He Rode For Charity. He Got A Lot More.

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Questrom’s Mark Williams pedals across America for Bikes Not Bombs
Mark Williams (Questrom’93), a master lecturer of finance at Questrom, at the Great Continental Divide, Monarch Pass, Colorado, on June 24. Photo by Mike Hill
There’s a saying, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mark Williams has been pedaling his way to that goal all summer.
If all goes as planned, the Questrom School of Business executive-in-residence and master lecturer in finance will ride his Specialized Diverge bicycle into Yorktown, Virginia sometime tomorrow, Friday, July 21, finishing a 3,700-plus-mile cross-country charity ride that began in San Francisco on June 4. Williams (Questrom’93) took on the ride to raise money for the Jamaica Plain-based group Bikes Not Bombs, which recycles bicycles and trains underemployed youths in bicycle repair. Williams wound up raising a total of $20,535.
Williams has been accompanied by Mike Hill, an investment manager whose ride has raised more than $20,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association. The two friends planned and trained for the trip for two years, expecting to average 80 miles per day while crossing nine states – California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and Virginia – primarily on the old U.S. Route 76 and U.S. Route 50, which means back roads and small towns. They rode through everything from snowfall in the Nevada mountains to 120-degree heat in the Utah desert, not to mention a 10-mile-long plague of grasshoppers during a Kansas wheat harvest: “The event felt biblical,” Williams says.
Williams, seen here on his Specialized Diverge bicycle, has raised more than $20,000 with his cross-country bike ride for Bikes Not Bombs. Photo by Mike Hill
The cyclists tried to hit the road by six or six-thirty in the morning. One day late last week they were riding from one hollow to another in Kentucky when a thunderstorm erupted and drenched them.
“I had sponges for feet ...

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