Friday, December 5, 2008

Day Zero - EA2009

Last month, Netflix began to release the first of three discs in Ewen McGregor and Charlie Boorman's Long Way Down series, which documented the actors' second long distance adventure motorbike trip from John O'Groats, Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa. Along the way, the series featured a social enterprise program, Riders for Health, that provides health workers access to reliable motorbikes that enable them to delivery medications and medical care to HIV affected and other communities. Here's a great, short video about RfH. I immediately tried to find a way to volunteer.

My hopes for creating an informal sabbatical that would enable me to combine two passions, riding motorcycles and working to save lives from HIV infection and associated morbidities, seemed to be dashed.

But in the back of a British motorcycling magazine, Bike, I found the advertisement for EnduroAfrica, a social enterprise that organizes adventure motorcycling trips with an altruistic theme: Raise ~$7.5k and join a 12 day motorbike trip through Southern Africa that ends with riders donating their motorbikes and other funds to several NGOs providing critical care and services to children affected and infected by HIV. I was hooked.

So, this blog will track my experiences planning, training, and fundraising for Enduro Africa 2009. Follow the adventure here.

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