It's Not About the Bike

When Hernandez wanted to buy a Hummer, his dream car, he heard again from his friends and family the same old refrain: Impossible, you won't be able to find one you can afford. Yet he found a good deal on one last year and snatched it up.

And so it came as something of a surprise to Hernandez when he one day heard the word leave his own lips. "Impossible," he recalls saying, as he was reading a promotional poster for an AIDS fund-raiser involving a bicycle hike, the next California AIDS Ride. He had already received the details in an e-mail circulated by two of his Deloitte colleagues. The obstacles seemed almost insurmountable. 575 miles! A $2,700 minimum fund-raising goal per rider.

"Impossible," Hernandez repeated to himself. "I don't know that many people in the U.S."

But the poster helped change his mind. Staring back at him was the very word he had come to dislike beyond all others. However, the word had been shaded in a way that converted its meaning. "I'm possible," it read.

"Okay, it's possible," he said. "I'm possible."

In early June, Hernandez and a group of 16 spirited colleagues embarked on the seven-day journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In all, 2,800 people participated in the event. The purpose of the event is to raise awareness and money for HIV/AIDS social service agencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Each of the 17 was determined to ride every mile.

For months, Deloitte professionals from six offices based in Texas and California had juggled travel schedules, family pressures, training, and fund-raising. Ultimately, supported by their family, friends, and Deloitte colleagues, they had raised $60,000 dollars for the AIDS cause — surpassing their goal by $14,000 — and overcome emotional, physical, and financial challenges to participate in the ride.

Just what led the 17 colleagues to join the adventure can be traced to Kameron Kordestani, 25, a consultant who joined the firm three years ago. He had embarked on his own journey, the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride, in August 2000, and found it to be a life-changing experience.

"Since leaving college and starting work, I felt I hadn't had that much of an opportunity to do as much community service as I would have liked," says Kordestani, who also wanted to raise awareness about the disease among his family and friends. "I'd like to think that it made me more aware and sensitive to a disease that in our society has taken a backseat."

In Alaska, Kordestani was inspired and humbled by cyclists, who were older than him or had HIV, buzzing past his reasonably athletic body. The 510-mile trek was grueling — it snowed, it rained, and it emotionally challenged the riders. Nevertheless, when Kordestani returned, he couldn't stop talking about the trip with Deloitte colleague Elizabeth Ho. He told Ho, a 26-year-old consultant based in Dallas, about the California ride in June.

Inspired by his stories, she said, "Okay, let's do this!"

Within a few short weeks, the two friends had approached and received support from partners in the firm and begun their recruiting effort. Deloitte gave each rider $500, paid for their $100 jerseys, and permitted them to raise money in the office and at firm events.

"I think it was a good way to highlight the fact that Deloitte is an employer that allows its employees a certain level of entrepreneurship," Kordestani says. "This doesn't just mean entrepreneurship at the client or that it ends at the office. It's really something that we can apply to other activities in our life."

In November, the two friends sent out their first e-mail.

Ken Perlman, 31, a Deloitte manager in the Los Angeles office, had mulled over doing the ride for the last eight years. Then Kordestani and Ho's invitation popped up on his screen and gave him one last kick.

"This is real," he said to himself before calling up his wife, Anastasia Figueroa, a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. For the 12 years of their relationship, they've only seen each other on weekends.

"I knew it was going to impact her and our time together. With her traveling and my traveling, we only have weekends together and that would be the best time to train," says Perlman.

Anastasia told him: "Go for it."

Lots and Lots to Do

For a ride of this length, most participants begin training about six months in advance. Since most of the Deloitte team were on out-of-town assignments in the months leading up to the trip, they trained out of their hotel gyms during the week and joined organized riding clubs back in their hometowns on the weekends. To ensure that they got their training and fund-raising accomplished, they made adjustments and sacrifices. They saw their spouses less, socialized less, and went on fewer vacations.

"I cut out a lot of trips and going out on the weekends," says Ho. "It's funny: When you do something like this, you realize that you can cut a lot of stuff out that you really don't need."

Kordestani even postponed applying for graduate school.

"I had to consciously decide that in terms of test preparation, application development, and visiting campuses, I had to put that off," he says. "I had to delay some things, but I think it was worth it for that experience."

