The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 114: These frat bros are cycling through Death Valley (to make life better for others)
On March 7, 2025, eleven men from Gamma Sigma Phi (Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas) will push off on a cycling relay that will take them 1,400 miles across deserts, mountains, unpaved trails and Death Valley. Riding day and night, they plan to reach Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, in just five days. They're riding to raise money for Greater Than Three and the Pepperdine Strong Fund. In this episode, Gamma Sigma Phi Jackson Kulp and Carter Young explain why they're doing this and how.
Link to the Bike to Pepperdine website. Click here to learn about the relay team and route, how they're preparing for the ride and their progress once they push off. You can also donate to their cause here. www.bikeridetopepperdine.org
Link to Greater Than Three, one of the causes that the bike ride supports.
Link to the Pepperdine Strong Fund, the other cause the bike ride supports.
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Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We are bringing you the story shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. Here is our host, BT.
BT Irwin:Irwin, family and friends, neighbors and, most of all, strangers. Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God. What kind of things do you imagine frat bros are up to these days? I'm talking about college dudes who hang out on campus with Greek letters across their chests. What kind of stuff do you imagine they do when they get together to do you know college dude stuff? Well, today we bring you the story of Gamma, sigma Phi, a fraternity sorry, a social club at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, texas. Acu has deep roots and strong ties in our Church of Christ community and tradition.
BT Irwin:Well, let me tell you these bros are up to something, and it is not college hijinks. They're planning a 1,400mile cycling relay across desert mountains and even Death Valley for some important causes. They push off on Friday, march 7 from Abilene. They'll ride all the way to Pepperdine University in Malibu, california, in just five days. My legs and lungs hurt just thinking about it. Here to tell us about their big ride is Jackson Culp and Carter Young. Jackson is a senior kinesiology major from Westchester, pennsylvania. Carter is a senior psychology major from Skipak, pennsylvania. Guys, I think you picked the right majors for what you're about to do kinesiology and psychology. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Really glad to be here, okay. So question right off the top who is the masochist who came up with the idea to pedal across 1,400 miles of desert mountains, unpaved roads and even Death Valley? I mean, why not rent a convertible and drive to Branson, missouri, or something?
Jackson Kulp:Yeah. So that question is absolutely one we've received a couple times already. I would say that it's really the inspiration is we're a bunch of dumb college guys who want to do our creative juices flowing as the stage of life we're at. In terms of the trip's origins, I would like to say that we are the creative people that came up with the concept, but it's actually an old tradition that Gamma Sigma Phi did over 20 years ago, years ago, and the trip originally started by uh.
Jackson Kulp:We did a different charity in 2001 called the run to arkansas, where, in a similar fashion, you know, we, we ran all the way to arkansas, relay style. And so there were these guys uh, primarily chris brewer and chris jaco Jacobs, and one other guy that said hey, that's really awesome, I just joined this club. I want to replicate that. They didn't want to copy them, but they wanted to do something equally as cool, and so they were like what if we did twice the distance? But we rode bicycles? Um, so ACU is connected with Pepperdine and uh, just from there they were like hey, we've never ridden bicycles before, we don't even own any, but we're just going to give it a shot. They ended up raising $5,000 that year, they did the ride again in 2006, and we're doing it again this year. Too much of your own fun, or not too much of just Abilene fun, and so you're kind of forced here to make your own fun, and we resort to things like this and so how did you?
BT Irwin:let me just back up here. So it started with your club 20 years ago. It sounds like they made the ride to Pepperdine two years in a row and then it kind of faded away. Has this been like a legend that's been passed down through the years that the two of you heard about and thought, man, wouldn't it be cool to do what those guys did 20 years ago? Um, and do you remember the moment where you made the decision yeah, we're going to do it.
