Good Luck, Johnny's Bikertress! You Are Atomically Awesome!

And she's off!

The AIDS/LifeCycle bike-a-thon officially begins today at 6 a.m. PDT, and Johnny's Bikertress--a.k.a. our own Atomic Kitten--will be among the thousands of riders enjoying a police escort out of beautiful San Francisco to begin her journey on behalf of Johnny and all his fans.

You can follow Atomic Kitten's progress on Twitter or on our Ride for Life Facebook fan page! And check out the new pages at the Ride for Life project's website! Our main page has now been translated into Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, and Korean is coming soon. You can also find out more about Atomic Kitten here. Be sure to click to the Ban.do photos page to see her super-glam helmet, and check out the designs from the Russian fans and from Facebook fan Mary Mimi Dzyacky that Atomic Kitten will be sporting on her T-shirts during the ride!

As of 2 a.m. PDT, our donations stand at more than $3,800: $3,570 on our official ALC page, and about another $300 in PayPal donations. That's excellent progress for a project that just began last Wednesday, and already puts us at about 52% of our goal of $7,500! Fans have been actively pimping away, both on Johnny's Facebook page and around the web, posting the link everywhere we can and alerting other celebrities and their fans via Twitter and Facebook. Though the ride ends next Saturday, June 12, fundraising continues until July 31.

And Johnny himself tweeted about our project last night! That means his 59,069 Twitter followers got the message and started tweeting it to their followers, who started tweeting it to their followers ...

Which reminds me: I am amazed and humbled that Johnny has partnered with us, his fans, to do this project. Much of the credit goes to Atomic Kitten, a dedicated and energetic fan who came up with this idea just about a month ago. It is largely through her efforts--laying out the concept for Johnny and his team, promoting the project, networking, encouraging others to get on board, and generally just driving every aspect of everything in addition to maintaining her grueling training schedule in preparation for the 545-mile ride--that her idea became a reality.

But it also says a great deal about Johnny that he agreed to make this happen. He's been involved from the very start, because of course we could not use his name or his official photos without his permission. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that he has teamed up with his fans in this way, and he's taking an enormous risk by doing so. He is wholly entrusting us with his name, his image, and his reputation--not something every celebrity would do, and not something we can take lightly. But Johnny truly loves, appreciates, and believes in his fans, and also he's very, very much about turning any celeb spotlight that comes his way toward humanitarian causes, particularly efforts to fight AIDS.

So it is both a privilege and an enormous responsibility that we have before us. A lot of our success rides on the sparkly Ban.do-ized helmet and strong legs of Atomic Kitten, without whom this project would not be possible. The rest is up to all of us other fans, to work together to bring in every donation we can, big or small or in-between.

Because every $1 donated is a $1 that goes toward saving lives.

And the closer we come to our $7,500 goal--or to exceeding it--the higher we boost Johnny and his fans among the top fundraisers for AIDS/LifeCycle. And also the more we help Johnny realize his dream of using his gifts, his heart, his love for others, his whole addictive self--and the accompanying celebrity spotlight that is shining ever brighter on him--toward accomplishing something truly, wondrously good, for other people.

As we embark on this journey--Atomic Kitten pedaling away, all of us pimping away, and Johnny soon heading to LA for those NewNowNext awards--let's join with Facebook fan Gary Podschun, who has been tireless in his efforts to promote our project, and offer words from the classic and beautiful Irish blessing to Atomic Kitten:

May the road rise to ... meet you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face ...

until we meet again ...

--A Blessing from St. Patrick 

Bless you, Johnny Weir and your Bikertress. You are both atomically awesome, and we couldn't do this without you!

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Please keep pimping out our official ALC donation page
and our Ride for Life PayPal donation page
to everyone everywhere!
AND PLEASE KEEP VOTING HERE for Johnny to win

the 2010 Readers' Choice Skater of the Year Award
(voting ends July 15)!

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Special thanks to Facebook fans Lizzy Pine for her artwork,
Maggie Strasser for the phrase "atomically awesome,"
and Gary Podschun for his inspiring posts!

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copyright 2010 / Binky and the Misfit Mimes / Lynn V. Ingogly / all rights reserved