Rider with a cause

Bike & Build

Providence, RI

Ms. Freeman will begin her cross-country ride in Providence.

San Francisco, CA

She ends her trip in San Francisco. Her aim is to raise money and awareness for affordable housing groups.

It will take her 73 days, but 24-year-old Rachel Freeman is determined to ride her bicycle from one coast to the other this summer. The Malverne resident plans to participate in the Bike & Build cross-country bicycle race from Providence, R.I., to San Francisco from June 9 to Aug. 20.

“I am concerned,” Freeman said when asked if she thought she could make it through the whole trip. “I like challenging myself. Everyone starts in the same place. I have just as much a chance as everyone else.”

Bike & Build is a nonprofit organization that raises money and awareness for affordable housing groups, and aims to empower young adults. Participants do not need to be American citizens and there are members who travel internationally to take part in the trip, which consists of eight routes, all starting on the East Coast, and cycle groups of 30 riders.

Before the trip begins, each rider must raise $4,000 in increments at given deadlines: Freeman recently met her $1,000 deadline and will now receive her bicycle from the organization so she can start to train. She plans to begin tracking her training progress, and eventually her trip, on the website rachelbandb.weebly.com.

The money that participants raise can be distributed in four different ways, Freeman explained in a recent interview with the Herald. It can be given in donations to construction sites at which riders will stop along their routes, donated in rider grants — donations given to a specific housing organization by a single rider — distributed through pre-arranged donations to groups with which Bike & Build works, or awarded as grants to affordable housing groups that apply.

Freeman applied to Bike & Build around October and started the fund raising process in January after being notified of her acceptance to the project. The organization provides bicycles, food and shelter to the participants, but Freeman said she will probably pay about $1,000 for her plane ticket home, application fee and extra equipment, like a bicycle kit, a spare tire and proper clothing.