Pedaling a Cause : 500-Mile Bike Ride Will Benefit AIDS Services
There are certainly easier ways to raise money for AIDS services than pedaling 500 miles down the coast of California. That, of course, is part of the allure of the California AIDS Ride, a weeklong bicycle jaunt that is as much allegory as fund-raiser.
When Brian Leonard climbs onto his new bike for the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles trek, he will be proving something to his late father as well as himself. Lisa Langere will keep her aching knees pumping as a statement of will and remembrance. Sydell Connor will be there with--and for--her son.
In the crowded world of Los Angeles AIDS fund-raisers, the ride is billed as a first. More than 500 riders have pledged to raise at least $2,000 each for AIDS-related services at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. They will set out from San Francisco Sunday and roll into Los Angeles May 7, camping out along the way.
About 15% of the bicyclists have the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. Connor’s son, Josh Wells, has HIV. Leonard has full-blown AIDS, though he does not like the sound of that.
“I still have a hard time swallowing that. I feel labeled,” said Leonard, 37, who lives in a West Hollywood bungalow with his “best buddies,” two Dalmatians. In January, his immune system cell count had plummeted to 12--a fraction of a healthy person’s. It has now bounced back to 133, still less than a fifth of the norm.
He signed up for the ride last July. “I just decided it was time to make some plans for the future, set a goal,” he explained. “I can do it this year. I may not physically be able to next year. I don’t want to have any regrets.”
Leonard’s father died of lymphoma shortly before Leonard joined the ride roster. “I wanted to do something to make him proud of me. I kind of let him down in a lot of ways,” said Leonard, a onetime hotel bellman who owned a pool maintenance firm before he stopped working. “I somehow got inspired to make an accomplishment. I think somehow the word will get to him.”
Langere is also riding in part for the dead. Jay Hinton, a friend since she was a teen-ager in Florida, died two months ago of AIDS. “He was my soul mate. Two people couldn’t be closer,” said Langere, who heads the art department at a Los Angeles set construction company.
A crystal always worn by Hinton hangs around her neck. She plans to mount a photo of the two of them on her bicycle for the long ride down the coast. “I’m going to be pulling on all his energy,” she said.
Along with a sense of loss, Langere, 35, brings to the ride a determination honed by years of cancer operations. She had her first while pregnant with her son, now a teen-ager. Since then surgeons have removed her ovaries, her appendix, her gall bladder and “I don’t know how many miles or feet of intestinal tract.”
It was a cancer operation--”I can’t remember which one”--that got her on a bicycle. During recovery, her hips hurt too much to run, so she started biking and went on to participate in triathlons of swimming, bicycling and running.
She plans to conquer the 500 miles with the same will that has helped her survive the cancer that has marked her entire adulthood. “We don’t need dreamers, we need doers,” she said.
For Wells and his mother, the ride is less embroidered by second meanings and more of a joint adventure. Still, they are making their quiet statements. Wells, the 30-year-old co-owner of a Los Angeles nightclub, wants people to see that having HIV is no obstacle to an active, busy life.
Connor, an attorney in her mid-50s, explained, “It’s important for parents to be out there too, for people who aren’t gay and lesbian.” The public can always relate to a mother, she said, and her presence may touch those otherwise unmoved.
Scraped and bruised from her training rides, Connor knows she’s not going to make all the hills. “The steep ones I’ll walk. I’ll do what I can. . . . I decided I’m not going to get anxious about it. I’m going to have fun.”
Connor and her 500-plus road companions will have a small army of support teams to help them. There will be 55 vehicles trundling over back roads with them: trucks to transport their gear, mobile kitchens and showers, vans to pick them up if they haven’t reached camp by dark. Supplies include 14,000 granola bars, 7,000 gallons of water and repair kits to fix 1,200 to 1,500 flat bicycle tires.
Volunteer crews will staff water stops, paint directional signs and prepare the campsites where riders will sleep in two-person tents.
Daniel Pallotta, the fund-raising consultant who is overseeing the ride for the gay and lesbian center, expects the event will gross more than $1.2 million in pledges, about 60% of which will go to the center after costs are covered. The Tanqueray liquor company is also underwriting the ride with nearly $250,000 in cash and services, Pallotta said.
Tanqueray’s involvement has drawn protests from some who object to the participation of an alcohol company in a health-related event. Pallotta, saying he was aware of only one or two complaint letters, said the company was exhibiting “responsible corporate leadership.”
With months of preparation behind him, Pallotta hopes the ride will become an annual occurrence.
“I hate the idea of institutionalizing AIDS with all of these events,” he added. “But we need the money.”
