By John Hewko
I first heard about El Tour de Tucson in the unlikeliest of places, on a water taxi in Thailand. In May 2012, during the Rotary International Convention in Bangkok, I was sharing a river boat with a group of Rotary members from Arizona. Among them were Ernie Montagne, a past district governor, and his wife, Sally, who would become a district governor herself in a couple of years. They knew I was an avid cyclist and told me enthusiastically about Rotary clubs in southern Arizona that had begun using the annual Tucson ride to raise money for polio eradication.
By the time our ferry ride was over, I had eagerly agreed to join them, and in November that year I participated in my first El Tour de Tucson, a rigorous 102-mile ride staged against a backdrop of mountains, desert, and cacti. Since then, I’ve made the ride nine more times, missing only 2020 when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During those years, my Rotary teammates and I, including my colleagues at Rotary International, have raised about $61.1 million to end polio. El Tour, as I’ll explain, was also the site of my two most memorable rides, albeit for very different reasons.
I wasn’t always the passionate cyclist that Ernie and Sally Montagne encountered that day on the Bangkok ferry. Of course, riding a bike was a part of my childhood, as it was for most of my friends. My generation, we all grew up on bicycles. We’d grab our bikes and zoom around the neighborhood. These days, that can seem like a lost art from a long-gone era.
