Online apparel store Cutdrop.com switches gears to become a virtual pop-up shop with a charity twist.

Beginning on October 19, 2009, Cutdrop.com will exclusively host one clothing or accessories brand each week. In that span of time, the site will offer items at a discount price and donate a portion of the profits to the charity of the brand’s choice. Cutdrop.com will also work with the individual brands, their respective charities and over 300 of the site’s online affiliates on marketing initiatives for the duration of the week. Continue reading »

This post is a collaboration between Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell’s “10 Ways” series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

3. Follow Charities on Social Networks

In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you’re increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it.

Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it’s a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers.

You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:

Oxfam America (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube)
The Humane Society (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr)
LIVESTRONG (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr)
WWF (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs

Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.

It’s important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they’re another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you’ll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.

5. Find Volunteer Opportunities

Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers.

For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.

6. Embed a Widget on Your Site

Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money.

Mashable’s Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.

7. Organize a Tweetup

You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that’s important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized.

8. Express Yourself Using Video

As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message.

Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac — the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports.

If you’re more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.

9. Sign or Start a Petition

There aren’t many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years.

Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.

10. Organize an Online Event

Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized “tweet-a-thon” like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.

In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.

Bonus: Think Outside the Box

Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew’s Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew’s cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease.

Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.

The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments.

Special thanks to VPS.net

A special thanks to VPS.net, who are donating $100 to the Summer of Social Good for every signup they receive this week.

Sign up at VPS.net and use the coupon code “SOSG”to receive 3 Months of FREE hosting on top of your purchased term. VPS.net honors a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so there’s no risk.

About the “10 Ways” Series

The “10 Ways” Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter.

This content was originally written by Mashable’s Josh Catone.

Way back in January I signed up for the Livestrong Challenge Philadelphia 2009 100 mile bike ride. My goal is to reach $1,000 in donations on my behalf before the ride, ideally exceeding it. Training has been going really well, pounding out miles with friends after work and on weekends and I’m happy to say that $533 has been raised so far, just over half of my intial goal.

With roughly six weeks left before the ride, I still want to meet the goal. I’m not at all nervous about spending 6+ hours in a saddle or the 4,300 or so verical feet of climbing. I am nervous about not meeting my goal, as cancer has affected so many people I care about and I will be letting myself down knowing there was more I could have done.

Roughly 300 of you subscribe to the RSS feed here at Randomn3ss, thank you. If each one of you donated only $5, that would put at more than double my initial goal of $1,000. Additionally, about 500 people a day visit the site, if each of you donated just $5, the goal would be crushed. Furthermore, 401 people follow me on twitter, 256 friends on Facebook and 1,883 friends on MySpace, if everyone donated just $5 the money raised would be astronomical.

Whether you know me personally or not, I’m sure you know someone that’s been affected by Cancer. I’m not asking for hand-outs on my behalf, I’m asking you to donate a tax deductible five bucks on behalf of cancer research to help fight and find a cure for the millions of people who have died, suffered and are suffering from Cancer, and their family and friends who suffer along side.

Make the donation using a credit card here: http://philly09.livestrong.org/mikepanic

I’ve been training for months to do this ride, all I’m asking for is your support, well wishes and as little as $5. I would also really appreciate it if you could forward this article along to friends and family, post it on your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or whatever other social media sites you use, all the icons to do so are at the bottom.

Learn more about cancer here. Wikipedia on cancer. Wikipedia on Lance Armstrong. Official Livestrong site.

Just over one month ago I signed up for the Livestrong Challenge 2009 to ride 100 miles on my bicycle to help fight and find a cure for cancer.  I’m happy to report that with the help of friends, family and strangers 20% of the $1,000 goal I’ve set has been reached!  With the event still six months away, the goal should well be exceeded.

Thank you to everyone who has donated and supported me for this great cause.  Please consider making a donation on my behalf at http://philly09.livestrong.org/mikepanic.

With the bulk of my weight loss behind me and the success of the National MS Society City to Shore Ride I trained for, raised $825 for and completed last fall coupled with the happiness I feel inside due to meeting several more goals, I started to look for another charity ride to take part in this year.  After searching around I was beyond happy to find out that a Livestrong Challenge was taking place in Philadelphia on August 23, 2009.  This year, i will be more than doubling the miles in comparison to the MS ride, taking on the longest ride the Challenge has to offer, 100 miles.

The Livestrong Challenge is a series in several cities spearheaded by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  This charity specifically appealed to me because I’ve seen too many of my close friends lose their parents to cancer, and while a few have survived, they all should have.  Beyond the physical pain they feel, it rips an emotional pain through their families and friends that lasts a lifetime.  A cure needs to be found.

