Music Cures Cancer Announces “Ride Across America”

A 2,800-mile-plus electric-bike journey from New York City to California, built around one simple idea: getting back to life

There are easier ways to get from New York to Los Angeles.

There are certainly faster ones.

But none of them quite make the point.

In 2021, Music Cures Cancer is hoping to put an electric bicycle at the starting line of one of America’s most famous cross-country routes: the Red Ball Garage in New York City. From there, the plan is simple, if not exactly easy: ride west until the bike reaches the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, California.

That is the traditional beginning and ending point of the Cannonball Run, a coast-to-coast challenge that covers roughly 2,800 miles depending on the route.

We’re calling our version Ride Across America.

And unlike the Cannonball, we’re not trying to do it in 30 hours.

We’re giving ourselves about 40 days.

Maybe more.

The objective isn’t to set a record. The objective is to get from sea to shining sea.

And there is a reason I’m willing to spend more than a month doing it.

I wasn’t supposed to be doing this

On the last night of January, I fell off a ladder while painting a mural in downtown Nashville.

It wasn’t a Music Cures Cancer project. It was a job for a hotel, but it was still Nashville, still Music City, and still somehow fitting that this particular year would begin with me literally hitting the ground.

I tore my ACL.

On April 1, I had surgery.

As it turned out, April 1 was the last day elective surgeries would be approved in Tennessee before the COVID-19 shutdown changed the rules. Then I went home.

For several weeks, I was essentially stuck in bed.

Eventually came physical therapy. Then crutches. Then learning how to move around again.

By the time I’m writing this in October, I’m still on crutches, although I’m improving much faster than expected.

I’ve spent much of the year learning what it feels like to have your life suddenly reduced to a very small radius.

That changes your perspective.

There are a lot of people who have had their lives interrupted by an injury or a medical diagnosis. Cancer patients know that feeling better than most. One day you’re living your normal life, and the next day everything revolves around appointments, treatments, recovery and figuring out what comes next.

I’m fortunate.

My injury is something I can recover from.

So I want to see what happens when I take that recovery as far as I possibly can.

I want to get back to life.

And I want to do it on a bicycle.

Then 2020 got even stranger

The ACL injury wasn’t the beginning of a difficult year for Music Cures Cancer.

It was just the next thing.

In December 2019, my car was broken into at my mother’s house.

I’d just gotten home from an event and went inside for about twenty minutes to make a sandwich.

When I came back outside, approximately $10,000 worth of Music Cures Cancer equipment, merchandise and donations was gone.

A mixing board.

A couple of Canon full-frame cameras.

A PA system.

Merchandise.

Donations.

A significant portion of the equipment we’d accumulated to actually make Music Cures Cancer events happen.

Then came January.

Then February.

During the first week of February, Nashville was hit by a tornado outbreak that devastated parts of the city and destroyed or severely damaged venues where we had been discussing future Music Cures Cancer events.

And then came COVID-19.

By late February and into March, the world we had been planning events in was essentially disappearing.

Events were cancelled.

Venues closed.

Plans stopped.

Fundraising stopped.

And I was sitting at home with a reconstructed knee.

At some point, I started thinking that maybe the next thing we should do shouldn’t be easy.

So why an e-bike?

Because I’m not trying to pretend my knee wasn’t injured.

An electric bicycle isn’t a motorcycle. It still requires pedaling. It still requires endurance. It still requires riding for hours, day after day, carrying everything you need across an entire continent.

Pedal assistance simply gives me a little help when I need it.

And after spending months unable to walk normally, riding an e-bike across the United States still sounds completely insane.

That’s exactly why I like it.

We’re currently researching bicycles and equipment, and we’re looking at a number of possibilities. We’ve seen promising bikes from companies including Triumph, Indian and Lectric, among others.

We’re also looking for companies that might want to become involved.

We need a bike.

We may need more than one battery.

We need replacement tires, brakes, tubes, tools and other equipment.

And because this isn’t going to be a vacation that disappears into the Instagram feed when it’s over, we want to document the entire thing.

Cameras.

Audio equipment.

Video equipment.

Navigation and communication equipment.

We want people to be able to come along for the ride from Nashville, wherever they happen to be.

If a bicycle manufacturer, camera company, outdoor company or other equipment manufacturer wants to get involved, we’re interested in talking.

