Matt King isn’t training for a race. The CEO of the Gobundance entrepreneurial network is riding his bike from the Texas-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border starting May 27, with a goal that has nothing to do with a podium: to raise $1 million and hand it out, in real time, to people in rural communities strung along his route.
The project is called theRide. It covers roughly 2,000 miles across seven states over 13 days — about 150 miles per day — finishing June 8 in Manitoba, Canada. King makes no claims about being an elite cyclist. “None of us are professionals, and that’s the point,” the project’s mission statement says. “The difficulty is real, the discomfort is real, and the challenge is earned.”
What distinguishes theRide from similar charity fundraisers is how the money moves. Rather than collecting donations that sit in a foundation account before eventually being distributed, King’s team identifies recipients in advance through an open nomination process, then delivers help on the ground, in person, in the towns along the route.
He’s already been doing it. During training, King stopped in San Angelo, Texas, to visit the family of 1-year-old Kash Nelson, who had suffered a near-drowning. He delivered a $10,000 specialty hospital bed, covered six months of the family’s mortgage, and left grocery gift cards and toys for Kash’s older brother — all before the official start date.
The route goes south to north: Matamoros, Mexico, then through Ben Bolt, Seguin, Evant, and Paradise in Texas before continuing through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota, finishing with a border crossing into Canada on June 8. A typical day involves 8 to 12 hours in the saddle with a support crew, filming, and scheduled community stops along the way.
King recently posted a video laying out the thinking behind theRide — what he’s trying to accomplish and why he structured it this way. It’s worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTrLiR4-o
Donations at any level are welcome, and the nomination form for potential recipients along the route is open now. Everything is at gobundance.com/theride.