Recent College Grad Riding for a Cause

Kathryn Kern's penchant to help others began at a young age, starting when her mother, Anne, sent her to Girl Scouts.

"I've just grown up in the community service aspect,"  said Kern, a Lexington resident. "It was in my system to get out there and have fun while doing something for someone else."

Now, after graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst this spring, Kern is looking to continue her generous ways. Along with UMass crew teammate Isabella Donadio, Kern is planning on raising money to pay a scholarship for a full semester's tuition and fees at the univeristy by riding her bike across America.

In all, the pair have mapped out a 5,000-mile excursion and raised approximately $1,000 to date.

"I don't want to sound cliché, but I'm thinking maybe (the ride is) a rite of passage," Anne said. "I just think this is something she's wanted to do and needs to do. She's always been a very independent young person."

In January, Kathryn, a 2006 Lexington High School graduate, first came up with the idea to ride a bike across the country while, ironically enough, loafing around in front of her television.

"On the show we were watching, the idea was go out and do something," she said. "Stop sitting around and being stupid."

So Kern and Donadio began to put things in motion – setting a plan and researching the most logical route possible.

The two were able to communicate with prospective riding companions via e-mail after advertising their itinerary through the Adventure Cycling Association's website.

"We're hoping to meet some people spontaneously, but we have one more definitely meeting us down in Maryland," Kern said.

The ride was scheduled to start on June 25, but due to campground discounts on Sundays the women chose to depart two days later. Beginning on Cape Cod, and using maps provided by both AdventureCycling.org and GoogleMaps, Kern and Donadio are heading south towards Virginia where they will connect with the TransAmerican trail towards Pueblo, Colo. From there, they will take the Western Express Route until they reach their final destination in San Francisco.

The trip is expected to last at least two months, but could go longer. Each day the pair will spend a different amount of time on their bikes. On the first day it was 12 hours, but the second day only eight. 

"Yesterday GoogleMaps set us on a hypothetical bike trail that doesn't actually exist," she said.

Kern has experience improving the lives of others. She's been enrolled in Habitat for Humanity since her freshman year of college, and in 2008 she spent six weeks in Morocco helping children through Cross Cultural Solutions. But this ride, with its self-sacrificial and exceedingly generous implication, is her crowning point. 

"It's basically just a way to culminate my experience from school," she said. "To put together athletics and trying to challenge myself. We wanted to ride for a purpose so it wouldn't be a self absorbed kind of thing."