Coast to Coast for Hope is a charitable organization dedicated to active philanthropy and building support to benefit the struggle against life-threatening diseases. Founded in 2003 by a group of college seniors who travelled across the United States by bicycle to raise awareness for cancer research, Coast to Coast for Hope has raised over $50,000.00 to help fight cancer and engage young people in ambitious, thoughtful community service. Click here to learn more!
Make a tax-deductible donation to Coast to Coast for Hope that will be used to support our rides and grow this year’s donation to fight life-threatening diseases!
An update on the Coast to Coast for Hope 2007 Team’s fundraising:
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.
Just got a call from Ryan last night from Alaska - the trip was a success! Congratulations to both Molly and Ryan for their hard work and dedication in the fight against MS. Here’s an excerpt from a note from Molly:
"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."
Ryan and Molly are on the road and on their way to AK. Ryan reports that the mountains in Canada are incredible and that biking all day long hurts as much as he remembers it hurting during his 2004 trip.
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!
Molly Gove and Ryan Burke - 2008 Coast to Coast for Hope Riders
We have some very exciting news to pass along. This spring, Molly Gove and Coast to Coast for Hope 2004 alumnus Ryan Burke will be riding to Alaska in order to raise awareness and support for Multiple Sclerosis. Often simply referred to as "MS", Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic disease that affects the central nervous system. Molly and Ryan plan to start their ride in Whitefish, Montana, and end in Anchorage, AK. More info to follow shortly, but here’s a short note from Molly about the upcoming ride:
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 AdaptiveSkiSchool at Jackson HoleMountain. Resort. As for myself, I work for the NordicSkiSchool 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, WY83002
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:
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.
The end of the year quickly approaches as we finalize some details regarding the 2007 Ride. The team’s pending donation has still been growing thanks in part to some individual matching grants. These matches come from employers who are interested in supporting their employees’ giving, and the matching grants are a great way to really make your own donations go extra miles. If you haven’t already, ask at work and see if there are any matching grant programs at your place of work. It’s probably not too late to get a match!
There’s a certain comfort in reliving this past summer’s cross-country bicycle trip from the everyday comforts of home. Sitting indoors on a comfortable cushioned chair, protected from the cold and demoralizing rain, I can now relive each step of the Coast to Coast for Hope 2007 Trip by a click of the mouse and the scroll of an interactive map.
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!
Do you want to see the 2007 Team’s route in more detail? Click here to visit our flickr.com map and examine the route taken by Coast to Coast for Hope’s riders during our 2007 cross-country bicycle trip.
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.
Sorry for a delay in blog posts, but we needed some time to relax after almost two months of bicycling. We are doing excellent and arrived at the coast in Pacific City, Oregon.
Kurt and Hayden dipping their bikes into the Pacific
We rode for five straight days through the wind, rain and uncomfortably cool temperatures to make it to the ocean and up the coast to Astoria, OR. Although western Oregon and Washington are usually associated with dismal weather conditions and abundant rainfall, the month of July is actually supposed to be the driest month of the year - I guess the rain had to catch up with us at some point throughout our trip and decided to hit us at the end! Minus a few sporadic isolated thunderstorms back east, Hayden and I ran into little precipitation.
A dismal yet beautiful day on the glorious coast of Oregon
After leaving Yellowstone National Park, we headed north through Montana. We were able to spend a few nights with some friends and family, allowing us to get back to riding clean and full of food for our last major sprint towards the coast!
A neat rock formation in the middle of a long day through Idaho
We had to tackle numerous high-elevation passes throughout the remaining four states, including our last crossing of the Continental Divide in Montana. We also completed our longest day of riding (in terms of milage) between Hamilton, Montana and Walla Walla, Washington for a total of 155 miles!
That? Eh, its only a 7,241 foot pass and our last Continental Divide… no big deal.
We pushed hard through strong headwinds, daunting hills and the endless fields of grain in northeastern/central Oregon, climbed the summits snowy-peaked Mt. Hood, continued steadily through Portland and battled the weather to the coast!
Our nation’s amber waves of grain
Ascents, decsents, hills and nothingness.
Mt. Hood at dusk
During the few periods of blue skies, we were able to take a swim in the unusually warm Pacific Ocean and relax on the soft sands of the coast.
One reason for bicycling from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific
Anyone up for a swim?
We took it easy up the coast and rode a day and a half with a fellow cyclist towards Seaside, OR.
The end of the Lewis and Clark Trail at Seaside, OR
After spending a day exploring the coastal town, we made our way to our final destination in Astoria and awaited our ride to Lake Tapps, Washington.
We may be a bit happy to see a warm, dry and fast vehicle that isn’t powered by our legs
Impressive… Although we ended at 4,299.9 miles
What to expect in the following few weeks:
Pictures: All of our pictures uploaded to a public site/page
Updated ‘2007 Trip’ page: This will go into detail about both groups’ stories, adventures and experiences on their cross-country bicycle journey
Donation Updates: We will continue to update the public on any further donations and donation matching. We will be working hard to find companies, organizations and/or people to match the funds raised through our 2007 Coast to Coast for Hope trip