My goal for this ride is to raise $1,000, I need your help to do this.  Please make a tax deductible donation on my behalf at: http://philly09.livestrong.org/mikepanic, even $5 will help, so skip Starbucks for a day and donate to an amazing charity and help me raise more than my goal.  If this money means it will help find a cure for cancer, I’ll ride 100 miles a day, every day.

This ride will be dedicated to:

• The Kastelnik Family
• The Pail Family
• The Landis Family
• The Cieri Family
• The Torpe Family

And all those who have suffered from, lost, loved or known someone who has been diagnosed with cancer.

As with last years event, I will be making progress posts on how my training is going along, since the longest ride I’ve done to date is 55 miles, I’ve got a lot of work ahead.  I honestly hope to smash the $1,000 goal in donations too, so that information will be updated on a regular basis too.

Learn more about cancer here.  Wikipedia on cancer. Wikipedia on Lance Armstrong. Official Livestrong site.

To make a tax deductible donation on my behalf: http://philly09.livestrong.org/mikepanic

Please use the social bookmark / network / email options below to share this article on your Facebook / Myspace / Twitter / and email to friends and family.  The more people that are made aware, the better.

On December 23, 2008, I lost 10 inches of myself.

Three years ago, my doctor diagnosed me with HPV.  I felt dirty, ruined.  That was before I learned that the disease affects over 20 million people in the U.S. alone.  In fact, 50% of sexually active people will contract HPV sometime in their life.

My form of HPV doesn’t lead to gential warts (SWEET!).  But, of course, I have the kind that gives you cancer.  The CDC classifies me as one of the 10% of women who “will develop long-lasting HPV infections that put them at risk for cervical cancer.”  That part sucks.

Luckily, my cancer scare was short-lived and treatable.  I had outpatient surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells from my cervix and get checked out about every two months to make sure that my cells aren’t mutating.  I thank my higher power every day that I got through that time relatively unscathed.  But I also pledged to try to make a difference for those who weren’t so lucky.

It seems silly, but I decided that donating my hair to Locks of Love could make a difference.  Over the next three years, I let my curly, thick hair grow down to my breasts.  It became my security blanket and my signature (as well as my scarf when it got cold).  People – sometimes random strangers – made comments about how gorgeous it was.  I felt confident, beautiful, and feminine.

But after three years, it was time (and finally long enough!) to let go.  I remembered my own fears and knew that they were nothing compared to those of a child dealing with a cancer diagnosis.  I decided to do it; the hair had to go.  I didn’t feel a sense of loss, but of freedom.  I felt like the last three years had been removed, like I had a new lease on life.  I also felt like someone else would get to experience freedom and beauty with a wig made from my hair.  There was no tax writeoffs, no public admiration, none of that.  I won’t even know who gets my hair.  I did something for myself and someone else and feel amazing.

If you fall into the qualifications for Locks of Love, I recommend donating.  If not for yourself, then just for helping someone else.  Hopefully, I’ll never need a wig and will be able to keep my own health issues at bay.  For now, I have a huge weight off my shoulders and I’ve never felt more free.

Hey all! Just because I moved from the Illadelph doesn’t mean I quit supporting some of the coolest and most talented motherfuckers around!!  See below for a Ragerienne-certified list of ill shit that you should take note of:

I hear last night’s JAXON’S LOCAL SHOTS VOL. 5 CD RELEASE rocked!!  To get a full list of tracks, hear sample of the bands, and find ordering info, go to WMMR’s LOCAL SHOTS PAGE for details!!

THIS SATURDAY: Knights of the Innocent and WNW Entertainment present “A Knight for the Children.”  Get out, support a good cause, get your face melted off, and say hi to Grizz and Mike for me!

A Knight for the Children

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11: Fuck work Friday!! Get out to Doc Watson’s and catch the debut of my boy RYAN VOX as lead singer of metal band PRIMARY DRIVE!  This kid’s got passion for music pumping through his veins… AND a hotttt girlfriend who lives and breathes this scene, so GET OUT and show some love!!

And… PLAN AHEAD AND GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!!  What better xmas present than the GIFT OF ROCK??  Come out to the downstairs at WORLD CAFE LIVE and see local favorites JEALOUSY CURVE, IKE, and THE CAULFIELDS!!  DECEMBER 26!  I have my tickets… do you??  Get them at IKEonline!

