Daniel Batchelor (38) sets off on Tour Aotearoa, an epic 3000km ride from Cape Reinga to Bluff, on Sunday.
As well as a personal challenge, he’s doing it to raise money for Mike King’s Key to Life charity.
It’s a cause close to his heart.
His younger sister, Loree, should have turned 37 in January. She took her own life, at age 19, in 2002.
“It was pretty rough, for my family especially,” he says.
He came up with the idea to do the ride after tackling the Tour Divide, from Canada to Mexico, with his partner last year.
As an extra challenge, if he can find a commercial sponsor, he says he’ll do the entire ride wearing gum-boots, in a nod to Key to Life’s Gumboot Friday initiative.
“If it can provide the funding to help even one person to pull through a difficult time and go on to enjoy the best years of life that my sister so sadly missed out on, and to help avoid the devastation to one other family that I have seen within my own, then it will be worth it.”
The ride is expected to take between 20 and 30 days to finish.
You can donate to Batchelor at: https://bit.ly/2uJr7sq