Jackson Kulp:Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that too, because it's certainly been a lot of trial and error to reach the organizational structure we have now. I'll tell you where we learned about the idea and I'll let Carter take the origins of how it happened for this group, for this group in our constitution, where, where we kind of take all of our traditions from, there is a small clause in the philanthropy section that says there may be uh projects and philanthropies organized by senior leadership, like the 25 hour basketball game, the run to Arkansas or the bike ride to Pepperdine on a random year to foster club pride. Uh in charity and that was the only thing we knew about it until this last march where carter can can take it so I actually have never, uh, read that part in the constitution.
Carter Young:But our um president, current president, mason hale, who's going on the trip, and then, kind of like, our ring leader, uh, sam O'Quinn um, we're going to a Gregory Allen Isaacov, I think is his name uh concert down in Austin.
Carter Young:And they were just talking during the whole ride and they were like you know, this bike ride, a Pepperdine thing, sounds so cool, let's do it. Um, that was last March and um, we were, um all together in a house one day and there was like five or six of us and they were bringing it up to us and, um, we were all like that is super cool. And they text us in our senior group chat and they're like who would do this with us? And we got like a 10 or 11, uh likes on that message. And so ever since that moment it kind of just came to fruition and there's just been so much planning and like who is coming and who's not? It's kind of been a little iffy and there's just been so much planning. But a fall semester is really when it started picking up, and then spring semester is like when everything started really coming together.
BT Irwin:So that's kind of the origin of when it came to happen is this your spring break.
Holly Linden:Are you making the ride on?
Carter Young:your spring break.
BT Irwin:Yeah, okay, new year, final spring break good, good use of a spring break. So let's get down into a little bit of details first, just so we can, so our listeners can understand what it is exactly you're going to do and how it's going to work. So it turns out you have 11 men who are going to make the ride, and it's a relay, so will each man take something like 130 miles.
Carter Young:Yeah. So it's kind of it's kind of tricky. So originally we were kind of naive going into this. We were like we're only going to have one van and we're going to have two bikers going at a time and we didn't really know how to attack this. But then we called Chris Brewer, which Jackson mentioned earlier, and he was like no, we had two vans and one biker going at a time and so we took that into account and so we're going to have it's one rest van and one biker van.
Carter Young:So the rest van goes up ahead like to a checkpoint 250 miles ahead, and they can like rest, eat, do whatever they want, while the biker van starts and goes, one biker at a time goes 10 to 15 miles biking one person at a time, and then next biker in that van goes.
Carter Young:They go 10, 15 miles. It's like a sprint, your body doesn't get tired or anything. And then there's like five to six bikers in that biker van and they just keep going until they hit that checkpoint where that other van is, and once they hit that then they switch vans. So then everybody who was resting originally becomes the bikers now and then everybody who was originally biking goes up to the next checkpoint and we'll just keep doing that, you know, until we hit Malibu Um. And obviously we'll play by ear cause we'll have elevation. So not everybody's going to do 10 to 15 miles, cause you know, if we get elevation we might only be able to do eight miles. Or, you know, some people might get really tired or they might be feeling it, so we might be able to do like 20, 30 miles.
BT Irwin:So we just have to play it by ear, but you know it'll probably be around 130 miles per biker how much experience does your team have with cycling long distances like this and through the kinds of terrain and weather changes that you're going to encounter along the way?
Jackson Kulp:that one is uh different depending on which one of us you're talking about. Yeah, as a as a whole with the group. We are not seasoned cyclists, I would say. What we lack in skills and experience we're going to make up for in enthusiasm and raw athleticism. But also, in our team we have multiple marathon runners, triathletes, lifelong athletes. We're not talking about a group of guys who, who are couch potatoes and and we're just like, oh, hey, uh, let's do this, it'd be fun. Uh, we're talking about like some pretty committed, uh in terms of like physical specimens that are going on the trip, and so we're.
