Ray Lovell’s annual fund-raising trek is a labor of love for his disabled students.

Ray Lovell set off on a mission at dawn Saturday.

While most South Bay residents slept, Lovell and a colleague climbed aboard a tandem bicycle at El Camino College in Torrance and headed south on a daylong ride along the coast to San Diego.

But weekend recreation was not the 42-year-old professor’s goal. Raising money to buy computer equipment for disabled students was.

Lovell teaches physically disabled and visually impaired students at El Camino College to use computers to gain job skills and independence.

For the last three years, Lovell has pedaled to San Diego to raise money to buy the specialized computer equipment that his students need.

“The equipment and the technology . . . open up so many doors to people with disabilities,” he said. “It has really opened up the lives of a lot of students that I’ve worked with.”

Last year, the bicycle ride raised $6,000.

This year, he hopes to net $10,000 in donations from individuals and corporations.

Lovell’s wish list is a long one.

He wants to buy another Macintosh computer for the college’s Special Resources Center and a machine that will scan books and print out the text in Braille. And he would like to acquire more software programs to provide disabled students with computer-assisted instruction.

El Camino College spokeswoman Mary Ann Keating said Lovell has been “a true guiding light” in the development of the special High Tech Center for the disabled.

Keating said Lovell has tremendous empathy for students who are visually, physically or hearing impaired. “It is truly a labor of love for him,” she said.

Lovell tells of one student, a quadriplegic suffering from severe multiple sclerosis who is unable to use a computer keyboard. But with a specially adapted screen, the student has been able to write letters and operate a word processor “entirely independent of someone else,” he said.

Lovell said the college received a grant from the state to establish the High Tech Center three years ago. But the seed money was not enough to buy all the equipment that was needed. “It became obvious to me that this was only the tip of the iceberg.”

Since bicycling is Lovell’s hobby, it was only natural to combine cycling with fund raising.

The first year, Lovell rode alone on the 123-mile trip from Torrance down the coast to Mission Bay in San Diego.

But last year, on the tandem bike, Lovell made it only to a steep upgrade at Torrey Pines State Reserve in La Jolla before darkness forced an end to the ride 15 miles north of San Diego.

By mid-afternoon Saturday, the Pasadena resident had passed through Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach on his way inland through Camp Pendleton. He returned to the coast in Oceanside, and was headed south again.

Lovell said he would make it to San Diego “if we can get to the top of Torrey Pines.” He said the tandem bike does well on flat land and downgrades, but it is tough to ride uphill.

Taking turns riding with Lovell were his wife, Kathy, a manager with Pacific Bell; Bill Hoanzl, acting director of the Special Resources Center; Sharen Kokaska, a specialist who works with learning disabilities, and Lyn Clemons, who assists students with vision and physical disabilities.