About 2,200 cyclists passed through Santa Barbara and Ventura counties on Friday as a part of the 31st, and final, AIDS/LifeCycle ride.
A partnership between the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Los Angeles LGBT Center, participants ride to break down the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS and to provide healthcare and medication for those who may not be able to afford treatment. Over the past 30 years, the ride has raised more than $300 million for the cause.
It’s not just the cyclists that are along for the 545-mile ride from San Francisco to Santa Monica, but also 600 volunteers, called roadies. They include family members, friends, and supporters who come from around the country to make the event happen.
Each afternoon, the ride concludes at a campsite, where roadies have set up sleeping tents, four shower trucks, a plethora of portable toilets, two full kitchen food trucks, and medical tents. Alan Hood, a second-time roadie from Phoenix, Arizona, describes the camp and a mobile town. Riders and roadies sleep in matching blue tents stationed feet apart. Those who choose to skip sleeping on the ground and book a hotel are dubbed “princesses,” according to Hood.
Roadies Margo Fargo and Oona Varga set up a tent in San Buenaventura State Park as part of their volunteer duties on June 6, 2025. Fargo is an eight-time rider and three-time roadie, and this is Varga’s first AIDS/LifeCycle event. | Credit: Elaine Sanders 
Riders and roadies sleep in tents each night of the seven-day AIDS/Life Cycle event. On the final night of the ride, volunteers have set up base camp in San Buenaventura State Park. | Credit: Elaine Sanders 
A line of rental trucks filled with the luggage of about 3,000 riders and volunteers. After parking their bike, cyclists pick up their bag at their designated truck that is managed and driven by volunteers. | Credit: Elaine Sanders 
Around 2,500 bikes line the bike parking lot that is under 24-hour security surveillance in San Buenaventura State Park on June 06, 2025. | Credit: Elaine Sanders
“It’s a big gay summer camp,” says roadie Katie Thomazin. The Seattleite has red star glitter stickers on her face as she waves in a tour bus of volunteers and supporters into San Buenaventura State Park for the last night of the seven-day ride.
Cyclist Gary Lima, whose nose is adorned in zinc sunscreen, came from Baltimore, Maryland, to participate in his second AIDS/LifeCycle ride. Having lost a partner to AIDS, he says that the community is what brings him back. It’s a group of “like-minded individuals that have lost friends, lovers, uncles, cousins, and we’ve all shared a common bond,” says Lima.
Day one of the event starts out with an orientation that sets ground rules and establishes the community as a “love bubble” focused on fostering support and joy.
“We come here, we get nurtured, and we grow,” says three-time rider Joel Longenecker. He thinks a more accurate term is to call the community a “love incubator” since the bonds and skills cultivated here extend “out in that challenging world that we face.”
Supporters cheer cyclist Gary Lima on with pompoms and cowbells as he comes to finish of today’s leg of the AIDS/LifeCycle ride in San Buenaventura State Park. | Credit: Elaine Sanders 
Joel Longenecker, member of team Trudging Buddies, finishes the ride from Riverbed Park in Lompoc to San Buenaventura State Park in Ventura on June 6, 2025. The three-time AIDS/LifeCycle rider says there were porpoises off the coastline on the ride down Old Pacific Coast Highway; the ride was meditative. | Credit: Elaine Sanders
The ride passes through small, many times politically conservative, communities including Bradley, California, population: 83. The local middle school started hosting fundraising BBQs when riders passed through town each year, and event organizers decided to pay the community to cater the lunch. Now, AIDS/LifeCycle hosts a fundraiser for Bradley Union School District within the greater AIDS fundraiser to help local kids.
“Our presence there has sort of shifted their mindset about [the LGBTQ] community and about the disease that we live with,” says Senior Communications Manager Gonzalo Garcia. “They’ve welcomed us with open arms.”
Garcia, who has spent 15 years working the AIDS/LifeCycle ride, says, “I’ve seen children grow up from Bradley who have felt comfortable coming out of the closet and being themselves.”
On the final ride, Garcia claims that about $120,000 has been raised for Bradley Union School District.
Senior Communications Manager Gonzalo Garcia was in San Buenaventura State Park for the last night of the final AIDS/LifeCycle ride. He has spent the past 15 years working the event, and as with many others, it is the tight-knit community that brings him back each year. | Credit: Elaine Sanders 
Davin Cole, retired San Francisco Police Officer and security officer for the AIDS/LifeCycle ride, watches over the thousands of bikes on each leg of the event. A former long-distance cyclist himself, he enjoys seeing the camaraderie of the riders as they come down the final stretch. | Credit: Elaine Sanders
In order to participate in the seven-day trek, each cyclist is required to fundraise a minimum of $3,500, which goes toward paying for expenses for the week and into a donation pool for HIV/AIDS healthcare. Many cyclists raise far more; cyclist Jay Gondek from Palm Springs personally raised about $15,300.
Cyclist Joel Longenecker is a member of the Trudging Buddies team which has raised over $576,000 for the cause, the third highest earning team of 227. The team, focused on sober riders and allies, has about 150 members participating.
“It was lovely to find guys that were changing their lives,” says Longenecker. For him and his teammates, cycling is a healthy way to “deal with the obstacles that come up in daily life.”
Despite all the money raised, increased production prices since COVID combined with a decline in the number of riders over the years have left the week-long event financially unable to continue. Garcia says that plans for two shorter three-day rides — one from San Francisco to Sonoma and the other from L.A. to San Diego — are in the works for upcoming years.
Roadie Sue Gross has been volunteering for four years and is left teary eyed on the last night of the final ride.
“I promised myself I was just gonna let myself cry this week,” says Gross. “With everything that’s going on in the world, my heart just needed this.”
