Two guys, two bikes, 2800 miles. But why? Why are two college students about to bike up the eastern coast of the United States?
This week, Zach and I took a trip to the Rally office in Atlanta. While we had some productive meetings and enjoyed seeing all the awesome people who work at Rally (and make it one of the coolest places on Earth!), the best part of the day was getting to know two new friends– Nolan and Lindsay. You have no idea how excited we were to be with these guys for the day.
Nolan is 9 years old. From behind his sheepish grin, he told us all about what makes him excited. He’s a HUGE Georgia Tech fan (that one hurt me….), loves to learn karate (he’s working on his green belt), watches tennis and NASCAR, and has a new found love of riding his bike without training wheels. Lindsay just had her 13th birthday. She loves fashion and modeling (last year, she even got to model with Falcons star Curtis Lofton!). And let me tell you – this girl has to be great at it, because she is confident, excited, and always positive. Nolan and Lindsey probably remind you of your own children or little brothers or sisters or cousins.
But these two kids also have cancer. Nolan is undergoing chemotherapy, battling brain tumors for the second time. Because the brain tumors hinder his balance, riding a bike without his training wheels is an incredibly exciting achievement. Lindsay just spent over three months in the hospital following a bone marrow transplant in her fight against relapsed leukemia. Because her immunity is so low right now, she is for the most part confined to being at home in isolation from the outside.
This is why Zach and I are about to bike from New York to Georgia. It is for Nolan, and Lindsay, and the other 35,000 families in the nation that are affected by childhood cancer. We are biking for them. We are biking to fund childhood cancer research - in the hopes that one day, Nolan can become not only a green-belt, but a black-belt in karate, and Lindsay can enjoy going outside and being with her friends. We are biking so that they can be kids and love life. We are biking for all kids with childhood cancer. And we hope that you will Rally Across America with us.
To learn more about Rally Across America, see our website.
To donate, see our fundraising page.
To get your own Rally T-shirt, go here.
You can also follow us on twitter @RallyAcrossUSA or our Facebook page.
Rally On!
Luke
