A Fraser Valley man is ready to cycle from Kelowna to Vancouver for cancer research later this month.
Sean Dalin lives in Langley, but he decided to start his fundraising trek in Kelowna, where his father and other relatives live and where he spent a lot of time growing up.
“I’m up there quite a bit, and it’s like a second home base to me,” he said.
Dalin is cycling for the BC Cancer Foundation’s Tour de Cure, where he signed up to cycle 160 kilometres a day for two days.
“I didn’t want to just do a big loop from Point A to Point B. So I started thinking maybe instead of doing 160, I’ll do 200 (kilometres) a day, and then I was trying to figure out how far 400 kilometres would be,” he said.
“It turns out a route from Kelowna all the way to Kitsilano Beach (in Vancouver) was exactly 400.”
Dalin said he wanted to participate in the cycling fundraiser after his lifelong friend was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2017. His friend underwent brain surgery and chemotherapy and is now stable. He will be coming along with Dalin as his support vehicle throughout the cycling journey.
“He’s my main inspiration for this. And one of my best friend’s moms, she recently was diagnosed with breast cancer. Another friend of mine, she’s a cancer survivor. There are a few people in my life that have been affected by it, and I want to do this for them,” he said.
“I got into cycling a year ago and it has been such a big impact on my life that I wanted to be able to do something with it to help impact other people’s lives in a positive way.”
The pair is scheduled to make the 400-kilometre trip on Aug. 28.
But with wildfires still active and out of control in the Interior, Dalin said he’s not too sure if he’ll still be able to go through with his plan to start the ride off in Kelowna.
“I’ll just have to pivot where I start from if it turns out I really can’t start in Kelowna, but the hope is I’ll still get to start there,” he said.
“Things are changing every day and I’m hoping by the time my ride day comes, things will be good.”
You can donate to Dalin’s fundraising page through this link.
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