Students bike cross-country for charity

UNC students traditionally use the summer to recuperate from the school year, but several students challenged that idea — and themselves — by biking across the country this summer.

Junior Aidan Kelley, an American studies major, rode cross-country this summer. Kelley was a co-leader of the Lucky 13 Bike Trip out of Chapel Hill, guiding members of Chapel Hill’s Boy Scout Troop 845 throughout the journey.

The group rode from Maryland to Oregon, averaging 75 miles a day for 10 weeks, for a total of 3,700 miles over the summer, raising $34,000 for the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

This was not Kelley’s first outdoor adventure — he has also hiked the John Muir Trail in California and built houses in Guatemala and Belize.

He said his inspiration for the Lucky 13 Bike Trip was a similar cross-country bike ride he took when he was in high school — but this year he was a role model for the group of teenagers, which included his younger brother.

“My responsibility as a guide was to navigate every day as well as just to help the high school guys along the way,” he said.

For every $15,000 raised and donated to the Lineberger Center, the center will send a patient to Victory Junction, a camp for children with illnesses.

Troop 845 leader Brian Burnham coordinated the trip and said he has led many bike trips across country and other outdoor adventure programs in the past including those with Kelley.

Sophomore history major Hannah Siler also biked across America this summer with Bike & Build, a nonprofit organization that supports affordable housing.

She said she rode from Providence, R.I. to Half Moon Bay, Calif., traveling more than 4,000 miles in three months. Siler raised $5,055 for the organization.

Siler and her group took days off from biking to build homes, mostly working with Habitat for Humanity.

“We had 15 build days, where we did stuff like painting, siding, roofing and basically everything you can do on a house,” Siler said.

She said the Bike & Build group spent their nights wherever they could find — staying in churches, community centers and even people’s homes, eating home-cooked meals if they were lucky.

“Riding through small-town America restored my faith in humanity,” Siler said.

Junior American studies major Emerson Rhudy also biked cross-country through Bike & Build, which she said was both a physical and mental challenge.

Her trip went from Nags Head, a town in the Outer Banks, to San Diego — 3,592 miles in about 70 days.

“If I can bike across the country, anyone can do it,” she said.

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