I’ll be riding my bike with a little more purpose in the coming months as I start preparing for a ride from Albany to Perth this November.
The ride follows the success of rides held over the last couple of years. This will be our third ride highlighting the cancer journey of a number of people and raising money to fight cancer.
The Story Behind the Rides
In February 2009 my wife’s sister passed away at the age of 41 from cancer.
In the weeks leading up to her death I was throwing an idea around for a bike ride from Perth to Albany. The ride would take my morning radio programme on the road to broadcast from a different town each day.
I wanted to give people who had been touched by cancer a chance to tell their story. Whether they’d lost a loved one or survived cancer, I wanted people to have the opportunity to break the silence and let people know that they’ve been through some deep waters. I wanted others who have been touched by cancer to know they’re not alone.
That ride happened in October 2009 and was very successful in so many ways.
As well as giving people opportunity to tell their story we raised around $15 000 for Cancer Council Western Australia.
Last year we reversed the direction and cycled from Albany to Perth, raising almost $20 000.
Ride for Cancer 2011
So now we’re doing it all over again. We’ll be cycling from Albany to Perth with the event taking place in the first week of November. We’ll travel to Albany on the last weekend of October to prepare to start riding back on Monday the 31st of October, arriving back in Perth on Saturday the 5th of November.
We have a great team of cyclists ready to take part and once again I’ll broadcast my radio programme each morning before hopping onto my bike just after midday to cycle to the next town. We’ll be followed by support vehicles which will carry all our gear.
If you’re part of a business that would like to partner with us on the journey, I’m urgently looking for some sponsors for the cycling jerseys. There are different levels of sponsorship for various sized logos on the jerseys.
I also need your story. Have you been touched by cancer? Are you battling cancer now or beaten it in the past? Does a loved one have cancer? Have you lost a friend? If you’d rather not leave your story in the comments section of this post, you can go to my contact page and send me an email.
Please Support Our Ride
You can make a donation to support Cancer Council WA by heading to the Everyday Hero fundraising page. If we can raise $20 000 dollars this year it’ll bring our total so far to over $50 000.
If you’re in Australia your donation is tax deductible. Even if you’re not, the work that Cancer Council WA is doing is making a difference throughout the world through some highly regarded research projects. Just head to the webpage and click donate. You’ll see a dropdown box that you can use to select ‘Rodney Olsen’ as the team member you want to support.
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