At the end of Skyler Kern's summer vacation, his bike won't be the only thing that's tired.
Kern and two other UF students will be cycling cross-country this summer to raise money for Relay for Life and to challenge their bodies and spirits in the name of adventure.
Kern, Maxx Mann and Nick Soilleux will be biking the 2,600 miles from Jacksonville Beach, Fla., to Huntington Beach, Calif., from May 2 to June 8. The 39-day trip will test the students' endurance, willpower and strength of friendship as they cycle about 60 miles each day between cities.
Kern, a UF sophomore, chose to take the trip after realizing he was missing something in his life - adventure. Mann, a UF prehealth junior, and Soilleux, a UF finance senior, decided to tag along for the fun but also to commemorate loved ones who have battled cancer. There were other reasons for the trip, however.
"I've never seen the Pacific Ocean," Kern said.
The cyclists are raising money for Relay for Life, which benefits the American Cancer Society. So far, they have raised more than $1,000 through sponsors, but Kern hopes to raise more. The group will be donating the remainder of the donations after trip expenses, as well as fund-matching half of the grand total of donations to give to Relay for Life.
The trip's sponsors include The Beer Pit, Relish, I Love New York Pizza and Chain Reaction Bicycles, as well as family and friends. Theatre Strike Force, a UF improvisation troupe of which Kern and Mann are members, will also be sponsoring the trip.
Three friends, all UF students and members of Theatre Strike Force, will be tracking the cyclists along the way, pulling a camper and providing moral support. The group will be camping and crashing on couches, via www.couchsurfing.com, in cities selected according to their distance from one another.
One of the passengers, Corey Draper, a UF telecommunication senior, will be filming the trip as a documentary to bring more awareness to Relay for Life and the trip itself.
The group plans to blog and "tweet" during the trip to raise awareness, chronicle their adventures and inform friends and family of their progress. They have already created a Web site, www.tourdestates.com, and their Twitter profile name is TourDeStates.
Passenger Kaylyn Brickey, a UF sophomore, said, "My favorite thing about this trip is that we're giving other people the chance to have adventures like we're having."
