CONCRETE CANYON RIDE FOR THE CHILDREN

ONE MAN’S MISSION
Photos Courtesy of Theresa Radkey, SCRC
Chapter 384
“In 2002, they gave me five days to live. I’m very happy to be fifty three,” says Dave Kaufman, First Officer of the Southern Cruisers Riding Club, New York City Chapter 384, a life long motorcyclist and cancer survivor, who has created one of the most unique motorcycle fund raisers in the county.

Now, he wants to have children who have not had a chance to live to have that same chance, doing his bit with The Concrete Canyon Run..

During the eight months of treatment in those dark days, he walked around the hospital, wandering past the children’s rooms. The experience was traumatic.
“I saw the kids—kids who had not yet had a chance to live being kept alive, very sad and not understanding what was going on in their short lives. It was a devastating experience”, he says.

After he got out of the hospital, he would return to visit the kids, bringing them do- rags and entertained them with motorcycle tales. The kids loved it. But the downside for him was the kids who did not make it.

“Sometimes I’d go back and one or two of them would not be there. They didn’t make it. It just got to me”.

A life long motorcyclist, he connected with Southern Cruisers and formed the New York Chapter. He found out that the SCRC official charity was the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which gave him the chance to give something back. “I was a cancer survivor, and some of these children were not. It was my chance to give something back”, he says

The Concrete Canyon Run was born.

The title is self explanatory; hundreds of motorcyclists from as far away as Georgia, Maine and Michigan rolling through sixty miles of New York’s man- made canyons, from the financial district, to Ground Zero, to Times Square and terminating at Coyote Ugly before heading out to New Jersey for the after-ride party, which goes on to…whenever. You don’t want to miss riding through the below ground-level street tunnels

From a dry run in 2002 of eighty or so riders, the ride grew to over three hundred riders in 2004. the run is the premier event for the chapter’s fifty plus members, who devote untold hours to making it work. In 2005, there would have been over six hundred riders, had the run not been rained out.


To date, the run has earned over thirteen thousand dollars for St. Jude, and 2006 it promises to be even bigger again. “I want this to be a good fun time for everybody, and to raise a ton of money for St. Jude”.
Let’s try and help him out.

IN MEMORIUM

THANKS RICK, FOR
ALL YOU GAVE US
This road trip actually began almost six years ago, when I bought a used, rather beat up long on mileage and short on looks Kawasaki Vulcan 750, in returning to motorcycling after a much too long hiatus. Aside from being in possession of a newly minted Motorcycle attachment to my license—A first for me, despite having owned two prior motorcycles—I knew absolutely nothing beyond that it had two wheels and a motor.

An internet search put me on to VROC, the Vulcan Riders and Owners Club, a what I then thought was a loosely formed group of Vulcan motorcycle riders and owners (that makes sense, no?) I signed on. It was perhaps the best move I could have made in my motorcycling education.

As a complete, or relatively complete neophyte, I was apprehensive at first, tepidly asking questions, which to my surprise were answered with what was often overwhelmingly helpful advice and solutions to my various motorcycle problems.

But VROC was more than that. I soon discovered that VROC was not something I joined, but a process of osmosis that gradually absorbed me. There was more here than just motorcycles. VROC was about life, And I was gradually absorbed into it.

It was the quintessential “Biker Bar” where everything was discussed, argued, fought over, and once in a while—not too often, remember, this was VROC--resolved. There was politics, religion—or lack thereof—and just about everything in between. It came to a point where if I had a question about just about anything, I would post it, and someone, somewhere knew something about it, or provided a link to someplace with the answer. It became a sounding board for just about every subject under the sun, from a world-wide membership. It can actually be said that the sun never sets on VROC membership.

And I came to know these people whom I had never met.


There were marriages and divorces, an affair or two, posts from family members advising the group of medical progress for various ills some member someplace was going through; and reports—all too frequent—of riders going down, including my own,
There were births and there were deaths. I don’t think I have every witnessed such an outpouring of support and emotion as that I was part of with the death of Foggy to Cancer. I had corresponded with him, but we had never met. His losing battle is the stuff of VROC lore, an experience shared by a world-wide membership that no one ever though would be repeated.
Until August 19, 2005, when we opened up our mail to the unimagined post announced that Big Number Three, Rick Jackubas had taken his last ride.

No. things like this don't happen to somebody I knew, even though I had never met him. It speaks volumes for what he left behind has effected each and every one of us in ways that none of us can explain.

There are no words that will adequately explain what he meant to us, so we will just let the day of silence speak for us. A member of our family passed on much too early in life one year ago today, and he is missed beyond words.
Thanks Rick