The annual summer bicycle feature story

It’s summertime and the roads are filled with brave cyclists battling disease.

The calls and the letters begin arriving every June. So-and-so from someplace far away will be bicycling through your town this summer as part of his/her effort to combat a disease of their choice.

The cyclists always make themselves available to the local newspaper and eager young reporters jump at the chance to write up a compelling story. If not, they’re given the assignment anyway by city editors anxious to fill space on slow summer days.

The stories are almost always the same. The cyclist typically has a family member who survived a horrible disease or was killed by one. A long summer bicycle trip to cure that disease seemed like a good idea.

Yes it’s hot out there and dodging traffic is dangerous, but it’s all going to be worth it when (your disease here) is cured.

The reporter gobbles it all up, spits out a 15-inch story, and it appears in the next day’s paper accompanied by a four-column photo of the lycra-clad cyclist posing next to his/her $3,000 bike.

Unfortunately, with this type of story, there’s seldom any followup. No one calls the cyclist three months later to find out how much money was raised or how many miles were ridden.

No one ever says “Hey, remember that bicyclist that came through here last summer? He funded a cure for cancer.”

Selling that high-dollar bike and getting a summer job instead of riding across the country would probably raise a lot more money, but where’s the heroics in that, let alone the news value?

My favorite such story occurred in my first year in the newspaper business. A co-worker at the Livingston Enterprise was asked to interview a biker passing through town on a cross-country trip to battle narcolepsy. The reporter met with the cyclist, took a couple pictures of his bike and then sat down in the conference room to interview the guy, who promptly fell asleep.

When he awoke, the startled reporter wasn’t quick enough on the draw, and by the time he asked another question the cyclist had nodded off again.

The story never ran. The biker kept falling asleep.

Every summer since then I’ve seen folks bicycling for a cure for everything from Alzheimers to AIDS, but never again for narcolepsy.

It just doesn’t make a very good story.

Parker Heinleinm is at [email protected]