Cycle for life Cycle for life (October 14, 2005)

Tri-Valley women bike cross country for Hope Hospice
by Rebecca Guyon

Biking cross-country might not sound like most people's ideal way of spending eight weeks worth of vacation, but for Celeste Matarazzo, Pleasanton's Rose O'Brien and Janis Turner it was a dream come true. The three Tri-Valley women biked from San Francisco to Virginia Beach, Va. in 60 days, passing through 10 different states. And while they had lots of fun along the way, seeing the country was not the sole motivation for their trip. Dubbing the experience, Cycle USA 4 Hope, the women used the trip as a way to raise money for Hope Hospice.

"Hope Hospice is a charity that we all had experience with," Celeste said. "Its message of living life to the fullest and dignity in life fit the theme of our trip."

Through collecting online donations at their Web site, www.cycleusa4hope.org, and receiving donations during their trip, the women raised $5,347 with more donations trickling in.

"Hearing how much we raised makes me feel like this was a big accomplishment," said Rose, who has been a Pleasanton resident since 1993, and has lived in the Tri-Valley for more than 30 years.

Although the women just completed the trip Sept. 28, it actually has been 20 years in the making. Celeste first got the idea to bike cross-country when she finished graduate school, but at the time she didn't have the finances to embark on such a trip. Despite the initial obstacles, she held onto the dream, even buying maps of the common cross-country route taken by cyclists and saving them until now. These same maps were used for the recent trip, with a few updates.

"It was something I had on my list of things to do in life," Celeste said.

When she took a job at Lawrence Livermore Lab, Celeste met Rose and Janis. The three shared a love of the outdoors and started going on backpacking trips together. Five years ago, Celeste mentioned the idea to her backpacker buddies. While they liked the idea, all three of them were concerned about safety.

"We thought about it and figured if we had a support vehicle we could do it," Celeste said. A support vehicle would carry around extra bike parts and first aid equipment, as well as offer the assurance that if anything serious happened, they would have the means to quickly get to a nearby town. "One of our friends' husbands said he'd be willing to do it, so once we had that, we started planning right away. That was 16 months ago."

With their support vehicle in the works and travel route picked out, the only thing left for the women to do was train for the long days of biking ahead. Although they were already in good physical shape, they still needed to build their endurance since they were going to bike an average of 65 miles a day.

"We trained pretty regularly for 14 months by doing back-to-back 40 mile weekends, then back-to-back 60 mile weekends," Celeste said. The training paid off. During the eight weeks of their trip, the women only took two rest days. Their shortest distance day was 35 miles and the longest was 95.

Beyond the physical training, knowing they were working for a larger cause helped the women keep up their stamina and make it through to the end.

"Working for a good cause helped propel me forward each day," Celeste said.

They also met many people along the way who were connected to hospice care and supported their mission.

"We'd stop at a stoplight and people would pull up and tell us what a great organization hospice is," Celeste said. "It really reinforced for me what we were doing."

Now that they are back home - they flew back from Virginia October 3 - the three women are adjusting to their normal lives, but won't forget the lessons and experiences from their trip.

"I never so fully lived in the moment," Celeste said. "It was refreshing, and something I don't do regularly, but want to work on doing more."

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