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Alexander: The California Coast Classic bike tour’s biggest booster

April 5, 2023

Pete Staylor is persistent. He has been for 22 years.

He floods the zone – with flyers, with social media posts, with mentions in conversations with friends and acquaintances and anyone who might possibly be interested. His goal: To raise awareness and participation for the annual California Coast Classic bike tour, an eight-day, 525-mile jaunt down Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

It will begin on Sept. 30 and will conclude Oct. 7. It is the Arthritis Foundation’s main fundraising event, routinely raising more than $1 million a year, and riders are required to raise a minimum of $3,500 to participate, either by soliciting smaller donations or by writing a check.

Staylor, 69 and a resident of Riverside, will be riding in the event for the 20th time, with a personal fundraising goal this time of $20,525. His first ride was in 2002, and his motivation then was simple.

“I started doing it because I wanted to find a cure, because I had arthritic knees,” he said. “I was kind of selfish. I want to do something big, make a difference.”

The motivation: Staylor’s knees no longer allowed him to play basketball, his first passion. He was pretty good in high school – full disclosure, This Space was a year behind him at Notre Dame High in Riverside and can vouch for it – and he said that as he got older “I got way better than I was in high school. … I would play five, six days a week, and when my knees went south it was horrible. I kept trying to play, because I love playing basketball.”

For help, Staylor went to orthopedic surgeon Gregory Heinen, who gave him Synvisc injections in each knee in November of 2001 to help cushion the knees and allow for greater movement. As Staylor told it, when he realized how much better those injections made his knees feel, “I said, ‘Doc, this is great. Can I go play ball?’

“And he said, ‘No, no, no, no, NO! You can swim or ride a bike.’”

Fair enough.

“I’m making a car payment at the bank, and I see this flyer and pick it up: ‘Take the ride of a lifetime, sleep under the stars, make a difference,’” Staylor said. “I don’t own a bike. I look at it. I took it home. I looked at it for two weeks, and I told my wife (Merry Lou), ‘I’ve got to do this.’

“My wife says, ‘You’re crazy.’ I said, ‘I know, but I’m doing it.’”

He did it and has continued to do it. Staylor started training in June of 2002 – a couple of months later than is usually recommended for this event – and did the ride for the first time that September. He did it again the next year and has kept at it ever since, save for 2014 and 2015. That hiatus came because he had both knees replaced, then reinjured one of them, and was prepared to give up riding and instead stay involved as a volunteer. But he discovered that riding an e-bike was easier on his joints, and he’s ridden one in this event ever since.

And a footnote: After nearly two decades of Staylor bugging his doctor to join him on the ride, Heinen finally acquiesced and rode in the 2021 event, and he’ll be back this year. Did we say Pete’s persuasive?

“He’s bold,” said Shannon Marang Cox, the ride director and associate executive director of the Arthritis Foundation. “And he’s figured it out – you just ask everyone because you never know. People that you would absolutely think, ‘Oh, they’ll donate to me,’ sometimes don’t. And sometimes people come out of the woodwork and you’re thinking, ‘Well, I haven’t talked to that person since high school, and I’m just Facebook friends with them. And yet here they came with a really, you know, kind and generous donation for my campaign.’

“And so I think Pete has figured out (the approach). You sort of ask everyone. You remind people frequently.”

The tour isn’t a race but instead a go-your-own-pace ride, with rest stops every 20 to 25 miles, support vans tagging along and free campgrounds – or hotels, for those willing to pay for more comfort – between stages. The first stage goes along Highway 1 from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, with subsequent stops at Monterey, Big Sur, Cambria, Oceano (which is 17 miles south of San Luis Obispo), Buellton, Ventura and finally L.A.

The aim is for around 250 riders, and Cox said that as of this week “there’s probably about 45 or 50 spaces left. And we do sometimes over-register, just because we have attrition.”

There is also the Arthritis Challenge Experience, which allows riders who can’t do the eight-day tour or those who live in other regions to pay a $39 registration fee, receive an official T-shirt, choose their own activity, post about it on social media and connect virtually to other participants.

That concept might have had its roots in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited not only this event but all kinds of pursuits. Even so, the Arthritis Foundation raised $960,000 that year without the eight-day tour, “which was remarkable,” Cox said. “I mean, when you consider that people fundraise to be able to do this event and it’s like a vacation, a trip of a lifetime or a challenge, to not have that and to have people continue to support, it spoke a lot about how committed people are to our cause and our mission.”

A good number of riders either are affected by arthritis or have family members who are affected. Others have their own back stories, whether they’re participating for a particular cause or in memory of a loved one, or just because it checks off an item on their bucket list.

Staylor recalled the 2018 ride, when he had a 30-rider team that included two people riding in memory of relatives who had passed away. Another woman who had reached out for help in training for the ride told him, “I’ve got two angels on my shoulders,” for her two sons who had passed away in the previous seven months.

“She had the largest group of people ever waiting for her at the finish line,” Staylor said. “And there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”

There has been a celebrity component over the years. Former Olympic miler Mary Decker Slaney has ridden in it. So has actor Nancy Travis and former KCBS/KCAL news anchor Linda Alvarez.

But when it comes to getting attention for this cause and this ride, few are as effective (or, yes, persistent) as the guy his fellow riders refer to as Cap’n Pete.

Case in point: During last year’s tour, Staylor was part of a group relaxing at a Mexican restaurant in Oceano after the day’s ride when a San Luis Obispo TV reporter showed up with a camera and said he’d been sent to talk to riders. He asked who was willing to be interviewed, and the other eight all pointed at Staylor.

“So I’m kind of an unofficial spokesperson,” he said.

“You have to self-promote. I’m not looking for attention. I’m looking for connection.”

For additional information about the California Coast Classic or to register, the event website is arthritis.org/CaliforniaCoastClassic

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Orange County Register

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Alexander: The California Coast Classic bike tour’s biggest booster

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