MCV pedals cross-country for scholarship
In 2006, MCV physician Jack Haar and his son Philip participated in an annual bike ride across Iowa. When Haar’s friend and colleague Jim Popp was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his hamstring, Haar and his son knew just what to do.
“Philip and I decided to dedicate a ride to Jim and use it as a way to establish a fund in his name and to raise awareness of the need for more research to conquer cancer,” Haar said.
Haar and his son held their first Ride for Jim cross-country bike tour in the summer of 2008 to raise money for the James D. Popp Student Research Fund. “We established the fund as a living memorial to Jim,” Haar said. The income generated is used to support a medical student to do cancer related research at the Massey Cancer Center during the summer after the first year of medical school.
“The students are paid a living stipend for the summer and provided support to attend a national cancer meeting sometime while they are in medical school,” Haar said. “The first James D. Popp Summer Research Fellowship was awarded this summer to Kyle Kindley.”
According to the Ride for Jim website, the route taken for the TransAmerica tour followed the Adventure Cycling Bikecentennial Route 76 from Pacific City, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia.
Howard Smith, one of the five riders, provided the official tally: 57 days and 4,222 miles of cycling.
To adjust for the 40 pounds of weight packed onto his bike, Smith spent two months incrementally adding weights during training.
Doug Gardner, a physician from Winston-Salem, North Carolina described a similar training regime. “I started training four months before,” he said, “trying to increase riding time and eight.” At the peak of his training, Gardner rode 3 or 4 hours a day with 60 pounds of weight added onto the back.
During the ride, an average day would begin at 7 a.m. and end by 5 p.m. — typically clocking 90 miles.
“Jim was a terrific athlete with drive and determination mixed with a compassionate, kind personality,” Jack Haan said. “I have noticed that somehow everyone who has gotten involved with Ride For Jim over the past two years seems to have these same qualities. The ride across America is not easy to do and takes some amount of personal drive and grit.”
Both Smith and Gardner recounted a wild array of sights during their trip, including a dip in the river deep in the Ozarks and a stop in rural Sebree, Kentucky, but both agree on the trip’s highlight.
“Sleeping in our tents in Yellowstone Park,” Smith recalls, “we saw wolves as close as 100 feet away. It was the neatest sound I’ve ever heard.”
At press time, the James D. Popp student research fund had raised $37,536 towards their cause.
