Thousands of miles. Hundreds of donations. One goal.

The original post can be found here: http://www.wickedlocal.com/concord/homepage/x1758551698/3-QUESTIONS-Concord-cyclist-plans-coastal-ride

3 QUESTIONS: Concord cyclist plans coastal ride

Courtesy photo Concord resident Matt Solar, left, at the finish of the 2005 Prouty Century Bike Ride in Hanover, N.H., with Adrian Ionescu, center, and Mike Morris.

By Patrick Ball/Staff Writer

Thu Dec 03, 2009, 01:40 PM EST

Concord -

After years of PanMass Challenges and annual Prouty Century Bike Rides, Concord resident Matt Solar and his team of philanthropic cyclists next summer will take the road less traveled, biking from Concord to Bar Harbor.

In a self-supported ride dubbed the “C2C,” Solar, Taylor Moran-Gates and Adrian Ionescu — members of a Wicked Philanthropy team formed in 2004 — will bike from Concord to the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Bar Harbor, Maine, to benefit an as-yet determined environmental group protecting the coastline they’ll follow along their ride.

Solar says they haven’t worked out all the logistics of the C2C, scheduled for July 29, 2010, but their goal is to follow Coastal Route 1. “How we get there is going to take some bushwhacking and trail-making,” he said in a recent interview.

Tell me about Wicked Philanthropy and what you guys are all about.

I’m working to organize a group called Wicked Philanthropy, and essentially what it is, is a group of friends who are trying to do different physical challenges to raise money and awareness for different causes. Historically, we’ve done the Prouty up in New Hampshire and the PMC here in Massachusetts. Those have both been for cancer. And our new one, which we’re doing as a self-supported ride, is the C2C, which is a 300-plus mile three-day trip. The group started in 2004, when Jeff Adams and I rode in the PanMass Challenge for the first time. Every year we wanted to pull more friends into it and sort of just became this group. Wicked Philanthropy as a name, sort of spawned off of an adventure racing team we had. We wanted to have a different image, not as clean-cut as some of these smaller, less aggressive charities. We want to push everything a little bit, whether it’s the fundraising goals or the charities we take on.

Why is it important for you to give to these causes in this way?

I’ve always enjoyed riding, I like spending time with my friends and I have an entrepreneurial spirit, so the idea of founding something as a group was really exciting, went hand-in-hand. In 2002 we lost a friend to cancer, but we didn’t have the resources to ride the PMC, which had a large fundraising minimum, until 2004. Once we bit the bullet and decided to do it, it just took off. As far as the environment, I fish quite a bit up on the Maine coast, and we’ve seen quite a bit of habitat destruction up there. So that’s been near and dear and, for the C2C, we’re looking for someone, like a grassroots organization working on that. We’ve found a couple and we’re working with our current sponsors, GU Energy Gel and Wicked Joe’s of Maine, to identify different causes we can donate to. And the cycling is what we’re good at. We’re all young and physically fit, relatively speaking, so it was a natural fit for us to use one to help the other.

How can people help you out?

People can help us out in one of several ways. One is, obviously we’re always looking for riders to join us in local rides or some of the longer rides, such as the Concord to Cadillac. We’re always looking for individual to help sponsor us and donate to our cause. And the third, which is probably the most important right now, is we’re looking for corporate sponsors to sponsor our team and help us pay for some of the logistics along the ride and make donations to some of our causes, whether it’s cancer research or an environmental cause. We will be submitting our jerseys — our final designs — probably in the February or March timeframes, so if corporate sponsors want to be on our jerseys, then we would ask that they get involved before then. Individuals for financial sponsorship can get involved any time, even after the rides, so probably until October 2010. Individuals looking to ride, I’d say as soon as possible.

Tags: Press