind our riders about, especially if we see them behaving badly, is that it would take only one rider, breaking one law, risking one permit, to jeopardize the future of the largest single source of funds for both the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center.
Here's a picture of me on a recent training ride.
The loud vest and non-matching helmet cover (some of us call that a BUHC--"butt-ugly helmet cover") identify me as a training ride leader.
I contracted HIV sometime between late 1980 and mid-1981 (I’m reasonably sure I was infected in December of 1980; I’ll spare you the gory details unless you really want to know). I tested positive in 1985 and discovered how long I’d been infected a couple of years later, thanks to having previously participated in the clinical trials for the hepatitis B vaccine. Early on in the course of the epidemic I began losing friends and neighbors. My first long-term partner died in 1993 (after we’d parted), my second partner passed away in December, 1992 while we were still a couple. Just this month a friend of mine died from an AIDS-related condition. When I say this is a very personal cause for me, I really mean it.
At the outset of my first ride I joined the Positive Pedalers. We’re observing the fifteenth anniversary of our founding this year. Our membership extends throughout the US, in Canada, in Australia, in the UK and in Germany. Our mission statement reads: "We are a group of people living with HIV/AIDS eliminating stigma through our positive public example."
It had taken every bit of nerve for me to even tell my parents that I was gay. In fact I didn’t get around to this minor bit of self-disclosure until I was 34 years old, shortly after I’d tested positive for HIV. Telling them that other piece of news took another few years. I did my best to avoid discussing my sexual orientation at work until long after any conceivable reason to hide it had disappeared. The mask didn’t fall away for good until my partner Mario’s illness. I certainly didn’t discuss my HIV-status in the office. During my second AIDS Ride, I was interviewed by a reporter. The following evening, I appeared on television—albeit in Los Angeles—announcing to the world that I was a person living with HIV. I didn’t think of myself as a spokesperson for anything, but there I was.
I got my first "serious" 35 mm single-lens-reflex camera in 1977. (It was an an Olympus OM-1. It was a great camera.) When I left New York in 1980, I lost touch with the friend who taught me how to use the camera and how to develop film and make prints. In 1996, while I was volunteering at the Names Project quilt display on the National Mall in Washington, I discovered a quilt panel with his picture on it. He’d died from AIDS in 1992.
I broke my collarbone shortly before the 2006 ride, so I rode along with the event’s official photographer, who was a friend of mine. The night before the ride began I went out and purchased a digital SLR camera. During the event, I watched what my friend was doing and shadowed him. Sometimes he copied me. I shot about 2,200 pictures. I don’t take the SLR with me when I ride; it’s too bulky. But I have a smaller camera that I carry with me whenever I ride. People seem to like my pictures. The ride staff has asked me to be present, camera in hand, for special events. If you’re on Facebook, you can see the pictures I’ve taken since I joined (be sure to send me a friend request if we’re not friends already). You can also see photos on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/...
I hate, and I mean I truly HATE, asking people for money. When I was a boy scout (back before they decided to start throwing out kids like me), we went door-to-door selling candy. As soon as I’d knocked on the minimum number of doors, I gave up. Asking people I know and people I don’t know, to donate to a cause always has felt a bit as though I were asking for pocket money for myself—even though I understand there’s an enormous difference between one thing and the other. It’s just not something that comes naturally to me. Yet despite my distaste for the fundraising, in the course of my rides I’ve managed to raise over $50,000.
So that's my story. In so many respects this has always been about doing more than I ever thought I could. When I started out, all I did was decide to get on a bike and ride an absurdly long distance in order to raise money to help people who needed it. In the process, I discovered that I’m a survivor, an athlete, a volunteer, a fundraiser and (perhaps) an artist.
Please sponsor me if you possibly can. You can find my pledge page at www.tofighthiv.org/goto/bobridesforaids.
This year, the Positive Pedalers calendar of AIDS bike rides lists twenty-five events, including two in Africa. One thing these rides seem to have in common is the creation of a brief glimpse of utopia, where people support each other and where racism, sexism homophobia and even AIDS-phobia are almost completely non-existent. That, all by itself, makes being a participant in these events something to cherish. So join us, won't you?
Donate to either of us; better still donate to both of us! Or come along and ride yourself, or become one of the non-riding participants, or find a ride near you and take part in that one. Train, find a great community, and help your neighbors. If you really feel you can't do such a challenging event, first go back & look at the video with anotherdemocrat, who says "If I can do this, you can, too". And these events need volunteers too. Logistics, food, water, signs, people giving directions, support vehicles, and cheerleaders are needed. Yes, cheerleaders are needed. When you are facing another damn hill, and can see yet another one after it, cheerleaders can get you through when you think you can't go on. So, join in, donate or volunteer, or do all three if you can.
Anotherdemocrat's donation page
Sfbob’s donation page
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Have you signed our petition to encourage the World Cup organizers to honor Eudy Simelane and all of the South African women who have suffered "corrective rape" at the hands of homophobic thugs? The 2010 FIFA World Cup is being held in South Africa and Eudy was raped and murdered in part for her love of the game of soccer/football and in part for her living an open life as a lesbian. We're only at 131 signers to date. PLEASE take a second and add your voice!
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This is the final week in our polling for you to select your favorite GLBT candidate or ally running for office. The five winners will be added to our ActBlue fundraising page. The leaders each week will be removed from further polling and guaranteed a spot on our page. The first week NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was chosen with 33 out of a total of 78 votes. The second week Senator Barbara Boxer of California was selected with 13 of 52 votes. The third week we chose Ted Ankrum for Representative with 16 of 44 votes cast. And last week we selected Jennifer Brunner for US Senate in Ohio with 25 of 71 votes. This week we will run our final poll on this and include all the candidates suggested but not yet selected. And if any of those selected in these polls end up in easy reelection bids, we will remove them from our ActBlue fundraising page so we can focus our efforts where they will make the greatest impact. Thanks.