Last year the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) campaign offered a buy one to be donated, get one laptop deal. They are doing it again this year and offering the same deal.  For $399 you get yourself a sprite little lappy and one goes to a third world country.  Some more on the laptops and the program:

What is the XO Laptop?
The XO is an impactful learning tool designed and built especially for children in developing countries, living in some of the most remote environments. As such, it has several features you won’t find on any other laptop.

For starters, it’s about the size of a small textbook and made with a rugged plastic exterior. It has built-in wireless and a unique screen that works in full color or black and white to make it readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outdoors. And finally it’s ultra-low power using only about 4 watts of power (most laptops use about 60 watts). This means, when there’s no electricity, it can be recharged with alternate power sources like solar power.

Why Give a Laptop?
Why give a laptop to a child who has no running water? If you replace the word “laptop” with “education” the answer becomes clear. You don’t wait to educate until all other challenges are resolved. You educate at the same time because it’s such an important part of all the other solutions.

The Children
Currently, there are XO laptops in over 30 countries from Peru to Rwanda, and everywhere it goes, the results are the same. The laptops help children build on their active interest in the world around them to engage with powerful ideas. When the laptops arrive school attendance goes up, teachers download lesson plans from the web and kids begin teaching each other how to use the machine. With the XO, kids actually learn how to learn.

The One Laptop Per Child Organization
Founded in 2005 by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop Per Child has a simple mission: to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each and every one with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, creative, self-empowered learning.

By giving a laptop, you are helping bring education to children in some of the world’s most remote areas.

You are connecting them to each other. To us. To hope. And to a better future.

Just as last year, if you live in the US you can claim half of the money back as a donation when you fill out your taxes.  Get more info and buy one here.

OLPC official site

As a photographer, still images mean a lot to me and I feel that they leave the most lasting impressions burned into our brains. For Blog Action Day 2008, I’ve decided to scour Flickr for the term Poverty and share with you some of the most moving photos that I’ve found.

Poverty + Telephoto = Outsider. Photo by: pilya

National Poverty Hearing: Oliver Letwin MP. Photo by: coopernaill

Homeless in Sugamo 2. Photo by: jamesfischer

Homeless woman with dogs. Photo by: Franco Folini

Homeless sleeping on the sidewalk. Photo by: Franco Folini

Luck Turned Its Back On Me. Photo by: kindgott

child in slum alley. Photo by: angela7dreams

Hardship in the streets of Varanasi (India). Photo by: Ahron de Leeuw

Edinburgh – make poverty history 3. Photo by: michael gallacher

Telling UN Climate Change Conference delegates to Fight Climate Poverty. Photo by: oxfam international

End Poverty to Stop Crime. Photo by: Editor B

more poverty. Photo by: ImNotQuiteJack

Make Poverty History whistle. Photo by: Daveybot

End poverty. Photo by: greefus groinks

Race for Poverty. Photo by: seastoxfam

India: 2006 – 2007. Photo by: Shayan (USA)

sleeping in varanasi. Photo by: MALi Photography

Street Shower. Photo by: Tierecke

work starts early.  Photo by youngsixsta

Mr Tavaud Teii, Deputy Prime Minister of Tuvalu at the Graph of Injustice.  Photo by: oxfam international

Buttons Design Contest.  Photo by: diegooriani

A portion of Kibera from the air. Over a million working poor reside in the Kibera.  Photo by Chrissy Olson

France’s Poverty.  Photo by: (((((i))))) (((((see))))) (((((you)))))

Poverty_Rangers_by_JonnyStarwind.  Photo by: afreytes

Links are provided to all of these amazing photographers Flickr pages, please check them out. To help end global poverty it will take an effort given by all. Get involved with one of the following organizations and help make a difference.

• Make Poverty Histor
• Poverty.com
• Outreach International
• OptINnow
• Learn About Poverty
• Buy buttons, all proceeds go to Global Fund
• Change.org

Learn more at the Institute for Research on Poverty

Read how Barack Obama and Joe Biden plan to combat poverty

Yesterday I rode 45 miles in the National MS Society City to Shore Ride 2008, which everyone helped me raise $825 and I trained my ass off for. I woke up at about 4:44am to the sound of rain, which I knew would be here this weekend. Knowing I didn’t have to get up until 6, I tried to fall back asleep, which I wasn’t real successful at. Just after 6 I rolled out of bed, put Oatmeal in the microwave that I got ready the night before and started to get dressed. After eating the oatmeal, I managed to also eat a whole wheat tortilla, peanut butter and granola all wrapped up as one. For someone who rarely eats in the morning, this was a chore. I then loaded my bike into my car along with most everything else I was taking, including a clear cycling rain jacket I ran all around town Thursday trying to find, and woke up Bella. Yes seriously, she was still under the covers in bed sleeping and not happy that I woke her up. Took her for a quick walk and reviewed everything I needed to take with me in my head once more.