Jackson Kulp:We're definitely not prepared for this kind of ride in that way, but in some abstract way, I would say, we've been preparing for a long time and especially I don't know who's going to be listening to this and has a certain concept of maybe what our organization, being a fraternity, would mean. But it is really hard to get through the process that we have to to become a part of our club. Uh, it's very challenging physically and mentally and there's almost kind of an inspiration that we we have with this where we're trying to replicate that once in a lifetime experience we had when we were being initiated into Gamsing Phi, this impossible thing that seems like a huge mountain you can't climb. But when we're doing it with each other and we're pushing each other, that mental game becomes a little more manageable and we really believe we can do anything with that.
BT Irwin:And so, yeah, how many men are in Gam gamma Sigma fire right now?
Carter Young:Ooh good question Um, I think there's like a hundred 120. Wow, as far as seniors go, there's only like 20.
Jackson Kulp:Yeah, we, we had, we just took a great pledge class of 37 guys.
BT Irwin:Um, our class of seniors, uh, when we joined and we were freshmen, we were 22 strong and we were one of the smallest classes in a really long time, and so that's part of the reason we are so close, one of the things we probably not allowed to talk about it, but I'll just say there was a lot of teamwork and there was no man left behind. Everybody had to participate, and so 11 of you are going to be riding no-transcript.
Jackson Kulp:You want to take that one? Yeah, certainly, spreading the word and reaching out to family and friends to get people on the bike to Pepperdine train is the biggest thing we've asked of our members. One thing that's been really inspiring to me, though, as these guys have watched us plan it and kind of rev up for what we're going to be doing. I have been so humbled with the fact that, like the younger guys right, it's a senior trip, we're spending a lot of time working on it. There's a sort of distance there.
Jackson Kulp:Younger guys haven't looked at us and been resentful or felt like man. I wish I was doing that and not them. The encouragement and the love, the way they've come around us to just encourage this tradition and to be like man. I hope I can do something like that when I'm in your shoes. But, man, I'm really glad you guys are paving the way like I've had that kind of feedback multiple times and it's hard for them to get their feet on the ground and be a full part of this. But that has changed everything in terms of how we view this, how we go about promoting it, um, the the just humble love that the guys have shown towards us and I think, like I thought there was going to be a lot of resentment, of like people saying, oh, why didn't they choose me?
Carter Young:But I think it's more of a mentality of, oh, I'm going to do this next year and I think that's like. This project that we're doing is really bringing our club together, which is so great. Now here's a here really bringing our club together, which is so great.
Holly Linden:Now here's a here's an important detail that I might have missed are all 11 of the men who are riding seniors.
Jackson Kulp:Well, it's, they're all seniors, but there's one junior. Okay, you want to take that one, or me? How did he get on?
BT Irwin:the so he's the guy that knows how to ride up a mountain right he was originally like in that conversation that I was alluding to earlier.
Carter Young:He was in that room and so he was like this sounds great. He's also like he bikes a lot and um, so we add him on. He's also an officer and he's like our alumni officer and we're like this is a big alumni event. All the alumni know about this because they've done it in the past. So we're like it would be great big alumni event. All the alumni know about this because they've done it in the past, so we're like it would be great to add them on.
BT Irwin:Are there people going along with y'all that are not going to be in one of the two vans? So you've got the biker van, the rest van. Are you going to have any kind of a convoy? Going to have any kind of a convoy like what kind of um, you know moral support and, uh, you know medical personnel are going to be going along with you on the trip uh, no, it's just going to be us 11 guys.
Carter Young:However, we have already had, uh, someone reach out to us, um in like the tucson area, like I think he's a gsp alumni and he was like I would love to meet up with you guys like 20 miles ahead and just bike with you guys, which I think is so great. That's, um, just just to be there for more support, and that would be great for whoever's biking that that span, because we're all going to be biking alone, especially like through the night yeah it's going to be so hard, just biking on our own.
Carter Young:But whoever is biking that 15-20 mile span, whatever and he's there with you he's going to push us, just to have someone by your side.
