Those of you who know me well know that I am gearing up for my annual "Ride Allegheny" bike ride. This ride started nine years ago when a group of my friends in the neighborhood were looking for a multi-day bike ride that would be on trails as opposed to roads. While there is some road riding involved, the ride from Pittsburgh, PA back to our home in Gaithersburg, MD is almost all on trails. It's about 300 miles and we do it over four days. And no, we don't camp. We're old. We stay in hotels.
A few years ago, after we'd done the ride several years in a row, we thought about making a connection with a charity. So we discovered Operation Second Chance, a local charity that supports wounded soldiers recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center. They do good stuff, so those of us on the ride have been asking for people to make donations to them.
Apparently I have some well connected friends, because last year we raised $60,000 for them, all by word of mouth. We have raised over $100,000 in total now. And all the money goes to the charity. No overhead. Okay, I think the charity pitched in to help pay for the bus that took us to Pittsburgh, but otherwise it's all theirs.
So please help us out. You can donate online at OSC's website. When you do, choose "Ride Allegheny" when it asks you how you heard about them, and put my name in the "in honor of" box so we can track it. If you want to learn more about our crazy ride, here's our web site. And this is a cool video that one of our friends made (for free) to help our fundraising. Thanks to everyone who has supported in the past, and thanks in advance to all of you who will help out this year.
Just want to say that this is a great thing. Congrats on what you guys are doing for the wounded soldiers coming back.