A team of 12 cyclists rolled through Athens today on their 2,000-plus mile tour aimed at saving lives.

The group disembarked from Brooks about 10:30 a.m. and arrived in Athens about 12:15 p.m. amid the raindrops, a few cheering bystanders and Buddy Blood Drop of the American Red Cross, the bright red and huggable blood drop with a human inhabitant.

“I wasn’t prepared to make a speech,” Buddy said. “I’m just here to encourage people to donate blood.”

Actually, the Five Points of Life Ride, a program of LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, is a campaign to raise awareness and to promote five lifesaving donations: blood, aspheresis (for collecting blood stem cells), marrow, organ/tissue and cord blood.

The cyclists ate lunch at Waddell Center Family Medicine on West Washington Street before continuing.

As they travel through six Southeastern states, from Mobile, Ala., to Cedar Key, Fla., the riders will speak to groups at hospitals, blood banks, schools, shopping centers and offices about the benefits of donation.

The bikers come from many walks of life – there is a nurse, a physician, a park manager and an entomologist, among others, according to an Athens-Limestone Hospital press release. The group includes a donor who has given more than 50 gallons of blood, a rider whose marrow donation saved the life of a nurse in Australia and a rider who received a kidney transplant, according to the press release.

Dawn Wolf, 45, of Indianapolis, Ind., is a first-time rider and the youngest cyclist on the trek; the oldest is age 71.

“I work as a medical technologist with the blood banks for Clarian Health Partners in Indianapolis (formed in 1997 when Methodist, Indiana University and Riley hospitals united) and we serve many critical patients. I see the benefits of donation every day. I have gotten to know a patient personally and wanted to help, so I became a platelet donor, a tissue and organ donor and a bone marrow donor.”

She encourages others to consider donating.

“Donating makes you healthy,” she said.

Don Stalous, chief of diagnostic services for Athens-Limestone Hospital, who watched the bikers roll in Tuesday, said Athens-Limestone Hospital is a member of the Health Group of Alabama Lab Network, which works with LifeSouth to make blood available. The HGA network was created to improve the availability and the cost of blood for network hospitals in the area, which include Athens-Limestone Hospital, Shoals Hospital in Muscle Shoals, Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, Decatur General, Huntsville Hospital and Marshall Medical Center North and South, Stalous said.

“To date, HGA has saved more than $23 million since June of 2002,” he said.

LifeSouth operates community-based blood centers in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, which collect more than 800 units of blood daily, supporting more than 130 medical facilities, according to LifeSouth. In this area, LifeSouth has offices in Huntsville and Decatur and conducts regular blood drives in Athens.