Jackson Kulp:BT, you touched on an important topic that we get asked a lot of the inherent risk and physical challenges that we're going to have to undergo throughout the ride, and we've, I feel like, taken a lot of precaution in that area in terms of just how we're structuring each biker, like how much they're going to ride, who has a say in whether you keep going or who's going to be able to stop someone if they're overexerting themselves. We've done our due diligence of making sure that we ride as close to a hospital or urgent care in the resident exercise scientist of the team and we've really worked hard to make sure that we are going to be doing proper recovery, fueling ourselves the right way and just staying healthy, because that's most important obviously.
BT Irwin:Well, I bet a lot of people are praying for you now too. They didn't know before, so that's gonna help, okay. So you have a great website. We're gonna put a link to that in the show notes. Uh, kudos to whoever put this thing together.
BT Irwin:Uh, and you've got uh, you've got your route that you're gonna follow from abilene to malibu, california, on your website and, uh, if you look at the route, y'all are gonna going to ride through desert. You're going to ride through mountains, you're going to ride on unpaved surfaces at some points along the way, and I will note that between miles 300 and 360, there is a climb of about 2,800 feet, so this is not a flat ride. You're going up and down mountains. Plus, someone has to ride. All of you, I guess, are going to ride through Death Valley, which is called Death Valley for a reason. I've lived in Abilene myself and there aren't many hills around there or valleys around there that will prepare you all for the kind of elevation changes that you're going to have to make on your bikes. How did you plan this route and how is your team training for what you're going to have to make on your bikes? How did you plan this route, and how is your team training for what you're going to encounter?
Carter Young:along the way. Yeah, first thing shout out to bike ride leader Sam O'Quinn, because he made the website and planned the route and he did a fantastic job. But as far as training goes, you're right, abilene is so flat so it's really hard to uh, you know, replicate that elevation gain. Um, most of us have been doing stationary bikes because you can like up the resistance and really build up like those quads. So that's mostly what we've been doing. Um, but we also did like a test ride, um to like a an outside town from abilene called anson and to try to like imitate the bike ride of pepperdine with a van following a couple bikers at a time, and it was. It was actually super humbling. That was like early on this semester. Um, we just did it on an access road and uh, yeah, it, granted we didn't do it with nice bikes like we have right now, but it was super humbling. It really motivated us to like really want to do this trip uh, really get going in our training. Um, and I don't, I don't know what else.
Jackson Kulp:Yeah, I would say I'm I'm grateful for that because we outlined a training plan around Christmas and up until that ride we were kind of not doing super good and it kicked our butt enough to really get us working on the bikes. We've built our power outage on bicycles more to where there were rides I was doing in November that were killing me in a 30-minute span where they're casual and seeing that progression has been. Honestly, I'm training for a triathlon right now but I'm more inspired by just that portion of it because I feel like I can take on these elevation changes. You're training for an Ironman by just that portion of it, because I feel like I can take on these elevation changes.
BT Irwin:Yeah, are you training for an Ironman?
Jackson Kulp:Well, we talked about doing an Ironman in the future, but we're going to start with an Olympic triathlon, specifically myself, Carter and one of our other team members, Tanner Hill. We're going to do that in Fort Worth in the middle of May, and so this has also been helpful for that.
BT Irwin:Yeah, I bet I didn't think to ask you about your equipment before. You mentioned that the bikes that you took out on your trial run in Anson are not the bikes you're actually going to be taking on this trip. How did you? Did each man have to get his own equipment? How did you get the equipment for this?
Jackson Kulp:his own equipment? How did you get the equipment for this? So we, when carter mentions we were riding, uh, not the bikes we have now. We are talking like bikes that we bought off facebook marketplace for 40, so they were, they were just our own bikes yeah, yes, and and that's what we spent a long time training on.
