• I made it, raising $7,908.50. With matching from the Ed Gould Foundation this becomes $13,317!
• About 700 other riders made it
• Total donations about $4.4 million
• Hundreds of volunteers
• Favorable weather all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles
• One earthquake
• One death
• No flats for me
• No major bike problems
• I sagged once
• Lots of photos for you
• No Pallotta

Bit o' background: YIOC (that is, Your Intrepid Old Cyclist, me) rode in the 1995 California AIDS Ride 2, 1997 California AIDS Ride 4, 1996 Boston-New York AIDS Ride 2 and the 1998 Texas AIDS Ride 1. I also crewed on Boston-New York in 1995 and 1997, and did volunteer work on Boston-New York from 1995 through 1998. All of these were PTW (Pallotta Teamworks) events.

The 1998 Texas AIDS Ride marked the end of my involvement with PTW events because it had become obvious after 4 years that they were making no serious attempts to reduce the expenses of the rides and, thereby, increase the proceeds to the charities. The Texas Ride was so bad that a few of the charities involved had to shut down after the ride. They actually lost money.

Here's a page with more information about Pallotta.

But in 2001 I got a swell new touring bike, a Bike Friday Air Glide. A bike designed not only for days of fully-loaded riding, but also to withstand abuse at the hands of airline personnel! It disassembles and folds to fit inside a standard-sized suitcase. That way it doesn't look like a bike to the airline and they don't charge me $50 to transport it, and they also don't store tons of lead shot and tanks of liquid oxygen on top of it during flight.

The Air Glide would sit around here and whine "Take me somewhere! Take me to California!" It got so bad I thought about doing the PTW California AIDS Ride again just for the fun of the touring. And then, like a message from the angels, a little note arrived in my mail box from the LAGLC (Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center) saying that they had dumped Pallotta and would be creating a new ride called "AIDS LifeCycle" to benefit LAGLC and SFAF (San Francisco AIDS Foundation) just like the AIDS Ride had done. But this new ride would tolerate no BS (bullshit), and it would make a valiant effort to trim expenses to the bone (and maybe even deeper!), and that the sole focus would be raising money for the AIDS and HIV programs at SFAF and LAGLC. None of this airy self-actualization stuff that PTW was drifting into. No air conditioned limos for celebrities. No promoter's fee.

What a deal! I didn't even have to double check with the Air Glide to see what he thought. YIOC sent off his registration fee immediately.