Riders for Health…worth getting involved with

If you have never seen the movie ‘On Any Sunday’, you really need to. If you were riding or racing motorcycles back in the early 70’s you are right now having great memories…the glory years. If you have not seen the movie, go rent it, buy a six pack, find an old motorcycle racer to watch it with and enjoy a great piece of motorcycling history…the movie, not the racer.

During the segment about desert racing, there was a scene where a racer stopped, actually tipped over, in order to not run over a desert tortoise. The racer picked himself up, walked over, picked up the tortoise and moved it off the racing line. “desert racers are good people” was the commentary. Well, I want to expand that statement, “motorcyclists are good people”.

Recently, a friend of mine, Dan Lo of Corner Speed Photography www.cspeedphoto.com, connected me, and a lot of others, with the ‘Riders For Health’ organization, a quick click and there I was at www.riders.org. I spent a good deal of time going through that site and learning all I could about ‘Riders for Health’. I’ll give you the ‘Readers Digest’ version here…if I can.

The ‘Riders for Health’ program started over twenty years ago in the UK. Founded by Barry and Andrea Coleman along with Grand Prix racer Randy Mamola. They wandered through the GP paddocks raising money for the ‘Save The Children’ fund. On trips to Africa to see the fruits of the fundraising, a new focus came to light. You can get all the medicine and medical workers you want, but if they can’t get to the people that need them, why?? Traveling through rural African regions, vehicles for medical services were just sitting for lack of service…sitting for lack of a $3.00 part and nobody to put it in. Riders For Health was born. Develop a program that can maintain the existing vehicles, get more vehicles and get the services that are needed to where they are needed.

I could write more, but instead, I’ll send you to the website, there you can see what this program does, why it’s so valuable and why to get involved. Take a few moments of your time and look into ‘Riders for Health’ this is an organization that does so much for so many in so many ways. www.riders.org

I have participated in many charity bike runs, donated to organizations, reported on many events and know that they are all valuable and do good works, Riders for Health just struck me a bit deeper than most.

To finish this up, this coming weekend there is a fund raising event at MDK Motorsports in Redwood City, California and July 2nd in conjunction with the MotoGP event at Laguna Seca is a fantastic event ‘Day of The Stars’..both well worth participating in.

Take a few minutes of your time and listen to my podcast interview with Adam Silver of Riders for Health at www.themotoworld.libsyn.com he has so much to say and he says it so well.