For Hernandez, who has played soccer and other sports all his life, it was the fund-raising that was the hard part. He sent 68 letters in English to his colleagues and business school classmates and 215 in Spanish to his friends in Mexico.

Deloitte's L.A. office collected all the donations into a pool and distributed it according to who needed it to meet their goals. This helped Hernandez close his gap and enabled everyone to go.

The Accidental Snowboardist

In January, Hernandez went snowboarding with a friend. He had an accident that caused him to land on his shoulder. "It was so painful, and the only thing I could think about when I was lying in the snow was, 'Oh no! I won't be able to do the AIDS ride!'" says Hernandez, who broke his right collarbone and had to wear a brace for 10 weeks.

He was still determined to ride. He has a couple of friends in Mexico who are HIV-positive, and he was doing the ride to show them he cared. He couldn't and wouldn't let them down. But knowing that his teammates would be concerned when they saw him next, he wrote them an e-mail to prepare and reassure them. It sort of went like this: "Guys — I had a minor accident. It probably looks bad but it's not that bad. It's only my collarbone. It's kind of dislocated or broken. But don't worry, I'll be okay and I will do the ride."

Not surprisingly, his colleagues had their doubts.

"Well, I guess Enrique is not going to do the ride," reasoned Kari Nearing, an executive assistant in the Los Angeles office who was riding in memory of a friend who had died of AIDS.

"I wouldn't worry about it," said Perlman, referring to the injured 5'8" soccer player. "I'm sure their legs are pretty strong."

As Hernandez said he would, he made it to the ride.

Swellings and Spiders

Hernandez's collarbone mishap was not the only injury to befall the Deloitte team. By the second day, associate consultant Amit Nag hurt his right knee and needed to rest it. For the next three days, he let it hang on the side of his bike as he rode using only his other leg.

"It was good training, I guess, for my left leg," says Nag, 26, with no hint of sarcasm in his voice. "Apart from the hills, which were definitely challenging, it was not something that was undoable."

He walked up the hill known as the Quad Buster, though. As he looked around, Nag says he could not feel sorry for himself. He saw elderly riders and people he knew were recovering from heart attacks pedaling away. One cyclist, David, had no legs and used a customized hand-cranked bike. He was an inspiration to many on the Deloitte team.

"I would stop every five minutes on those hills, but I said, 'You know what, I'm going to do it,'" says Nag, who expects to begin attending Kellogg Graduate School of Management this month after taking a leave of absence from Deloitte starting in September.

The ibuprofen also did wonders.

At the end of the third day, Perlman commented to his teammates, "Something must have bit me overnight." But, thinking nothing else of it, he continued on. By midday, a golf-ball-size swelling had appeared on top of his left ankle. He went to the medical tent, where he was told a spider probably had bitten him. He was advised to take the van to the next pit stop. The manager ignored the advice and kept pedaling.

"The reason they want people to do the bike ride is that it's a good analogy for what the people with AIDS are going through," says Ho. "Some days are good and you're flying and you finish early. Some days you ride alone. I think they put those hills and winds there on purpose. They really make you think, because you are just struggling. It's a wonderful analogy."

Is This Earth?

With a consulting force bigger than some small American towns, any small gathering of Deloitte employees is a good networking opportunity. What made the situation even better was that most members of the Deloitte team — analysts to senior members — did not know one another very well.

"It was a good opportunity to meet colleagues, because not only was it something outside of work, but also you saw everybody challenged," says Kordestani. "You got to see how they reacted to the challenges they faced — whether it was a hurting knee or a flat tire or not enough sleep. That was a neat experience."

Things happened in this surreal world that you wouldn't often see in real life, says Nag. "You're stretching all the time, and you are always on line for port-o-potties, for food, and for the bathrooms. It's very normal to go up to someone and ask, 'Mind if I put my leg on your shoulder?' And they say, 'Go ahead and do that.'"

Steep hills caused riders to break out into song as if they were in a musical. Kordestani sang from the movie Aladdin so much that a fellow rider planned to buy the soundtrack.

Perlman sang his wedding song, "I Melt With You" by Modern English, to get through the rough spots. And, most members of the Deloitte team can belt out a famous Spanish song — courtesy of the Mexican in the group.

One of the hardest parts about camping was waking up in the morning and finding your tent sopping wet from the overnight condensation. It didn't help that the tents were put away in the early morning and didn't have much time to dry out for evening use.

