Mapping and cycling for a cause
Illini 4000 (I4K) is a non-profit, student-run organization that fundraises for cancer research and support services and leads an annual cross-country cycling trip from New York City to San Francisco. I heard about the club in high school and jumped at the opportunity to join during my sophomore year at Illinois. I would get to bike across the country, make new friends and raise money to fight a disease that had affected many of my family members. And as a geography major, I was also excited to help map the daily routes for the trip!
Each August, the I4K team starts planning the route by selecting stayover towns that are approximately 70 miles apart. We then use the Ride With GPS app to automatically connect those towns into a route and check the route each day to make sure it is actually safe for cyclists, rerouting to safer roads whenever possible.
After helping plan the route and other logistical details, it was finally time to join the ride in May 2022. The Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming were my personal highlight. We spent two days there: one day climbing over 6,000 feet in 40 miles to Meadowlark Lake and the next day descending into the beautiful Tensleep Canyon. It was a rewarding, exhilarating, and gorgeous stretch!
The most challenging leg of the ride for me was Oregon, where we biked down the I-5 stretch through Portland, Eugene, and Grants Pass. Every day was hot, well over 100°F, and the frustration began to bubble up after being on the road for 60+ days. We had to shuttle in our support van for a day due to a nearby wildfire. The ride became a crash course on America’s biggest environmental and social problems but also reminded me of another reason I love cycling: there’s no hiding from what’s happening around us.
My experiences, all the highs and lows, informed a lot of my interests in geography through the rest of my time in college. When professor Julie Cidell talked about embodiment in her transportation geography class, I reflected on how the embodiment we felt as cyclists out in the elements is different from your protected experience in a car. And I thought about how much our infrastructure varies by city and state.
In talking to our stayover hosts about their experiences with cancer through the Portraits Project, we heard first-hand about how community and geography affect people’s medical outcomes. I4K gives you this very personal, exposed experience of the variety of the American landscape, which endlessly sparked my curiosity as a student of human geography.
If you want to ride with the Illini 4000 or would like to learn more about the organization, visit illini4000.org.