Pre-Registration Opens for the Butt Out! Colon Cancer Ride in Mobile

MOBILE, Ala. — Organizers are encouraging riders to pre-register ahead of the Butt Out! Colon Cancer Ride, a Mobile fundraiser that raises money and awareness in the fight against colon cancer. The event is scheduled for Saturday, May 11, with activities centered on Mobile Bay Harley-Davidson, and like most charity rides on the Gulf Coast it combines a morning of registration, a police-escorted group ride and an afternoon of food, shows and community for a cause.

Charity motorcycle rides have become a staple of the Gulf Coast fundraising scene, and the Butt Out! ride fits the pattern while carrying a personal urgency of its own. The event’s name leaves no doubt about its subject: colon cancer, one of the most common cancers diagnosed in the United States, and one whose outcomes depend dramatically on how early it is found. An event that puts hundreds of riders on the road in May does double duty — raising funds for the fight and keeping the conversation about screening alive in the community.

How the ride works

Registration opens at 11 a.m., with kickstands up at 12:30 p.m. The route features a police-escorted ride carrying bikers and supporters to Bob’s Downtown Diner, where the day continues with a bike show, a car show, and a raffle. A police escort is one of the distinguishing features of a well-run charity ride — it keeps a large group of motorcycles moving safely through intersections and lets organizers control the pace — and Mobile-area riders know from experience that an escorted ride turns a route into a rolling parade.

Organizers stress that participants do not need to ride a motorcycle to take part — all vehicles are welcome. That inclusiveness matters for a cause event: supporters who drive cars, trucks or anything else can join the procession to Bob’s Downtown Diner and take part in the afternoon activities, and the gathering becomes a full community event rather than a riders-only affair. The bike show and car show provide the afternoon’s centerpiece, with the raffle adding another fundraising channel for attendees who stay into the day.

Fees and how to sign up

Pre-registration is available online, and organizers also planned an in-person sign-up session at Mobile Bay Harley-Davidson. Fees help cover processing costs: $21.50 for a rider, $31.50 for a rider plus passenger, $21.50 for a T-shirt, and $11.50 for the car and bike show. The fee structure is deliberately modular — a rider who wants the full experience pays one price, a passenger joins for a modest add-on, and supporters who only want to show their vehicle or pick up the commemorative shirt pay only for what they take part in.

Pre-registering ahead of the May 11 date spares organizers the hardest part of any charity event: processing a crowd in person on the morning of the ride. Early sign-ups give the ride’s planners firm numbers for the escort, the route and the food planning at Bob’s Downtown Diner, and they shorten the line at Mobile Bay Harley-Davidson when registration opens at 11 a.m. Walk-up riders are still welcome, but organizers are making the case that online pre-registration is the smoothest path to kickstands up.

A personal fight against stage four colon cancer

The ride is closely tied to the personal story of Jennifer Rogers, a local television news assignment manager who has been openly sharing her battle with stage four colon cancer, documenting her journey as she undergoes treatment. Her fight inspired this year’s event, which organizers expect to draw a large crowd of supporters. In a newsroom town like Mobile, Rogers’s candor about her diagnosis has given the ride a face — and a reminder that colon cancer does not discriminate by age, occupation or lifestyle.

Stage four colorectal cancer is the most advanced stage of the disease, and an openly shared battle with it is an act of advocacy in itself. Patients in treatment often discover that friends and neighbors have been putting off their own screening — and a visible, public fight like Rogers’s has a way of prompting people to schedule the colonoscopy they have been avoiding. Organizers of cause rides understand this dynamic well: the money raised matters, but the awareness raised may save more lives than the dollars.

Why colon cancer awareness matters on the Gulf Coast

Beyond raising funds, the event aims to spotlight colon cancer awareness — a disease where early screening can dramatically improve outcomes. Colorectal cancer develops slowly, often from precancerous polyps that can be found and removed during a routine colonoscopy before they ever become cancerous. That long window is what makes screening so powerful: caught early, colon cancer is among the most treatable of major cancers; caught late, treatment becomes harder, longer and less certain.