The route isn’t finished yet

There isn’t a line drawn across a map yet.

We’re researching that now.

The traditional Cannonball route is the inspiration, but we’re riding a bicycle, not a car, and the fastest road between two cities isn’t necessarily the road we should be on.

We’re looking at established bicycle routes and the possibility of connecting with the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail as soon as practical. The TransAmerica route is one of the country’s classic cross-country bicycle routes, stretching thousands of miles and using a mixture of rural roads and established bicycle-friendly corridors.

The final route will depend on safety, terrain, access to food and water, charging opportunities, weather and where an e-bike can actually go.

Because there’s one major difference between an automobile Cannonball and what we’re attempting:

The bike has to keep moving.

We’re hoping to average somewhere around 100 miles a day.

That’s a goal, not a promise.

One hundred miles on a bicycle is a long day under the best circumstances. One hundred miles every day for weeks, while carrying equipment, dealing with mountains, weather, mechanical problems and charging batteries, is another thing entirely.

That’s why the 40-day figure is only an initial target.

There may be rest days.

There may be shorter days.

There may be days where 100 miles simply isn’t happening.

The only hard deadline is the other coast.

Labor Day 2021

If we can make the numbers work, we’re aiming to leave around Labor Day 2021.

September should give us a better chance of avoiding the worst summer heat across much of the country, although anyone who has spent time on a bicycle knows that weather has a funny way of ignoring your plans.

The ride will start at the Red Ball Garage in New York City and end at the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach.

And then we’ll see how long it took.

Not because we’re racing the Cannonball drivers.

We’re not.

Those people have cars.

I have an e-bike.

Our challenge is different.

We’re going to take the long way through America because that’s what the bicycle requires.

But we’re not leaving until we can afford to go

This is important.

We’re not asking people to fund a vacation.

Before this ride ever leaves New York, we need to prove that we can raise enough money to put the bike beneath me, get me to the starting point, and keep me on the road.

Our larger fundraising target is approximately $500,000.

That number includes the equipment and logistics necessary to make the project possible, travel to the starting point, overnight accommodations, documentation and potentially a support person if we determine that a support vehicle is necessary.

It also allows me to actually dedicate myself to the ride rather than trying to work another job while crossing the country.

Our minimum target is to put at least $100,000 toward cancer-related work through Music Cures Cancer, with the majority of that ultimately intended for local Nashville oncology programs and organizations such as Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

The money raised through Music Cures Cancer will support the project as a whole, including the cost of actually completing the ride. That distinction matters because if we don’t have the resources to complete the ride, there isn’t much of a fundraiser.

We want to build the infrastructure first.

Then we ride.

Before New York, there is Nashville

The cross-country ride begins long before I ever reach the Red Ball Garage.

It starts with training.

Once I’m able, I’ll begin with shorter rides around Middle Tennessee.

Nashville to Clarksville.

Longer rides.

Then longer still.

The Natchez Trace.

Eventually, rides measured not in hours but in entire days.

And we’re going to document those, too.

The training is part of the story.

People will be able to watch the distance increase, see the equipment being tested, see what works and what doesn’t, and follow the recovery of a knee that, at the beginning of this project, couldn’t get me across my own house without crutches.

If you’d like to join one of the training rides, that’s welcome, too. Get in touch with Music Cures Cancer and we’ll figure it out.

This isn’t meant to be a guy disappearing into the horizon for 40 days.

We want people to come with us.

Even if they only ride for ten miles.

One mile at a time

I don’t know exactly what this country is going to look like next September.

Nobody does.

That’s probably the most appropriate part of the entire idea.

A year ago, Music Cures Cancer was looking toward 2020 with events planned, equipment in the back of a car and a bunch of ideas.

Then somebody broke into that car.

Then I fell off a ladder.

Then Nashville was hit by a tornado.

Then a pandemic shut down the world.

There isn’t much point pretending we can control what happens next.

But we can decide what we do next.

For me, that means getting back on my feet.

Then getting on a bicycle.

Then pointing it west.

The Cannonball Run has always been about getting from one side of America to the other.

We’re borrowing the endpoints.

We’re changing the vehicle.

And we’re changing the reason.

This isn’t about how quickly I can cross America.

It’s about whether I can cross it at all.

New York to California.

One pedal at a time.

For Music Cures Cancer.

Ride Across America — 2021.