A community is ready to ride again
Published 10:28 am Thursday, July 28, 2016
Hundreds of motorcycles and classic cars are ready to ride through northern Iowa on Saturday to raise awareness and funds for cancer research.
The 5th Annual Norma Foster “Ride for a Reason” will take place on Saturday, July 30, starting in Riceville, Iowa.
Registration will take place at the Riceville Community Center. The registration fee is $30 per person and includes a t-shirt, raffle ticket and a meal after the ride.
Those who do not ride can join the meal for $5 a plate. The event will also include live and silent auctions and raffle prizes.
Since July 2012, Ride for a Reason has honored the memory of Norma Foster, a Riceville, Iowa, resident who died in 2011 at age 55 following a two-year battle with breast cancer.
“Our ride honors an amazing and wonderful woman who would’ve loved to have been involved with this,” said her husband, Dean Foster, in a press release. “It’s all worth it if we can raise and donate money that saves just one person from this horrible disease we call cancer.”
Last year’s Ride for a Reason drew about 250 participants who rode motorcycles, classic cars and in a bus decorated with pink ribbons and messages. The nearly eight-hour trip started in Riceville and covered almost 100 miles through northern Iowa with numerous stops in towns along the way before coming back to Riceville for a dinner and auction.
For the past two years, Dean Foster and his family have designated The Hormel Institute’s cancer research as the recipient of the Ride for a Reason fundraising. Overall, Ride for a Reason now has donated more than $37,000 to The Hormel Institute and raised about $71,000 overall in four years for cancer research.
As with any gift to The Hormel Institute, 100 percent of the Ride for a Reason funds will directly support cancer research.