"People went out of their way to be kind," says Christine Crompton, 27, a senior consultant in Austin. "The faster riders would arrive and take out the tents, whether they knew the person or not, and put them out to dry. It was a very collegial group."

The Consultant in Me

It's not a race, it's a ride. Hernandez was told this. He read it on the brochures. But when it came to the first day and he was surrounded by people in their professional cycling gear, his competitive spirit got the best of him.

"I jumped on my bike and saw that people were passing me. I thought, 'No, that can't be happening.' This is all from consulting. You can't stand people passing you. So, I started riding faster."

At the end of the day, he was exhausted. His knees hurt. "This is stupid," he chided himself. "This is not what this is about." So from Day Two on, he decided that he was going to take it slowly and enjoy every aspect of the trip.

"Everything changed," he says. "All of the nicest people were in the back of the ride. I started enjoying the ride. At the end of the day, I was almost the last to arrive in camp. But I met so many people, it didn't make a difference."

There were consultants like Perlman, who admitted that they couldn't help but keep tabs on their work through voice-mail. Others, however, purposely shut work out of their minds. Ho meant to check in to find out whether she'd been assigned to a certain project, but she never got around to it.

"You just want to stay in this other world as long as you can. You got used to camping, long lines, port-o-potties, talking with and helping one another," says Ho. "You don't want to quite get back to reality, even though you are ready to."

It was a utopia many felt sorry to leave.

"For one week, we are living in a perfect world where everybody helps everybody, where strangers say hello, and at the end of the day, you feel that you are changing the world," Hernandez says. "If I go with that same approach into my projects — that I can change the world and I have seen that you can — it will make me a better consultant and a better person." It's an approach, Hernandez says, that makes the impossible possible.

Sidebar: Bike Trip Participants

Enrique Hernandez, 32
Manager, Los Angeles
Years with firm: 5
Focus: Supply chain management

What kept him going: "I had a Mexican flag because the AIDS problem in Mexico is so much worse than here and I feel like I'm doing something that can help. Everybody who passed me said something in Spanish or yelled 'Viva Mexico!' It gave me a sense of pride and belonging."

Ken Pearlman, 31
Manager, Los Angeles
Years with firm: 6
Focus: People competency

Excerpt from his journal: "Day 5. Pretty spectacular crash. A woman got flipped off her bike, injuring her skull. We are told she is okay. We are also told that she had to answer two basic, consciousness/shock check questions: 'What day is it?' and 'Where are you?' None of us have any idea what the real answers to those questions are. Her responses were: 'Day 5' and 'Six and a half miles from camp.'"

Amit Nang, 26
Associate consultant, Dallas
Years with firm: 2-1/2 years
Focus: Strategy

What kept him going: "On the second or third day, it was really warm and I was the last guy out there, pretty much. It was flat land and I was just in the middle of nowhere with no one around me. I was thinking that somewhere out there, there is a guy pedaling with his hands, who did all the hills. And if he could do it, I can, too. There is no real excuse not to."

Elizabeth Ho, 26
Consultant, Dallas
Years with firm: 3
Focus: Technology

A highlight: "People who lived out in the communities would come out. They'd stand and pass out cookies or strawberries. The best part was the little kids. They saw you and they'd yell like you were the biggest superheroes. 'We love you riders!! I want to be a rider!!'"

Kameron Kordestani, 25
Consultant, Santa Ana
Years with firm: 3
Focus: Financial services/buy-side

Frustrating moment: "It was within the first half-hour of the first day. We were going through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Quite a large crowd had gathered to cheer us on and all of the riders had sort of grouped together, so there was a lot of traffic. Once it cleared up, I started going fast, and I missed seeing a pothole along the way. I had to stay back and change my flat. It took 10 minutes, but the Deloitte team thought I had gone to the front, so they went even faster. I didn't catch up to them until lunch."

Christine Crompton, 27
Senior consultant, Austin
Years with firm: 5
Focus: Technology in public sector

A highlight: "The third day of the ride was the 'Quad Buster.' It was the day after the century (100 miles) and for most people, including myself, it was a challenge. There was this amazing support along the way. Some of the fast riders would ride to the top of the hill and circle back around. When someone slower wanted to get off their bike and walk, the fast rider would push their seat and help them so that they'd make it up without having to walk."