Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - June 6, 2005
Delfin Vigil, Delfin Vigil, Chronicle Staff Writer
"Along the way you'll be thinking 'wow' when someone tells you the story of their HIV-positive sister. Or 'Wow, so that's where artichokes come from.' And 'Did that drag queen with a cigarette and high heels really just pass me? Wow,' " McCormick told the stretching, Red Bull-drinking crowd at the Cow Palace in Daly City.
In their fourth year since parting ways with the promoters of the now- defunct California AIDS Ride, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center have raised more than $19 million through the co-sponsored AIDS/LifeCycle bike ride.
The ride was reincarnated after a dispute over money between the two AIDS charities and the promoter Pallotta TeamWorks. The California AIDS Ride regularly drew 3,000 registered cyclists in the late '90s; the LifeCycle started with only 700 in its first year. "We've raised $6.8 million and grown to 1,600 cyclists this year -- that's a 33 percent increase in both categories from 2004," said Mark Cloutier, executive director of San Francisco AIDS Foundation, who was dressed Sunday in cycling pants and shoes. "When you consider how the AIDS infection rate in San Francisco is up and federal funding is down, this is a very loud statement of support."
Friends and relatives whistled, cheered, hooted and hollered support and a helicopter hovered above as the cyclists emerged from the Cow Palace about 6: 30 a.m. and headed up Geneva Avenue to Highway 1.
"It wasn't easy for me to get the time off of school and work and to raise the money for this," 23-year-old Safeway worker Victor Martinez of Oakland said as he hugged his mother, sister and niece. "But I had to do it. AIDS awareness is too important."
In order to register, Martinez and the 1,600 other cyclists each had to raise or donate $2,500. Some had been saving for years, others borrowed from friends, and a few maxed out their credit cards to register.
Ken Thomason of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) has done whatever it takes to ride in every California AIDS Ride and AIDS/LifeCycle since 1994.
"It started when a friend said I was too chicken to ride," said Thomason, 50, wearing a skirt, leg warmers and disco-ball earrings with matching necklace and sharing his bike with a toy chicken sporting a coconut bra. "So now everyone knows me as the chicken lady."
The seven-day ride is divided into daily increments, with several rest stops and food breaks along the way. Day one was to end in Aptos, east of Santa Cruz.
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be," said Danny Samrath, a 26-year-old marketing analyst from San Francisco who signed up for his first ride in honor of "too many friends" with HIV. "I'm above novice level but below the hardcore North Bay nuts."
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