Someone sent me an email asking me to donate money. She told me she needed to raise $4500 for a marathon hosted by a charity they were running in Anchorage, AK this summer. The idea of helping to pay someone's airfare from Houston to Alaska so that they can run a marathon to combat cancer is ludicrous to me. It is a backwards approach to goodwill.

It reminds me of a friend of mine that biked across the continent to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. He did the trip with his girlfriend (who accompanied him in the largest van I had ever seen). His 45 day trip raised a total of $1000 for the charity, but he raised thousands more than that. A lot of it went toward gas and sustenance. Despicably, when he arrived home, he had a $4000 carbon fiber bike to show for it.

Funding someone else's recreation under the guise that you are supporting a charity is deplorable. That is not goodwill.