Podcast: Cycling Coast to Coast to Help Kids

A UConn dental student and two medical students are spending their last free summer pedaling cross-country to raise money for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. Hear their thoughts from the day before they left in early June.

collage of student cyclists outdoors with their bicycles and cycling gear

Three students from UConn Health are spending their last free summer bicycling cross-country to raise money for the Hole in the Wall Gang camp. (Photos from https://www.instagram.com/coast2coast_2022/ and https://uconncoast2coast2022.blogspot.com/)

Three students in biking gear group portrait outdoors with bicycles
From left: Dustin Moore, Julia Neri, and Brian Legato are UConn Health’s 2022 Coast to Coast for a Cause team. (Photo submitted by Julia Neri)

The summertime cross-country fundraising bicycle tour that is now an annual student tradition at UConn Health is underway for a 17th year. Rising second-year students Brian Legato (UConn School of Dental Medicine), Dustin Moore (UConn School of Medicine), and Julia Neri (UConn School of Medicine and UConn Health Graduate School) they started pedaling home June 6 from Anacortes, Washington, where they dipped their bike tires in the Pacific Ocean. Two days earlier they flew to Seattle, where their bikes had been shipped.

The cause this year is the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a campground in Ashford founded by Hollywood legend and philanthropist Paul Newman that offers a camp experience to seriously ill children at no cost to their families.

All these kids can just go to camp, because that’s such a huge part of any child growing up, and it’s a place where they don’t have to be seen as ‘the sick kid’ anymore. — Julia Neri

The day before their flight to Seattle, they were guests on the UConn Health Pulse podcast to discuss their trip and how you can support the 2022 Coast to Coast for a Cause.

Cycling Coast to Coast to Help Kids