A handful of Northwestern students are biking for a change this summer.
Friends Sharon Bautista, Seiji Carpenter and Charley Walters are confronting a physical and mental challenge to help people with AIDS. The three NU seniors plan to raise a total of about $10,000 this summer for HIV/AIDS research by riding their bikes more than 500 miles each as part of AIDSRide.
Other NU students who are riding in the AIDSRide for the first time this year include Weinberg senior Samantha French, Weinberg junior Natalie Moore, Weinberg junior Jessica Ray, Speech senior Mindy Thompson and Medill freshman Lauren Taiclet, who writes for nyou.
Walters, who will bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles in June, is dedicating his ride to an 11-year-old named Michael, whom he met through a mentoring program for children affected by HIV. Michael’s parents are both HIV positive and are “struggling to still raise their children in extremely difficult and discouraging circumstances,” Walters said.
He said he wanted to dedicate his ride to the boy and his family “with hope that they will all survive this ongoing epidemic.”
Wanting to support Michael was the easy part for Walters. It’s the rigorous training that will prove challenging, he said.
“I bike a lot and I ran the Chicago Marathon in 1999, but I’m still nervous,” he said. “California and Alaska are both a lot tougher than riding in the Midwest for hilly reasons.
“The AIDSRides have sparked a biking passion in me,” he said. “It’s great to associate such a great physical sport with the community of kindness that is the AIDSRide.”
Weinberg junior Julie Heintzelman, who has participated in two AIDSRides, introduced Walters and Bautista to the bike trips and encouraged them to bike from Minneapolis to Chicago last year.
“It was life-altering,” said Bautista, about her first AIDS- Ride, for which she raised $200 more than was required. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Bautista, a Speech senior said the cause has been important to her since high school.
“When I was 13 years old, I couldn’t understand why the disease carried political, economic and cultural reasons for not helping the victims,” she said. “Because of their lifestyle, we blamed the victims.”
The bikers have a number of motivations for doing the rides, but they all agree that their hard work will have positive effects for the AIDS community and society.
“It’s inspirational. It tells people that you can test human limits,” said Bautista, who is riding in Alaska from Aug. 20 to Aug. 25. “It moves you to do incredible and seemingly impossible things. I hope that eyes will open and tears will come when the community hears about what 2,000 people are doing.”
Alaska is one of three AIDSRides whose profits go directly to vaccine research. Bautista chose this ride because it is “the hardest – it’s not easy, but we do it because there’s people who have to live with something that’s not easy every day.”
Before August she must raise $3,400 to ride in the Alaska ride.
“My family and friends think I’m crazy, but they’ve always thought that I’m crazy,” Bautista said. “Still, they support me 110 percent.”
In order to raise the $2,700 for this year’s San Francisco to Los Angeles ride, Weinberg senior Carpenter hosted a party at his co-op apartment that took in $2,000 from about 400 people. Bautista, Carpenter and Walters will split the money and donate it to AIDSRides.
Carpenter said he also asked for donations from his parents and their co-workers, and from every NU professor he has had.
“Too many people have the attitude that AIDS is a past issue,” Carpenter said.
