Heart Transplant Recipient Embarks On 3,000-Mile Ride To Urge Organ Donation As 108,000 Await

Ken Abbott Honors Donor With 3,000-Mile Cross-Country Ride After heart transplant

USA: Ken Abbott has begun a 3,000-mile bicycle journey from Ocean Beach to St. Augustine to mark a decade since a life-saving heart transplant and to raise awareness about organ donation and transplantation. The 61-year-old rider, who only took up cycling after his recovery, plans to average 75 miles a day and aims to complete the trek in 59 days with scheduled stops in cities along the route.

Abbott’s path to transplantation followed a serious cardiac collapse in 2016. After walking into the emergency room at Mount Si, clinicians diagnosed ventricular tachycardia and cardiomyopathy and assigned him a very slim chance of survival. Six months later he received a donor heart that restored his life and also enabled transplants for two other people. Abbott credits that donation with fundamentally changing his outlook and his daily life; in the year before the trip he logged more than 12,000 miles of riding.

The cross-country campaign is being staged in partnership with the nonprofit Live On New York and will be documented on social media and at pedalingforlife.org. Abbott will not travel alone: he is accompanied by his friend Pete Tranina and Pete’s wife, Eleanor, who will follow in a rented RV where the trio plans to rest between stages. Organ donation is a central theme of the ride — organizers emphasize the scale of need in the United States, with roughly 108,000 people waiting for transplants, about 49,000 transplants performed last year, and roughly 13 people lost each day from the waiting list.

Abbott hopes the journey will put transplantation back into public conversation and inspire registration and conversations about donation. Friends who once thought the idea audacious now describe the trip as a way to honor donor families and to show what transplant recovery can allow: a renewed life on the road and a platform to advocate for others still waiting.

Video originally published on 2026-03-04 21:29:36