A trio of friends bike across the country to raise awareness and funds for multiple myeloma
To what lengths would you go to help a friend? For Robert Guba and Burke Moran, that distance is 3,100 miles.
Memorial Day weekend of 2024, Guba and Moran got the kind of devastating news that no one ever wants to receive: their childhood friend, Chris Seab, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of white blood cell cancer.
They knew they wanted to help, and with assistance from Moran’s father-in-law, Mike Jastram, the two set out from Ocean Side, California, to begin what would become a 3,100-mile e-bike ride across the country with Jastram trailing behind them in an RV as a support vehicle.
“No matter how much you plan, with a trip like this, there are going to be constant challenges,” Moran says of the figurative and literal roadblocks they encountered throughout the ride. “Every day was different from the one before, and no two were the same. It just got to be entertaining.”
Each of them was responsible for different aspects of managing and documenting their voyage. Jastram served as the navigator. Guba was the bike technician. And Moran was the social media manager and restaurant finder. “Each night, we would all sit together to write a Facebook post on what happened that day,” Moran recalls. “We found that writing about it got to be more amusing than the day itself, and it became part of the enjoyment.”
The Facebook page, Wheeling for Healing, quickly gained traction, garnering a large following from friends, family and strangers alike. Their honest—and often humorous—recounting of each day of their trip became a source of entertainment for those following the journey, and it quickly translated into donations. “I was surprised to see how many people donated that we didn’t even know,” Moran says.
The grassroots social media campaign raised over $100,000 in just a few short months. In February, they donated $20,000 to Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center here in Baton Rouge, the hometown of Jastram, Moran, Guba and Seab.
“Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center saved my dad’s life quite a few times,” Moran says. In 2014, the cancer center named the Thomas J. Moran Imaging Center after his late father. “It’s a place that has always been close to our family, and we thought that if we’re raising money, it’d be good to bring some of it home.”
Mary Bird Perkins recently hired multiple myeloma specialist Dr. Andy Dalovisio as the director of the center’s new myeloma, lymphoma and cellular therapy program, perfectly aligning this donation with the impetus and inspiration for Moran, Guba and Jastram’s cross-country fundraising adventure.“We are building this program from the ground up, and gifts like this will allow us to incorporate offerings to create a top-tier program,” Dalovisio says.
“There are people in Baton Rouge who have had this disease, and they had to go out of state to get treatment,” Guba explains. “For them to be able to get care and extend their lives while being close to home is incredible.”
The trio came through Baton Rouge to hand deliver the check to Mary Bird Perkins. “The ride from Jefferson Highway to Mary Bird was probably the scariest part of the trip,” Moran says with a laugh.
While their journey began to help Seab—which they did by donating $10,000 to his family to help cover outstanding costs and another $10,000 to the Billings Clinic in Montana that treats Seab when he is home—they have also helped hundreds of others diagnosed with multiple myeloma covering travel, lodging and insurance deductibles through donations to the University of Arkansas. “It’s interesting to see how everything helps,” Moran says. “Being able to supply these additional funds was a beautiful thing, and we’re happy that we could help other people as well.”
Moran and Guba rode around 75 to 85 miles per day, every day, until they completed their trip in Jacksonville, Florida, 24 days after they began peddling. “It was a challenge, but minimal compared to what our friend Chris and other cancer patients go through on a daily basis,” the group wrote in a Facebook post.
“This ride was purely experimental, but we ended up having a great time, sharing lots of laughs along the way, and we’re just very fortunate that we were able to do it,” Moran says. “It’s a great life experience that I wish more people could have.”
The group is already dreaming about their next ride, aiming to gain larger donors and welcome more people to join in on the ride, all while raising awareness during stops along the way.
“Others have already told us they would like to participate,” Guba says. “And I know that they would see how impactful the trip truly is and how many people we meet on our stops who have some kind of connection to multiple myeloma—a type of cancer we’d never heard of before Chris’s diagnosis.”
Their inspiring journey was full of heart and plenty of humor, making it the ride of a lifetime while helping to extend the lifetime of a dear friend and others suffering from the same form of blood cancer.
“It’s memorable in its own way,” Moran says. “It’s incredible seeing how different our country is from coast to coast and how we’re still all affected by cancer diagnoses.”
Keep up with Wheeling for Healing by liking the group’s Facebook page. To make a donation, visit wheelingforhealing.com.