At 6:30ish John showed up, a friend who was doing the ride with me, and we started to unload the bike form his car and pile it into mine. Shortly there after we hit WaWa so John could grab a bagel and we got on the road, at which point John tells me he is recovering from being sick. Great, it’s going to be wet and gross out all day and he’s already sick. This can’t be good.

Directions said it would take about 2 hours to get there, we did it a little faster and didn’t hit any traffic I was expecting to, arriving at the start location just after 8:30, there were already a fair amount of people there but parking was not an issue. John had some last minute money he needed to turn in, we both went to the bathroom again and got out bikes ready. Then we stood around, chatted with some random people and stood around more. The information I had was arrive at 9:30, on the road by 10:30, but they announced that they were trying to put us on the road by 10am, which we were thankful for.

They had called for rain but it didn’t rain our whole drive down and upon arriving, the sun even came out for a while. John had a bit of a choice to make at this point. It wasn’t raining, but he brought a jacket with him since they called for it, and he wasn’t coming back to the car with me, his family was meeting him at the finish so they could enjoy the beach for a while. Leaving the jacket in my car wasn’t an issue, but he had it packed full of snacks, car keys and a bunch of random stuff he needed to ride with and couldn’t find his jersey that had pockets in it that morning. 20 minutes later, 2 minutes before the start, he said screw it and wore the jacket.

The start was kind of uneventful, there were honestly not a lot of people at the 45 mile start, maybe 100-150, but within 1 mile we meshed into an intersection with thousands of others who had started 30 miles earlier at the 75 mile start and we were deep in the packs now. It was kind of crazy, on certain roads packs of cyclists were 50-75 yards long and taking up both lanes of traffic. We had been warned to follow NJ traffic laws, clearly no one cared. Police were at nearly every intersection to block traffic for us so we didn’t have to stop and everyone was really happy. The roads were wet, but no rain. We were both amazed at how flat the roads were, seriously no hills, maintaining 20 mph was no chore at all and we hopped into a few pace lines here and there, but John’s throat didn’t allow him to breath easily and his jacket was acting a bit like a kite, so we didn’t stick in any for too long. We did pass people, a lot of people, some of which I’m sure were in over their heads when they signed up for the ride and thought – hey it’s only a bicycle, I used to ride one when I was a kid, this can’t be too hard.

Looking at the cue sheets before the ride, we noted 3 rest stops. The cue sheets themselves, which I took, were not needed as you just needed to follow the convey, but we both felt that 3 stops in a 45 mile flat ride weren’t all needed. John did want to stop at the first one, about 12 miles in, so he could get some food to take with cold medicine before rolling on, planning on skipping the second and hitting the third. Upon entering the first stop we were greeted with rows of people cheering us on but it was a packed rest stop, partly because it was the first stop in 20 miles for the 75 mile riders. We both looked at each other and said, lets turn around and hit the second stop. A loud, familiar pop sound and I got off my bike, it sounded like a broke a spoke. Checking the bike, all appeared OK though, we started off riding Within 30 feet I knew things weren’t right, hollered up to John and hopped off, spinning my rear wheel. It was out of true by more than a half inch, catching on the brakes. I flipped the lever for the quick release on my brakes and double checked the spokes, broke a drive-side spoke, sure as shit. Luckily it was at a rest stop, they do free bike repairs there. Problem was, there was a line.

After waiting for about an hour, the nice guys at the repair tent fixed my spoke and got the wheel true enough to ride, all for free. Off we go, time to warm up to riding again. As luck would have it, the temperature hung between 68 and 72 the whole ride, so while John sweated his cold out a bit, I enjoyed a pretty good ride in just a jersey, the rain jacket was left behind in the car.

The ride continued on smoothly, we passed people, racers passed us, the roads were wet and dry and some felt like cobblestones, but all in all I felt really good when we pulled into the second rest stop at about mile 24. Grabbed a mini Clif bar, a half a banana, flushed it down with some water and let a little water go at a porta-potty. Everyone was in such a great mood, enjoying the weather and the fact it hadn’t rained, some were taking their time and really laying out on the parking lot of whatever business this was setup in, clearly having a tougher physical time doing it than others. John made a few quick calls, we stretched and headed off.

Between stops 2 and 3 we had small periods of mist, not even a drizzle, but it wasn’t bad and we didn’t really get wet. Some more crappy roads and finally some smooth ones, pulled into the 3rd rest stop at around mile 36, just wanted to get off the bike and walk around, John wanted to put a little more food in his stomach and we headed off for the last stretch.

