A group of friends who have full-time careers has successfully turned a regular cycling excursion into a regular charitable excursion.

At first Team DC was a recreational cycling group of men and women. But when its members decided to participate in a Washington, D.C. AIDS Ride five years ago, they became addicted to giving back to the community.

When they realized what a difference they made for charities such as Food & Friends and Whitman Walker Clinic in the District, and the fun they were having at the same time, they made a commitment to continue participating in charitable activities. Food & Friends receives 25 percent of its annual operating budget from proceeds of the Washington, D.C. AIDS Ride.

The team motto, "Riding for charities - Biking for fun," developed into a passion its members chose to live by. According to members, Team DC has racked up more than 30,000 miles and raised more than $100,000 since its first ride.

"The concept of riding for charities was something we were interested in, not just riding," said Alan B. Gross, 53, of Bethesda, an attorney and team member. "We got addicted to the giving of ourselves."

John Burwell, 51, a photographer from Washington, D.C. and co-founder of Team DC, agreed. "The more you do by helping people, it becomes a contagion," he said. "You want to do more and more."

So they did just that.

"Collectively, we've participated 45 times in AIDS rides," said Burwell, who has participated in six rides himself.

Gross and fellow team member Gil Hofheimer, 58, of Bethesda, a car salesman, will bike in their sixth AIDS ride, and their first international AIDS ride, on Sept. 5 in the five-day, 450-mile AIDS Vaccine Ride from Montreal to Portland, Maine.

Though the three men have not had any personal experiences of friends or family members who have had AIDS, they quickly developed an interest in the cause as a result of the rides.

At a campsite for the AIDS Vaccine Ride in Alaska, Gross remembers listening to a memorable African speaker share his experience with AIDS to the riders. The man, a father of five, became a father of 15 when he adopted the children of two of his brothers and their wives who died of AIDS.

The team members say they participate in the rides for future generations as well as themselves. Gross and Hofheimer have two children; Hofheimer also has three grandchildren.

Burwell, whose wife Claudia helps out in the AIDS rides as an organizer and as part of the crew, carries his nieces' hair clips during the rides to remind himself that he's doing the rides for them as much as for himself.

"I think of my nieces and nephews and the world they're going to grow up in when we do these rides," Burwell said.

Besides the altruistic motives of joining the rides, the members of Team DC also do it for the fun and a mini-escape from their daily lives.

"You're in such a structured day-to-day environment in law, or sales or photography, but when you go [on the rides], it's totally different," Hofheimer said. "You're totally uninhibited."

Hofheimer admitted to harboring homosexual stereotypes before he joined Team DC, but those stereotypes were easily dispelled once he started participating in the rides and began to meet more people touched by the disease

The members train together by meeting early weekend mornings and riding 40 to 50 miles as well as riding after work by themselves.

They take the time out of their vacations to participate in the rides. "This upcoming ride in September is the first vacation I've had this summer," Gross said.

But Team DC's enthusiasm for helping charities extends beyond the AIDS rides. They also volunteer at least once a month in the kitchens of Food & Friends, an organization that provides meals to people with life-threatening diseases. They mentor inner-city youths with mountain biking outings through an organization called Urban Rangers. And Team DC has also participated in other fund-raising rides such as Dream Ride, Eat a Peach, Breast Cancer Fund, and Sea Gull Century.

"The AIDS ride is not the beginning and the end of what we do," Gross said. "It's a year-round cause for us."

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