It all started back in April of 2002. I was driving along in my junk heap of a car and the radio squawked out an ad about the Northeast AIDS Ride. It was to be a bicycle ride from Bear Mountain NY to Boston, over four days.

I thought to myself, "Hmmm that sounds like an interesting challenge."

Then I heard the radio spot say, "each rider has to raise a minimum of $2100 dollars to ride in the event".

Then I filed this away in the back of my head as something to think about. It was the $2100 dollars that made the idea of this task seem a little difficult, not the 350 miles. I gave the whole thing some thought on the Long Island Railroad ride to work that day. That day I had lunch with my tri-athlete friend and mentioned the event to her. She said "You should totally do it!!" Of course she is one of those people that is so positive that she can make anything seem possible.

So, the thoughts were rolling around in my head. I asked my friend (who had been in my company longer then me) if she thought the company would sponsor something like this. She said, "I don't know dude. maybe....."

The thoughts continued to roll around in my head. I became more and more interested in doing this thing. It had been years since the last time I did something in the name of charity. It was time to give something back. I decided I was going to go into work and see if I could find someone in the company that could help me sponsor this event. When I got to work that morning, I read my email. Interestingly, the first email I read was one that said that two people from our imaging department had approached the Managing Editor about the event. PEOPLE magazine was going to sponsor five riders from within the company and there was need of 3 more volunteers. (The first 2 being the two that had approached the Managing Editor). I immediately threw my name into the hat for the drawing to be chosen as one of PEOPLE's riders. About two weeks later they held the drawing and I was chosen to be one of the five that would represent PEOPLE Magazine.

Now that I had been chosen, I actually had to put my money where my mouth was. When I was in college I used to torture my body and challenge it to do things that it might not be able to do. But it had been a few years since then and I have been an occasional mountain, climbing desk jockey since.

It was time to begin training. In early March of 2002, I pulled out my trusty Trek 6000 Mountain bike.

I looked it over to see what I would need to do with it to make it road worthy. Besides shaving about 15 pounds of weight off of it (which was unfortunately impossible) I replaced the nobbly off-road tires with some nice smooth slicks and got a tune up. Then as per the urging of my tri-athlete friend I got clipless pedals. For those who don't know, clipless pedals are like a ski binding for you bike. They bind your shoes to the pedals. This increases pedaling efficiency and power by allowing you to use the muscles on both side of your legs as well as use the power of your legs in a full motion throughout the pedal stroke.

There is a park not to far from where I live. It has a bike path that goes from Merrick to Jones Beach along the Wantagh Parkway. I drove my car with my bike inside to the park. (Yes, I chauffeured my bike.) It was mid-March and fairly cold. I was dressed in about 6 sweat shirts, a turtle neck, some old soccer shorts and some white long johns. Under my helmet I wore a thick wool winter hat and on my hands I wore brown jersey gloves. It must have been hilarious for any real biker to have seen what I looked like. Little did I know but, I was severely lacking in gear. But that all comes later.... So, I pulled my Trek 6000 out of my car and put the front wheel back on. I threw my leg over and rolled out. It was about 30 degrees and its always windy on this particular route. The Cedar Creek trail is about 4.5 miles one way. So, I decided that I was going to do a few runs back and forth and see how I felt. After the third run which came out to about 27 miles, I fell to the ground by my car and collapsed in a heap. I asked myself what the hell I had gotten myself into. The ride I was training for was 350 miles and that day's ride wasn't even a tenth of it.

Something was going to have to change or I was going to die trying to finish this ride. I was exhausted, my feet were frozen and I couldn't feel my fingers.