Jackson Kulp:Uh, we are so grateful for abilene's bike store called Biketown. It's owned by Jim McDonald and we went and met with him months ago to gauge his interest with the trip and to see if he would be interested in contributing at all, and he has provided us bicycles, bicycle equipment and a lot of invaluable advice, and so he's hooked us up with exactly what we need for this trip, and I try and thank him as much as I can every time we connect, but it will never be enough.
BT Irwin:So I have to go backwards one second here. You talked about riding through the night. Are you just going to move nonstop for five straight days? There's not going to be any point at which you're all stationary and sleeping.
Carter Young:Okay. So it's actually kind of a funny situation. Tanner, who Jackson just mentioned, actually has a wedding, who he's a groomsman for, on Sunday night. So we kind of had to build around that and he is kind of he's kind of a critical part of monday morning. So we were like, okay, we have to pick him up at the airport. So how do we time this correctly? So we're like we should spend the night in tucson, so it gives us a break and we could pick him up at the airport on monday morning. So we're, uh, riding through the night on friday night, riding through the night saturday, and then getting into tucson on sunday night, spending the night, and then monday morning that rest van is going to pick them up in Phoenix and then the biker van is just going to catch up with them.
BT Irwin:Wow, wow.
Holly Linden:Yeah.
BT Irwin:That's a lot of planning right there.
Holly Linden:Yeah.
Carter Young:It's going to be a lot. I don't know if we're going to be able to keep up with the plan, but we're going to try our best.
BT Irwin:Yeah, okay, so let's just get down to a couple of causes that you're supporting by doing this. You mentioned that there are two that are really important to you. Could you tell us about those causes, what they do and how you pick them? What?
Jackson Kulp:they do and how you pick them.
Jackson Kulp:So this was, uh, I think, what inspired us to actually make this happen.
Jackson Kulp:Um, obviously it was just an idea and something we talked a lot about up until like October, and we're really excited to do it. And we, up until like October, and we're really excited to do it, and we, we kind of lost a little bit of traction or passion because I, we realized, you know, we don't have anything that is meaningful to us, that we that we want to do this for, um, for a long time, I, every once in a while, would go to the parking lot of the rec center on campus at ACU to help another student named Heidi Wachtel out of her van, because Heidi is paralyzed in the lower half of her body. And then, sophomore year, I attended a chapel where Heidi was the guest speaker and she shared a story with us about why she is in a wheelchair, where she had a trampoline accident she before this, by the way, was a ultra marathon runner, a firefighter and one of the most active people you'll ever see Wow and fell off of a trampoline, hit her neck and her spinal cord flooded.
Jackson Kulp:Oh my and she was paralyzed from the neck down for a long time and, through physical therapy and just one of the most miraculous recovery stories you'll ever see she has regained motor control in much of her body and you can go on her Instagram HeidiGirls5, and see the documentation of her as she has regained motor control. She's starting to move her legs again. This is one of the most immensely remarkable, I mean, for someone who's going to become a physical therapist like me. This is the person I can look at and be like. My career can be meaningful, and so earlier this year I find out that Heidi has started a nonprofit called Greater Than Three Outreach where she provides infrastructure, rehabilitation and, most importantly, sports wheelchairs for people in Abilene who are in a situation like hers, because we're a small town in West Texas we don't have infrastructure for those kinds of things and it made it really hard for Heidi to come across that stuff. And so Greater Than Three is a newer nonprofit, but it's run by her. Her husband, brayden Rob Allen, is who owns the field house here in Abilene and one of my biggest mentors. Deanna Shake is a faculty ACU, is the treasurer of their board and we're raising money for them and that's one of the greatest blessings ever.
Jackson Kulp:Additionally, we are, you know, we. We started planning right and then the palisade fires happened, uh, in california, and kind of threw a wrench in a lot of what was going on. I mean, there was a time where we didn't even know if we'd be able to actually go to malibu. Um, and after talking with some Pepperdine faculty and seeing the kind of great work that the Pepperdine community is doing for their students who have lost their homes and everything they have in these fires, we thought it would be nothing but appropriate to raise the fundraising efforts. Right, not to just divide, but we've maximized and multiplied how much money we are trying to raise and have raised also, so that we can give as much money to Greater Than Three Outreach, as originally planned, while also giving the other half of the money we raised to Pepperdine Strong Fund, which is for those students.