The awareness gap is the persistent problem. Screening rates historically lag behind those for other cancers, in part because colonoscopy has a reputation it does not entirely deserve and because people without symptoms see no reason to be checked — precisely the point at which screening does its best work. Public health campaigns across Alabama have pushed for years to raise screening participation, and community events like the Butt Out! ride carry that message to an audience that a brochure never reaches. Riders who spend a Saturday afternoon talking about the disease, seeing its survivors and hearing its stories leave with the reminder that a scheduled screening is the most practical takeaway any cause event can offer.

May on the Gulf Coast is a full month of fundraising rides, walks and benefits, and the Butt Out! ride joins a crowded calendar by making itself personal. The connection to Rogers gives the event its story; the partnership with Mobile Bay Harley-Davidson gives it a venue built for riders; the escort to Bob’s Downtown Diner gives it a route that ends in celebration rather than dispersal. It is a structure that Gulf Coast communities have refined over decades of cause rides, applied here to a disease that thrives on silence.

How the community can help

Community members who cannot attend can still support the cause through online donations. The online channel matters for a fundraiser tied to a personal battle — coworkers, news-industry colleagues and friends of the family spread across the region can contribute without riding, and every dollar supports the fight against colon cancer that the ride was built for.

For those attending, the practical outline is simple: pre-register online or at the in-person session at Mobile Bay Harley-Davidson; arrive before registration closes into the 12:30 p.m. kickstands-up departure; ride or drive — all vehicles are welcome; and plan to spend the afternoon at Bob’s Downtown Diner for the bike show, the car show and the raffle. A commemorative T-shirt is available for $21.50, and entry to the car and bike show is $11.50.

The Butt Out! Colon Cancer Ride arrives at a moment when colorectal cancer awareness is finally gaining ground nationally, with screening promoted earlier and more aggressively than in past generations. Events like Mobile’s are part of that shift — turning a disease that people once spoke about in whispers into a cause that can fill a parking lot with motorcycles on a Saturday in May. For Rogers and her supporters, the ride is both a fundraiser and a statement: the community knows, the community is watching, and the community is riding along.

The ride’s venue is itself a piece of the local motorcycling landscape. Mobile Bay Harley-Davidson serves as the dealer hub for the region’s riding community, and Harley dealerships along the Gulf Coast have long functioned as gathering points for charity events of every kind — veterans’ causes, children’s hospitals, disaster relief. The dealership’s parking lot provides room for the registration crowd, the staging of a long line of bikes, and the kind of pre-ride atmosphere that makes the 11 a.m. opening an event in its own right, with engines warming and organizers making final announcements before the escort leads the pack out.

The destination matters too. Bob’s Downtown Diner sits in the heart of the city, and an escorted arrival of hundreds of vehicles downtown turns the fundraiser into a spectacle that passersby cannot miss — exactly the kind of public visibility an awareness event needs. Downtown Mobile’s street grid, framed by the skyline and the busy corridors leading in from the west, gives a ride like this a memorable finish, and the diner setting transforms the post-ride gathering from a parking-lot pause into a proper destination with food, shade and room for the shows and raffle.

Organizers of first-person cause events often note the particular energy that comes from a beneficiary’s own community showing up in force. A newsroom is a close-knit workplace under normal circumstances, and a colleague’s public health battle mobilizes the kind of turnout — stations’ staffs, area media workers, longtime viewers and friends — that an anonymous charity ride never generates. That base of support, layered on top of the region’s established riding community, is why organizers expect a large crowd despite the busy May calendar.

The mathematics of events like this one favor participation over precision. Whether a supporter pays $21.50 to ride, $31.50 to bring a passenger, $11.50 to enter the shows, or simply buys raffle tickets over lunch at the diner, each contribution feeds the same purpose, and the cumulative effect of a few hundred registrations is the kind of sum that makes an annual event self-sustaining. The fees themselves — modest by the standards of Gulf Coast charity events — reflect a fundraising philosophy that maximizes participation and treats every rider, driver and diner as part of the fight.