Karin Piche has made up her mind. She's rounding up and training an army of riders.
"When I found it just didn't make sense," Piche says.
Another friend had cancer.
It'll be her third year bringing a team to the two-day Ride to Conquer Cancer in August. Her goal is to sign up 50 riders, nearly doubling last year's group. She has 47.
That biking army is in honour of David Mah, a Citizen photographer and Piche's dear friend who is battling cancer in Calgary.
"He was one of the people who helped make this team a reality, just by believing in me," says Piche of Mah.
Since 2013, the Wheelin' Warriors of the North has raised $185,000 for the BC Cancer Foundation. This year's she's setting her sights on $150,000 and they've already raised more than $27,000.
"The support in the community has been amazing," she says.
That first year Piche didn't know what she was getting into trying to raise funds and train for the Vancouver to Seattle trek.
Piche has a fitness background and is also a nurse, which is useful when she trains her teammates, many of whom are the opposite of avid cyclists and some who, like her that first year, had never even ridden a bike before taking on this challenge.
"My role is to support the riders with their training," she says, adding the team sponsors go a long way of reducing the stress of having to raise the $2,500 required of every ride participant.
"As difficult riding to Seattle is, the hardest part of the process usually is the fundraising."
But the ride is no cakewalk.
Cyclists can choose the classic or the challenge, with an option of starting in Vancouver and ending in Seattle or doing the complete - and grueling - round trip that begins and ends in Vancouver. All routes are more than 200 kilometres long.
Back in 2012, months after her best friend died of cancer, Piche bought a bike started planning.
"She was the catalyst," Piche says.
That death of that friend brought Denise Scott to Piche's team.
Piche recalls it clearly: a stranger with a great big bouquet of flowers shows up at the doorstep of the very first team meeting.
"She goes, 'These are for you honey,'" Piche says. "I go. 'Why?'"
Scott laughs as she remembers telling Piche she was crazy.
"She was crazy and she is crazy," says Scott, who now lives in Golden but plans to ride with the Piche's army. "Prince George is lucky that we have her to lead such an amazing team."
Scott is surrounded by loved ones with cancer.
"My mother and father-in-law both died four months apart from cancer. My grandfather died, my mom has cancer, my husband has cancer, my cousin has cancer."
Her husband was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma about 10 years ago.
"It's treatable, not curable which is a hard thing to get your head around until you have to get your head around (it)," she says. "As weird as this may sound, cancer makes you appreciate what you have. You've got to live for today, not for six months or five years or even 20 years down the road."
But she knows that research can make a difference.
"This is the only way I know how to help them besides the emotional support," says Scott, adding she thinks it's important all the money raised stays in the province for its researchers. "For me I think it's my outlet."
Scott describes the ride, especially the last grueling hill on the second day, as life-changing.
"It was the most uplifting, amazing experience in my entire life," says Scott, whose son and niece, a cancer survivor, are both doing the ride this year.
"If we don't do it, who else will?"
That drive to make a difference keeps Piche coming back year after year.
"I can't let it go," says Piche, even though she knows other parts of her life suffers.
"I just can't not do it. I have to keep going forward and then when the David Mah's come along it just makes me all that more driven to do it."
The Wheelin' Warriors of the North's next fundraiser is a bake sale on Friday at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. The team is also asking for donations and silent auction items in advance of their big gala fundraiser on May 2.
For more information, visit the team's Facebook page at facebook.com/WheelinWarriorsOfTheNorth
