Lou Quinn Ride

Friday, 27 June 2014 at 13:38

Australian, Terry Heard made a stop in Woodstock during his 22,500 kms bike ride through North America.

WOODSTOCK -- Terry Heard and his motorcycle have travelled all the way from Australia to North America to ride in honour of his wife.

Lou Quinn passed away in May of 2013 from ovarian cancer -- just 12 days after her diagnosis, at the age of 33.

Terry and Lou had a dream of visiting every Disney Park in the world. "There was only two that we hadn't gotten to. We didn't get to Florida and we didn't get to Tokyo and so as part of actually taking her to Florida Disney, I decided I'll make a little bit of a holiday of it and decided to do this big ride around and actually use it to raise awareness for ovarian cancer as well. So I started in Los Angeles five weeks ago and I've done 12,500 kilometres so far."

Terry, who was riding with a friend at that time but is now travelling solo, stopped in Orlando to visit Disney. "I rode all the rides she always loved and I actually took some of her ashes there and spread her ashes in Disney as well -- so I'm not sure whether they would have liked that but Lou's now in Disney forever."

By the time Terry completes his ride next month, he will have travelled roughly 22,500 km.

Terry stopped in Woodstock Friday morning -- from here he was travelling to Niagara Falls and down into Pennsylvania. He plans on making visits to Mount Rushmore, the Rockies, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and eventually end in L.A. before heading home to Australia July 23rd.

He has plans on visiting a few friends along the way and continue to raise awareness and funds for ovarian cancer. "On the way around, I've caught up with a number of ovarian cancer organizations as I come around the U.S. and they've been posting out on Facebook and things for what I'm doing and promoting what I am doing as well. I've got a blog that I am writing every day as well, showing all my daily events and what I'm saying and what I'm doing and everything like that as well. It's getting quite a lot of publicity as well."

Thus far, the Lou Quinn Ovarian Cancer Fund has raised $23,500. To learn more about the cause, click here to visit the website and read Terry's blog.

When asked what Lou would think of Terry's ride -- "she'd been thinking I am absolutely mad! Lou was never one who...she didn't like having the spotlight on herself or anything like that. Now we've taken her loss and made something big of it, so..yeah...it's good."