When Jonathan Triantafyllou received a phone call last semester and learned that his close friend Philip Bayliss had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, he was shocked.

“He was 22,” said Triantafyllou, a music senior. “It shattered the idea of [invulnerability] you have at 20 or so.”

In the years before, the two friends had talked about going on a large-scale bike ride for some kind of cause but never got around to it because of conflicting schedules, Bayliss said.

After his diagnosis, however, Bayliss and Triantafyllou felt that now was the time to bring this idea into fruition.

Thus, Bike Towards the Cure was born.

“We’re both very new to this, though we grew up in an area where mountain biking was really prevalent,” Bayliss said.

Bayliss has come to use the knowledge gained from his bachelor’s degree in business management — he is now pursuing his master’s in business administration at UNT — to help organize the official nonprofit organization.

However, he has had to learn a lot in the process.

“I’ve been lucky with the people I’ve reached out to for help,” he said. “[The organization] will help me professionally.”

Jonathan Triantafyllou, a music senior, lays out the 4,500 mile cross-country route he and his friend will undertake on their bicycles in June. Their ride will cover 15 states and raise funds for their newly created nonprofit, Bike Towards the Cure. The money will go toward cancer research. Photo by Drew Gaines/Photographer.

He said he wants to follow the example of some of his friends who organized a similar event for autism where they took boats up the east coast from Florida to the Jersey Shore.

“I’m following their model a bit. They got a lot of press and coverage while [biking] would be best.”

While Bayliss works on the bureaucratic side of things, Triantafyllou plans the day-to-day route and performs unofficial public relation duties.

Combining two routes coordinated by the Advanced Cycling Association, the ride will tentatively begin on June 12 in San Diego, Calif., and will end about two months later in Avalon, N.J. — totaling about 4,500 miles.

“I plan on writing to larger cycling magazines,” Triantafyllou said. “There was already an article published [in the York Dispatch] back home on the East Coast.”

People who don’t want to try and conquer the full ride can join in for smaller intervals as long as they donate $1 for every mile they ride.

The organization just nabbed its first corporate sponsor, Shaklee Sports Nutrition, and Triantafyllou said he looks forward to seeing more follow its lead.

A handful of events during the ride are in the works, including a kickoff day at the beginning of the ride and a possible day ride in Phoenix, Ariz.

“I have a friend in Phoenix who’s heavily involved in the athletic community,” Bayliss said. “We’re talking about doing a half or full century [a 100-mile ride] down there.”

Both men feel slightly out of their comfort zones in pursuit of this endeavor, but they remain passionate and said they hope to reach their goal of $30,000 by the time they reach Avalon.

“This is a bit extreme,” said Bayliss, “but extreme measures are required.”

For more information and opportunities to donate, visit the Bike Towards the Cure Facebook page.

Link to the Authors post

The following is a guest post by Chip Seal of http://chipsea.blogspot.com/.  He has had several run in’s with the Ennis Police Department and here is his personal take on this situation:

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I had learned to ride a bicycle in California, and rode it for thousands and thousands of miles in that state. So when I took up cycling again in Texas in 2006, I wanted to be sure I understood Texas bicycle specific law and how to safely navigate on a streetscape that had few wide lanes like had experienced in California.

Texas law was straightforward: In Texas, bicycles are vehicles, so they have the rights and duties of all other traffic. Texas cyclists have the statutory right to the roadway, (travel lane) and a duty to follow all the traffic rules like automobiles.

Four years later, and after traveling 12,000 miles in Texas traffic, I was confident that I understood what the Texas Transportation Code (TTC) said. The City of Ennis says that I don’t know what I am talking about.

The way they interpret the TTC, a cyclist in the City of Ennis must either abandon the roadway and ride on a shoulder any time other traffic comes by, or a cyclist can only operate on a roadway in a school zone. (The only place a cyclist can travel close to the maximum posted speed limit.) The Jury wasn’t clear as to which result they preferred.

One of the officers who ticketed me said under oath that he had only stopped two other cyclists in the past year, and neither of them for “impeding traffic”, the crime I am accused of. He also testified that I was the only operator of any type of vehicle that he had cited for impedance.

This surprised me, for there have been only a handful of cyclists in Ennis that I have seen over the past two years who were operating lawfully.

I was likewise surprised I had been the only illegal impeder he had ever seen! Indeed many common vehicles in and around Ennis cause other traffic to slow, but are commonly accepted and not considered “impeding”. For example, traffic is impeded all the time by folks making left turns, vehicles pulling a heavy load, driving below the speed limit when towing other vehicles, slowing to park or turn into a driveway, garbage collection trucks, mail delivery vehicles, and the operation of a farm or construction vehicles on the public streets whose primary purpose isn’t transportation.

I am therefore not fully convinced that my cycling has been treated like all the other vehicles by the City of Ennis. But maybe I am wrong about this. If so, I would expect any vehicle unable to keep up with automobiles, like farm equipment, will be ticketed if they venture into Ennis this year. It may be a new enforcement policy!

In fact, the roads in Ennis have ceased to be public roads if the severest interpretation of the jury is adopted. The only vehicles that would be allowed on the formally public streets of Ennis are those that have obtained prior approval from the government to drive on them, and are carrying documents that can prove that. No unregistered vehicles allowed.

“Imagine George Plimpton. Except he’s got real athletic ability. And he’s a woman. And she’s taken on a challenge that makes Paper Lion look like a brisk game of Go Fish.

Meet Kathryn Bertine, elite triathlete, former professional figure skater, and starving artist. In the summer of 2006, Bertine was out of a job, a home, and a general sense of direction when ESPN staked her to a dream:  she was given two years to make the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing—by any means possible. As Good As Gold is the hilarious, heroic account of Bertine’s serial exertions in the realms of triathlon, modern pentathlon, team handball, track cycling, road cycling, rowing, open water swimming, racewalking, and—fasten your seatbelts—luge.

On her journey, the obstacles range from jet lag to jellyfish, flat tires to dating disasters, knuckle bashings to road rash. But, as time starts running out, Bertine doesn’t sweat the small stuff, only the large–like scouring the globe for a tiny nation to adopt her, and pushing her body and mind as far as it will go. Maybe all the way to China.

Between harrowing, but laugh-out-loud episodes of triumph and humiliation, Bertine takes short “Water Breaks” to contemplate the ins-and-outs of fan mail, failure, re-hydration, nasal reconstruction, and what it really means to be an athlete.

Kathryn Bertine swims, runs, and rides like a champion–and her writing is victorious; mining literary pleasures from her physical pain and her spiritual tenacity. In As Good As Gold, Bertine proves she has something more valuable than an Olympic medal. She’s got Olympic mettle. When it comes to the human heart, she takes the gold.”

Buy the book on Amazon:
So You Wanna Be an Olympian?: One Woman, Twenty-six Sports, and 800 Days to Fulfill a Lifelong Dream