Riding to Fight Cancer
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Philip Haar’s JGSM Surly brand bicycle looks like any other on the rack outside Uris Library. With its turquoise frame, black handlebars and street tires, few would expect that the bike — and its owner — will soon trek over 4000 miles from Oregon to Virginia. On June 9, just days after Philip earns his MBA from Cornell, he and his father, Dr. Jack Haar, will begin a summer-long journey across our great nation that has been years in the making.
The impetus for the trip came after the death of Dr. Jim Popp, a cancer researcher and friend of the Haar family. Popp had begun working with Jack at the Medical College at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1983, just before he entered medical school. Jack recalled Popp’s avid athleticism throughout his life, which prompted the two to schedule medical experiments so that they would end in time for a noontime game of basketball or squash.
“I was always soundly beaten but if we were asked how our game went he would manage to make it sound as if it was a close match or that I had given him a lesson,” Jack wrote in a statement on the trip’s website, rideforjim.org.
Philip also remembers Popp spending vacations with his family in Maine, where they used to play tennis together.
“I also ran the five mile portion of the Richmond Marathon with him when I was 12,” Philip said.
In 2006, Popp fell ill with high-grade malignant sarcoma in his hamstring — an advanced form of cancer. It came as a surprise to him, considering he had researched immunology for a good many years. However, it was Popp who came up with the idea for the cross-country bike ride to benefit cancer research.
“He talked about doing the ride with us, but he passed away at the end of last year,” Philip said, noting that Popp maintained a level of fitness even throughout his 15 months of sickness.
Raising Awareness
Since then, Philip and his father sprung into action — organizing a trip both to honor Popp’s memory and raise funds to cure his disease. They set a goal of raising $43,000 before the trip — $10 for every mile they ride.
But according to Philip, “money is only part of it. We’re also trying to raise awareness.” He added that the National Institutes of Health has decreased its funding for cancer research, something the father-son duo hopes to bring attention to in their ride.
Making the Trek
The trip will begin in the college town of Eugene, Oregon, and continue on U.S. Bike Route 76 across the country to Yorktown, Virginia, riding about 80 miles a day. With tents, food and the other necessities strapped to their bikes specially made to carry heavy loads, they’ll camp out across the country. Several other people will ride with them for the first few days. Some of Popp’s medical school friends will also meet up to bike the final distance through Virginia, stopping at VCU along the way. But for the most part, it will be Philip and Jack who venture through the landlocked states.
“We’ll put everything on our bikes,” Philip said. “We’ll sleep in tents and stay in motels every once in a while to take showers.”
Philip also noted that there is a community of people who open their homes up to cross-country riders as they make their ways across the country. A site called warmshowers.org, which touts itself as a place to find “hospitality for touring cyclists,” allows anyone who wants to host riders to post on the site. Cyclists are able to contact anyone who has offered hospitality with the expectation that they will in turn provide the hospitality.
To prepare, Philip says that he’s been doing two or three rides every week of about twenty minutes, but added that the inhospitable Ithaca weather hasn’t allowed for too much training. However, Philip has some experience with long-distance cycling. A few years ago, he biked the 500 miles across the state of Iowa.
Though he hasn’t hammered out all the details of this year’s trip, Philip hopes to make the trek a yearly tradition.
The money raised will go to the College James D. Popp Student Research Fund, which will endow one student’s “travel and living expenses for a first year medical student to do cancer related research following the first year of medical school much as Jim did.”
A Cross-Country Tradition
Although biking across the country may be strenuous, many have done it to raise awareness and money. Terrence Zimmerman ’08 decided to spend the last summer biking across the country to raise money and awareness for his fraternity’s charity, Push America. He started in San Francisco and rode 80 miles a day with fraternity brothers from across the country, stopping in the afternoons to help at centers for people with disabilities. Overall he raised over $5,000 for the organization.
“Everyday was an adventure,” Zimmerman said. “It was a whole new part of the country I had never seen, and seeing it from your bike is a different experience. It was also a physical and mental challenge.”
In addition, the Salina Journal reported that a man decided to bike across the country backwards last summer. He started his ride on AIDS Awareness Day last August and has been riding since, going from Venice, California to Washington D.C. and then to Florida. The purpose of his ride, he said, is to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, the homeless and medical marijuana. He handed out flyers along the way.
When asked why he wanted to ride backwards, he told the Salina Journal, “America’s going backwards. It’s hurting, and on my way across this country I’ve seen it.”