It's been now six weeks that my friend Steven started teaching a spinning class at 7p at the Brannan Gold's gym here in San Francisco. The unusual thing: it's his way of getting to his pledge for the yearly AIDS Lifecycle Ride (ALC).
If you don't know, the ALC is a charity ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, just like the more famour AIDS Ride. The latter has gotten a bad reputation for mismanagement of funds, so there has been an effort to create a ride where as much of the funds goes to AIDS research as possible: ALC.
Every year, a big contingent leaves San Francisco in June to ride to L.A. It's a grueling ride (545 miles), mostly performed by people that don't really spend a lot of time on their bikes, for whom the ride is as much of a challenge as the fundraising before.