It’s one of the major events here in Central Oregon; and it's right around the corner. The Tour Des Chutes on July 16th offers bike routes from 100 miles long down to just seven miles, all to raise money to battle cancer. Gary Bonacker started the ride in 2005 after surviving brain cancer and talking with Lance Armstrong at a race in Portland in 2004: “And talk to him about being a cancer survivor being somebody who wants to go beyond being a cancer patient who wants to go and he said a great way to do this is to come up with a fund raiser and I came back and a very small group at that time put together the Tour Des Chutes. Q: how many people? About 700, which amazed me ‘cuz I thought: “Oh, if we can get about three hundred, and we were like scrambling for food." Now the Tour Des Chutes has about a thousand participants. Gary says they're all well fed with a burrito bar provided by Longboard Louie’s of Bend. You can still register online up until Thursday, July 14th. And after that you can try to register at the race. The website is: www.tourdeschutes.org.
