This year will be my third year riding from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for AIDS services in California. The ride itself is both physically and mentally exhausting for me, and prompts me to question my motives and abilities often. But training and riding with dedicated and amazing people, many of them living with HIV and AIDS, many of them having lost friends, family, and partners to HIV and AIDS, keeps me focused. I ride to raise money both to prevent HIV infection and to help those living with HIV and AIDS get the services they need to survive and live in dignity with hope.

I grew up with HIV and AIDS as new terms in our nation's vocabulary. When I worked at Planned Parenthood in Colorado I was an HIV/AIDS counselor, and I have been volunteering with Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS, an organization that helps people with AIDS take care of their pets) since moving to California. Those of you who know my cats know that I adopted Flo through PAWS when her dad died of AIDS almost two years ago. So I ride for him, and for Flo, and for everyone else I have met these past three years in the Bay Area affected by this disease. I ride because so many people in this country still see AIDS as a "gay disease" and I want to address fear and misinformation. I ride because on a global scale, AIDS is very much a woman's disease, and is everyone's problem.

I ride because AIDS is not over. Globally, an estimated 36.1 million people are living with HIV, and there are an estimated 5.3 million new infections per year. That means that between the time I rode in AIDSLifeCycle 1 last year and the time I will ride in AIDSLifeCycle 2 this year, 5.3 million people worldwide will have become infected with HIV, and 3 million will have died. There are 14,000 new infections per day worldwide, which means that during the seven days I will spend on my bicycle in June, an estimated 98,000 people will become infected with HIV. These numbers are staggering and devastating.