How the MS Ride Became My Ride

One Cyclist’s Quiet Reason for Showing Up

June 29, 2025

People do all sorts of noble things to raise money: shave their heads, jump in Lake Ontario in March, run a foot race in a banana costume. Last year, I promised to ride one kilometer for every dollar raised for the MS Bike Tour.

Let’s be honest: I was going to ride those kilometers anyway.

Not because I’m a compulsive rider. Not exactly. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking so, based on my uneven cyclist tan and the number of water bottles in our dishwasher. I don’t track every ride, but my legs get itchy if I haven’t turned the cranks in a few days. I tighten up. I start walking like Gumby. I start feeling my age. We can’t have that.

So yes, I ride. I ride a lot. But the MS Bike Ride is different.

I started doing it for the challenge. That’s how these things begin. You sign up for a good cause, realize it’s a decent excuse to ride 150 kilometers, and convince yourself you’re doing it for others. That lasts a year or two.

Then Natalie got involved.

Natalie knows everyone. To go anywhere with her in London, Ontario is to fall into a social gravitational field. Old colleagues, people she met in pottery class, someone who once sold us a chair on Facebook Marketplace, they all greet her like a long-lost friend. She remembers what their kids are up to. What they’re studying. Who they’re dating. What kind of dog they have now.

It’s lovely. It’s also a logistical problem.

One year, we went to the Western Fair to buy cheese. We got within five feet of the cheese market. Then we stopped for a “quick chat” with a crafting friend who was making costumes for Cloud Atlas in her spare time. I stood there holding a tote bag for 30 minutes. We didn’t get the cheese.

So no, I don’t do the MS ride for the challenge anymore. I do it because Natalie makes it fun. She tells stories. She waves at half the peloton. And I get to feel useful. I break the wind for her and her friends. I ride ahead on hills. I fix flat tires. I hand over extra snacks from my jersey pockets like some kind of roadie with domestic ambitions. It’s a role I’ve come to enjoy.

Our ritual is fixed now. I wake up early and ride to Grand Bend alone the morning of the event. Then I meet Natalie, and we ride together to London with whichever friends she’s collected for the year. The next day, we ride back to Grand Bend. If the weather is good and my legs still feel decent, I’ll sometimes ride home to London again that afternoon.

It’s a full weekend. It’s a lovely tradition. It would have stayed just that, except for one conversation with my dad.

We were chatting about my July rides. My parents think I’m nuts, by the way. Natalie is the reasonable one. I was explaining my latest MS Bike Tour plan when my dad mentioned, casually, that someone in our extended family had been living with MS.

Jesus, Dad. When were you going to tell me? Bad communication: it’s what families do.

That’s when it shifted.

I started paying attention. I learned that Canada has one of the highest rates of MS in the world. That no one knows what causes it. That there’s no cure. It often begins in young adults but can strike anyone. It progresses in stages, and once you pass a stage, you don’t go back. That the MS Society funds not just research, but real support programs: daily help, coaching, connection. It’s not just about science, it’s about living.

I started hearing more. Friends found out I was doing the ride and told me about people they knew: a coworker, a sister, a spouse. A friend who walked one summer and couldn’t by the next. A father who hides how much harder it’s getting. A neighbor whose kid was just diagnosed.

Suddenly, it wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t an annual ride with a good jersey and whatever snacks I can cram into its pockets. It was everywhere. It was everyone.

And that’s the part I still struggle with.

I can accept that people get sick. People do. We all carry something, sooner or later. I can accept that illness is a part of the human story. But I can’t quite accept how common MS is. How quietly it moves. How ordinary the lives are that it disrupts.

The people I’ve met don’t ask for help. They manage. They care for their families. They go to work. They figure it out. They don’t make a fuss. But maybe we should. Maybe we should make a fuss, not because they want it, but because they won’t ask. Because we can.

We can’t solve everything. We can’t cure every disease, fix every system, ride every ride. But we can each do one thing. And I guess what I’m saying is that this is mine now.

I ride to help raise funds for people living with MS. But that’s not really it. Not entirely.

I ride to show them someone cares. That someone’s out there, making a fuss. I can’t ride their ride. But I can show up. And ride alongside them for a while.