The good news: we did it again. AIDS/LifeCycle raised over 17 million dollars this year. That’s not a typo. Seventeen million. For HIV/AIDS services, prevention, advocacy, care. For actual lives.
This time, I wasn’t riding. I was behind the scenes, lugging arrow signs and cleaning up the road as part of the Advance Route Marking team. Me and a few other legends out there a day early, making sure the route was safe and the signs pointed the right way.
It was one of those rare weeks where your body’s tired but your spirit isn’t. Long days, sunburns, inside jokes, and just enough chaos to keep it interesting. Seven days, hundreds of miles, thousands of tiny moments that added up to something huge.
Why It’s So Successful?
AIDS/LifeCycle wasn’t just successful because people cared. It was designed around real community. Not just one, but a Venn diagram of them: queer folks, cyclists, activists, people living with HIV, people who lost someone. It connected San Francisco and Los Angeles, two cities with deep roots in both bike culture and the LGBTQ+ movement. That’s a potent mix.
It was also personal. Riders carried names, faces, ashes, and stories. The mission wasn’t an abstract “awareness campaign.” It was a pilgrimage. And you don’t half-ass a pilgrimage.
And then there was the tone. Serious cause, zero solemnity. Humor made it human. There’s nothing like pedaling past a drag nun in a banana suit yelling “hydrate or die-drate” while you’re contemplating the weight of the epidemic. The camp didn’t dilute the meaning. It carried it. That’s queer magic.
Volunteers held it all together. Thousands of them putting up arrows at dawn, wrangling gear, manning rest stops. They weren’t there for clout. They were part of one or more of those overlapping circles too. That kept the event affordable and grounded.
Another important aspect that makes the role of fundraiser easier and also promotes transparency is that the money raised for the event is directly linked to the needs of the organizations. You know exactly where every dollar is going, as they provide fundraising cards showing the cost of some services.
And maybe most importantly, ALC was inclusive without compromising its identity. It was proudly queer, but open to anyone who showed up with respect and sunscreen. It didn’t pander. It invited.
That’s hard to replicate. Maybe impossible. But that’s also what made it work.
What I Found There
I’ve done this twice. First as a rider, then as a roadie. I made that choice out of gratitude. The roadies on my first ride were the reason it felt so magical. They patched me up, cracked jokes when I was falling apart, and somehow made a porta-potty feel like a spiritual checkpoint. I wanted to give a little of that back.
When I first joined, I figured I’d just ride my bike, raise some money, maybe get a decent tan. But what I found was something else entirely.
People showed up for me. Total strangers. Volunteers cheered like I was a rockstar. Riders I’d never met fixed my flat, shared their snacks, gave hugs without asking why I needed one. I met artists, nurses, queer elders, kinksters, first-time riders in their 60s, and people who had done this ride 20 times and still cried at every opening ceremony.
I cried too. A lot. Sometimes from the pain, but mostly from other people’s stories. Stories about partners they lost. About surviving when others didn’t. About showing up for someone who once showed up for them. That kind of grief and joy doesn’t just sit in your chest. It moves through you.
This wasn’t some curated, polished community. It was messy and loud and wildly diverse, and it worked. Everyone belonged, even if no one matched. And somewhere between the rest stops and the road grime and the weird inside jokes about Butt Butter, I realized I felt more myself here than almost anywhere else.
The Bad News
This was the last AIDS/LifeCycle. Wait what?
After 30 years, it’s coming to an end. Not because it failed, but because the model stopped working. Organizers from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center laid it out clearly. Costs went up. Participation and fundraising went down. Post-COVID logistics got harder and more expensive. In 2019, the cost of fundraising was about 33 percent. By 2023 and 2024, it had more than doubled. Every dollar raised was being eaten by production costs. They cut vendor contracts and scaled back staffing, but the numbers still didn’t make sense. They said it no longer met industry standards for financial responsibility.
So the 2025 ride was the last one. The Final 545. One more chance to ride, to roadie, to scream into the wind while sweating through your chamois for a damn good cause.
It’s hard to explain what this ride means unless you’ve done it. It wasn’t just a fundraiser. Not just a bike ride. It was a weird, beautiful, inconvenient miracle. A moving village powered by muscle, glitter, grief, sunscreen, and community.
A Tech Bro Postmortem
If AIDS / LifeCycle were a startup, it would be a masterclass in product-market fit. In thirty years the ride raised more than $300 million, powered by riders and roadies who treated fundraising like a love language. A few individuals pulled in over half a million apiece, enough to make any investor grin.
The problem was on the cost side. Pretty common with health startups. Every seven-day ride needed fleets of trucks, medical tents, mobile kitchens, shower rigs, and a volunteer army. Love padded the budget, but it never balanced it. When expenses kept outpacing donations, the organizers decided to retire the week-long version while the memories were still warm. Shut it down while it still meant everything.
I came back for that final rollout, not with pitch decks or growth hacks, just a broom and a stack of arrow signs, grateful to guide people home one more time.
The story is not over. A leaner chapter is already in the works: three-day weekend rides that preserve the heart of the experience while making it more accessible and affordable for riders and reducing the costs to run it. Smaller footprint. Same purpose. That sounds like an interesting pivot, the kind of thing Bay Area folks know how to do.
I don’t have a profound ending. Just sitting with the whiplash of raising millions for a cause and saying goodbye to one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever been part of.
