If you are looking for a long distance bike tour (the peddling kind), a 100-mile Laredo Rotary Bike Tour is coming on February 12. The Laredo Rotary Club is looking for bikers and sponsors. The club will include this 100-mile tour (there are lesser mileage events) as a part of Rotary International's Centennial, 100th year of being a service organization.

It was on February 25, 1905 that Rotary founder and attorney Paul Harris and three friends met at an office in downtown Chicago, with the idea that business leaders should meet periodically to enjoy camaraderie and enlarge their circle of business and professional acquaintances. Today, ROTARY INTERNATIONAL is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders, providing humanitarian service, encouraging high ethical standards in all vocations, helping to build goodwill and peace. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 31,000 Rotary clubs located in 166 countries.

The Laredo Rotary Club, established May 1,1920, is staging the Rotary Bike Tour also as a fund raiser. Funds generated will primarily support what Laredo Rotary calls Diploma Plus, a program designed to encourage high school seniors to stay in school and graduate. Diploma Plus provides selected at risk students a small monthly stipend, with the understanding that they maintain a passing grade and a 95 percent attendance. While the club is now sponsoring students from the three Laredo Independent School District high schools at a cost of $6,750 per year, it would like to expand the coverage to United ISD. The Rotary Bike Tour is a means to expand the program.

The Rotary Bike Tour can be entered in one of four distance objectives: 100 miles, 60 miles, 40 miles and 20 miles. All of the contest will be along Hwy 359, the 100-mile trip going to Hebronville and back. Shorter events will go a portion of that route to equal the mileage entered. Entry fee has been set at $25.00 and must include a minimum of $50 in pledges per entrant (donations and pledges are tax deductible).

The tour is planned with safety in mind (all bikers must wear helmets), and refreshment points will be provided at 10-mile intervals along the route.

Each participant will receive a Tour T-shirt, and prizes will be awarded based on donations.

Rotarian Mike Dickerson, a biker himself, is heading up the Rotary Bike Tour project. For more information, visit the bike tour web site at www.olsllc.com/RotaryBikeTour or call Mike at 956-791-5422 or email him at jmd@dickersonlaw.com . Also, you may contact the club secretary, Chuck Owen, at 956-724-6186.