by Oscar de León
Staff Writer
Freshman Derek Keepers, an honors student at the University of La Verne, will show his support to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation by cycling in the AIDS/Life Cycle, a seven-day, 585-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The event will take place on June 6 and will end on June 12.
“I’m participating to make a difference in the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS,” he said.
According to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, since the early 1980s, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, have disproportionately affected California. The foundation also states that over 109,000 Californians have been diagnosed with AIDS, representing 17 percent of all cases reported in the United States. While over 68,000 people have died from AIDS in this state, it is estimated that over 40,000 Californians are currently living with AIDS and that up to 130,500 may be HIV-infected.
“I’ve been training five days a week,” Keepers, who has been riding his bike from 50 to 100 miles a day, said. His favorite sites to bicycle are Puddingstone, San Dímas Canyon and the Glendora Mountain Road.
Keepers said that ever since October, when he made the decision to join the AIDS/Life Cycle, he has been forcing himself to eat healthy for this bicycle run. He has been eating fruit and food with carbohydrates. “I have been drinking tons of water too, to not get dehydrated,” he said.
Keepers, who was born in Pomona and used to play football, said that this is going to be his farthest bicycle ride ever. He said that at the beginning, he wanted to do this race to challenge himself. But, later he started thinking more about the fact that the epidemic is killing so many people. Now he is also participating in the run to support the cause.
Keepers comes from an athletic family. His brother is snowboarding, what Keepers is very proud of, because even though his brother was blind, he is still athletic.
“I think that my mom is the most athletic,” Keepers said, adding that his mother walks regularly and also goes to the gym. Among Keepers’ hobbies are abstract painting, guitar playing and writing.
“I’d like to be a philosophy professor some day. I love philosophy and the only way I could express my love about it is by teaching it,” he said.
Oscar De León