The last stretch had the worst pavement of the trip, but still ridable, sand was starting to show in the roads, that’s how we knew we were getting closer and people were out cheering a bit more. It’s also the first real traffic we had to actually ride in. The coarse crossed a few major highways and the police couldn’t help us there, we jammed in 2 or 3 wide on the shoulder while cars were on our left and had to wait for green lights. This took a bit loner than I would have liked, but it’s a charity ride, not a race, so it wasn’t terrible.

Roughly five miles from the finish supporters started to really come out along the rodes, some had signs of how many more miles it was. I think at roughly the 3 or 3.5 miles to go mark someone was screaming “You’ve done it! It’s all downhill from here!” This made John happy, although again, this was all flat, but none the less, he took off and I followed. His eyes quickly opened up wide, very wide.

After a half mile of sprinting at speeds in excess of 25mph, a huge bridge into Ocean City, NJ was looking at us. I was ahead of John and looked back to see his reaction, his mouth gaping open, his eyes wide and clearly not thrilled. Anyone who has driven there knows these bridges. They go from sea level to maybe 75 feet tall, I could be wrong, I Google’d it and couldn’t get an answer so figure slightly higher or lower, but when looking head on, from a bicycle, it looked a bit intimidating. Clearly the person screaming out that it was all downhill wasn’t a NJ native and didn’t know about these bridges. All the training I had done I knew they wouldn’t be a problem and only had to drop one gear about half way up and another about 5/8th of the way up. Once at the top, I slowed down and waited for John so we could roll down the other side together. Things were going well, we were less than two miles from the end and my body felt great.

John saw the second bridge and I can’t tell you how many curse words came out of his mouth. Partly because we were looking at it from the side view now, and it looked long, really long, steeper than the one we just did too. John’s sickness and sore throat meant he couldn’t get all the air in and out of his lungs as fast as he’d like, but there was no way he was walking this. We kept a good pace at the base and I took off, counting on seeing him come down the other side. This bridge I went up much faster, sadly it was also much more dangerous. There were a lot more novice bikers on the ascend than the last, and that meant very slow speeds and wobbly front tires, causing them to do little unpredictable zig-zags back and forth, there were also a lot more cars, so passing in the lane of traffic wasn’t always an option and I lost some of my momentum waiting for other people to move right so I could pass left.

Flew down the back side and waited up for John near the base. Some zig zags through really nice beach houses and we started to hear the roar of people. Balloons and police lined the crowds at the finish where we were met with tons of people clapping and cheering, we had made it. We were funneled down some barriers, I joking said I felt like cattle, and then into the local football stadium. Neither of us knew where we were going so we just followed everyone else. Someone told us where we could park our bikes, but we found a spot and just stood by them, John called his wife to find out where they could meet and I started to ask where I could get a bus back to my car at. John and I both got our completion medals and a shirt at this point, and also decided that we didn’t need to really hang out until the 3pm dinner started, so we started to make our way out of the finish party.

I found the intersection where the buses would take me back to my car, John and I shook hands and he went off a few blocks to meet up with his family, grab dinner and enjoy the beach.

There were supposed to be buses running every hour on the hour, it was now 2:40pm but the next one wasn’t scheduled to leave until 4pm. A late 40’s couple was at the check-in tent with me and scoffed at the idea having to wait nearly an hour and a half to catch a bus back, I joked and said they could ride back, apparently they didn’t appreciate my humor as they gave me dirty looks; seriously, it’s a charity ride, you donated your time, relax a little. They then went on to go to the check-in tent every 15 minutes until we left, on about time at 4pm, to see if there was a way to get this going faster.

While waiting I saw just about every kind of person who had completed this ride, all walking tall with their medals on, all sharing stories about how the ride went and smiling. Seriously great atmosphere. I also took notice to one man, maybe in his 50’s, who had just completed the ride and had an oxygen tank with him, another woman, perhaps in her late 30’s who had a prosthetic leg from the knee down who was proudly displaying her medal. If these two people can complete the ride, anyone can. I started this ride and knew no one with MS, doing it purely to get myself into better shape, complete something unselfish and help raise money for a good cause. It took a lot of hours of training to loose the 20 pounds I did and complete this ride and I regret no part of it. That, along with all the Thank-You’s I heard from so many people who I don’t know and will never see again at the finish is my reward for doing the ride.

The MS ride, along with thousands of other charity rides take place all over the world throughout the year, please look into doing one, not for yourself, but for those who will benefit from your participation. I will be doing this ride again next year and will start collecting donations for it shortly, please consider donating.