Welcome to Cycle 4 Strays!
Support the Ride - Donate Now - $ave a $tray!
Follow the ride on Twitter!
Watch as well-wishers support the C4S Team as they start the journey from Dogtown at Best Friends on to Costa Rica.
See the video!
A former stray is now a happy family pet in the coastal village of Dominical, Costa Rica.
If you wish to donate to the C4S Fund for Haiti, go to the donation page and earmark your donation "For the Furry Wanderers of Haiti" in the comment section. C4S will then route your funds to the outreach effort. Thank you for caring and for all your offers to help.
The 2010 edition of C4S aims to raise
$20,000
to fund spay and neuter in developing nations and contribute to ending the tragedy of homeless companion animals.
Here is how you can help:
CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW AND SPONSOR THE RIDE
Forward this message to all your animal loving friends:
with as little as $10 we can spay/neuter an animal!
Help us make the ultimate difference in the communities
where it is needed the most!
Sponsor 1 dog or cat or as many as you can afford.
The first Cycle 4 Strays was born in early 2009 during a ride throughout southern Costa Rica, as Skylere and I pedaled on a badly graded gravel road on our way from Playa Zancudo to the surfing paradise of Punta Banco, near the village of Pavones on the border with Panama. As we debated the conditions of stray animals in developing nations, I thought about turning our passion for cycling and exploring exotic locales into a fund raising effort to benefit local advocacy groups.
That night, working with a lap top computer and an internet connection best described as "sketchy", I networked with animal advocates throughout the United States and Europe and the founder and managers of the McKee Foundation, a US non profit that focuses on promoting spay & neuter of companion animals in Central America and the Caribbean. A plan of action started taking shape, I quickly threw together a web page to collect donations and it was on!
Less than 2 weeks later, Skylere and I left Zancudo and cycled north to the town of Sarchí bringing much needed funds and a message of hope to the community.
At the end of the 500km ride, we had raised 261% of the projected fund raising goal!
Stoked, I vowed to continue my cooperation with the McKee Foundation and decided that
Cycle 4 Strays would become an annual event to promote the importance of spay and neuter as a humane method of population control and to support animal advocacy groups that operate in nations that lack basic infrastructure and the means to help their own strays.
Thanks to this first effort and the sustainable community outreach programs of the McKee Foundation, terms like spay & neuter are slowly becoming part of the family lexicon. As more doctors in veterinary medicine learn the Small Incision Spay & Neuter Method, attending one of the free clinics organized by McKee throughout Central America, more animals undergo this innovative, minimally invasive procedure and, slowly, but surely, the number of stray animals roaming the neighborhoods decline.
Help us make a difference!
Ride with me on January 22, 2010 departing at 11am from Dogtown at the
Come on, you know you want to ride! We will start at about 6,000 feet of elevation, breathing in the snowy, clean air of Utah's high desert, drop down to sea level, cross the border with Mexico, point the front wheel south and hammer all the way to Guatemala. Costa Rica is just down the street, after El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. It will be the adventure of a lifetime!
We will meet amazing people, experience different cultures, taste exotic new flavors, sweat on the steep climbs, grin with excitement on the breathtaking descents, curse every flat tire and every knuckle busting chain repair job and, most importantly, contribute to ending the plague of homeless pets. Ride for one kilometer or for a thousand...
Whether across town or across the border, if we can help a community help its strays, we have a moral obligation to do so.
If -for whatever reason- you are unable to ride, please consider sponsoring us with a donation that will help the McKee Foundation help more animals. 100% of all donated funds will go to support desperately needed community outreach programs as well as spay & neuter clinics.
You can also visit www.mckeeproject.org or contact Carla Ferraro, McKee's Program Director, at carla@mckeemail.org for more information.
On behalf of all the furry wanderers of this world I sincerely thank you!
Davide.
Cycle 4 Strays' attorney, Roberto Santa Lucia, hard at work clearing the site of our future training facility in Uvita, Costa Rica.
