AIDS/LifeCycle is a 7 day, 545-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, co-produced by and benefiting San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. The Ride began in 1994 and was called the “California AIDS Ride.” In 2002, it was rebranded as AIDS/LifeCycle. Since 1994, participants have raised more than $300 million for the HIV and AIDS-related services of the Los Angeles LGBT Center and San Francisco AIDS Foundation. For more information, see http://www.aidslifecycle.org.
This is Scott’s first time riding this event, and my seventh. He has been my remote trainer, my hotline, and my advocate since 2016 when I first rode. This time he will not be able to avoid or outpace me, so I’m going to point out some things about the ride here that can’t really be captured in a boilerplate blurb, but that hopefully he will get to experience in June:
- It’s more than a bike ride. It is so big, so colorful, so creative, so freaking INTENSE, that it almost immediately becomes an alternate world in which we all get to live for a week.
- We call this the “love bubble” and that’s an apt description. Yes, people bicker, and cry, and get annoyed and intensely frustrated. No, it’s not endless bliss — quite the contrary — but it is filled with love.
- Once in it, it becomes obvious that this is how the greater world should be – with the best of people coming out, the acts of generosity, the ability to express life and love with humor and creativity. This is how it should be.
- The act of collectively embarking on a huge, painful, arduous, insane endeavor such as this — IN SERVICE TO OTHER PEOPLE — bonds people together in a way that is unique. If this were a ride to just prove we can do it, it would be completely different. It’s the service to other people that makes ALL the difference.
- On this ride you can watch people of all sizes, shapes, colors, ages, orientations almost immediately lose their divisive boundaries and replace them with … nothing. They just disappear. It just is all OK as we all face the same challenges together.
About Bradley:
Day 3 lunch is usually punitively hot. The small agricultural town of Bradley opens its doors to us and we gratefully wolf down their burgers, chips, and soft drinks.
One year someone (allegedly) said: “We’ll pay you a hundred bucks if you let us eat these burgers and chips in air conditioning.” So they opened up their cafeteria and let us in, and have done so ever since.
The riders end up donating around $70K towards their school programs, matching the district’s entire annual budget in one day. And in the process everyone gets to meet and appreciate people they’d never talk to otherwise.