BT Irwin:So how much money do you hope to raise and how can people make donations?
Carter Young:Yeah, so our original goal was only set at 10 K on our GoFundMe, but we actually hit that pretty fast, which is such a blessing Um, and we're actually right now at almost like 22 K and counting, um, yeah, and so our, our set goal right now is 50 K. Um, yeah, no, it's, it's pretty awesome, um, and so you can go to our go fund me um at I think it's like GSP bike to Pepperdine for charity, um, and or you can go to our website, which I think you said you'd link it's bike ride to pepperdineorg, and on our website it's super obvious you just go to the top right corner and click donate and it'll go straight to our gofundme. Um, but it's, it's awesome. I think jackson has a pull-up. We're at 21 675, which is so amazing. We have over 100 donations. I I never would have guessed that we would have gotten that much money. Um, we're just so blessed to have that in that community to have donated that much.
BT Irwin:Well, to our Christian Chronicle audience, let's give a little more to that. We'll put a link in the show notes. So y'all are going to set out on March 7, and your plan is to make the ride in five days. Can people follow your progress somewhere?
Jackson Kulp:yeah, uh, pretty simply, we we have documented pretty much everything on the trip through our instagram, at bike to pepperdine uh, we are.
Jackson Kulp:We have a pretty intricate content plan, uh, for this week leading up to the trip and then the trip itself. You're gonna see me and carter's face on there, as long as the other nine guys. A lot, just some professional stuff, but also just a lot of antics. Right, I want to take a little video of myself after I finish my sprint and just talk about the experience. It's going to have the ins and outs of every single second of our day. We have two media people Sam, who's been running our website and our Instagram and is pretty much the guy behind everything, and then Ben Lancaster is one of our best friends we live with him and a monster, the best, most skilled media person you could ever see. And so one of them is going to be in each van at all times documenting everything, and that's going to be consistent posts on that Instagram page and that's mostly where you can follow our progress, and then we'll be taking documentation for that trip as well.
BT Irwin:We'll link all of that in the show notes for our audience to follow along. I know I'll be following along. I want to see this story. It sounds like it's going to be epic. Congratulations to y'all and your brothers for putting that together. Jackson Culp and Carter Young are members of Gamma Sigma Phi at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, texas, and they are about to push off on a 1,400-mile cycling relay with nine of their Gamma Sigma Phi brothers to raise money for Greater Than Three and Pepperdine Strong Fund. If you'd like to follow their progress and support their causes, go to bikeridetopepperdineorg. We'll put a link in the show notes. Like I said, jackson Carter, go with God.
Carter Young:Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Jackson Kulp:BT. Really appreciate you. It's been a pleasure.
BT Irwin:We hope that something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened or enriched you in some way. If it did, thanks be to God and please pay it forward. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. Recommend and review it wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Your subscription, recommendation and review help us reach more people. Please send your comments, ideas and suggestions to podcast at christianchronicleorg. We want to hear them. And don't forget that our ministry to inform and inspire Christians and congregations around the world is a nonprofit ministry that relies on your generosity. So if you like the show and you want to keep it going and make it better, please make a tax-deductible gift to the Christian Chronicle at christianchronicleorg. Slash donate Until next time. May grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Holly Linden:The Christian Chronicle Podcast is a production of the Christian Chronicle Inc. Informing and inspiring Church of Christ congregations, members and ministries around the world since 1943. The Christian Chronicles Managing Editor is Audrey Jackson, editor-in-chief Bobby Ross Jr and President and CEO Eric Trigestad. The Christian Chronicle Podcast is written, directed, hosted and edited by BT Irwin and is produced by James Flanagan in Detroit, michigan, usa.