By Five members of Pi Kappa Phi will embark on a summer-long charity bike ride across the country this May.
The bike ride, called the Journey of Hope, is a 64-day, 4,000-mile bike ride for which 100 members from various chapters of Pi Kappa Phi travel from the West Coast to Washington, D.C.
Cal State Long Beach students Warren Claiborne, Mitchell Danford, Jake Hoyt, Mike Potts and Brandon Ratner will be among those participating.
Push America, Pi Kappa Phi’s national philanthropy, hosts the annual summer ride to “push” awareness and raise money for people living with disabilities in the U.S., according to CSULB’s Pi Kappa Phi President Chris Myrter.
Riders must fundraise $5,500 before the ride begins, and how the participants raise money for the trip is up to them, according to Push America’s website.
Claiborne, who used to work as the philanthropy director, said he has heard great things about the ride from previous participants.
“Everyone I’ve talked to who has gone on the trip said it’s literally life changing,” he said. “This is my last year, and I want to go out with a bang.”
Hoyt said that he’s always “had a heart” for helping people with disabilities and that getting the opportunity to do that while biking across the country made “everything kind of fit just right” for him.
“Back home, I coached a soccer league for kids with disabilities and have been doing that since I was 10 years old,” he said. “I’m going to be doing something that I love doing every day for the whole summer and not have to worry about anything.”
Hoyt said riding across the country and helping people in the process is a reward in itself.
Ratner said he also has a history of helping people with disabilities, since he worked as a Special Olympics coach for floor hockey and basketball in high school. He said Push America is the reason why he rushed Pi Kappa Phi in the first place.
“I’m going to get more out of it than I can ever give these people,” Ratner said.
Most money raised goes toward community centers for people with disabilities, which the riders will stop at and visit along their journey. These stops are called “friendship visits,” during which riders spend time with the people at the center and participate in activities such as ping-pong, wheelchair basketball and puppet shows.
According to Ratner, the riders will make friendship visits nearly every day of the trip.
“You get to interact with the people you do the ride for,” Ratner said. “It’s a really unique thing.”
To raise money for the ride, Hoyt said he hosted a fundraiser at Buffalo Wild Wings, and Ratner is looking to design tank tops to sell for donations. Ratner said he also wants to hold a silent auction to bid off items donated by local businesses and that he plans to use social media outlets to generate awareness about his cause.
Claiborne said it’s his personal goal to raise $10,000 before the trip.
“So far, I’ve done the basics, like starting up Facebook pages and ordering business cards,” he said. “I’m also working with a company to try to set up a text-to-donate line.”
To prepare for the ride across the country, Hoyt said the group has done a weekend training trip during which they biked and visited a community center in Lake Havasu City, Ariz.
The summer-long ride will begin sometime in late May and end in August, about two weeks before school starts, according to Hoyt.
Riders will have three routes to choose from, all of which begin on the West Coast. The departing locations for the routes include Long Beach (south route), San Francisco (north route) and Seattle (trans route). All three routes meet in Washington, D.C. on the last day.
Danford, Hoyt and Ratner have chosen to leave from Seattle while Claiborne and Potts will leave from San Francisco.
