Matt Lauer Fights Poverty on Tour de Red Nose Ride
Early Monday morning, Hamptonite Matt Lauer embarked on day two of his five-day, 226-mile “Tour de Red Nose” bicycle ride on to raise money for impoverished children. Lauer, the Today show and hundreds of fans have been chronicling the newsman’s progress on social media using the #GoMattGo hashtag. (Scroll down to see the photos!)
Lauer began his adventure with much fanfare at Boston’s Fenway Park—home of the Red Sox—on Sunday and continued through various small towns in New England before concluding his first day in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was greeted by kids from the local Boys and Girls Club.
On day two, a tough, uphill ride from Providence to New London, Connecticut—noted to be the most difficult day of his journey—Lauer said on Today that the weather was much colder. Fellow anchor Meredith Vieira looked pretty warm, however, when she appeared dressed in a head-to-toe fuzzy deer costume, driving a golf cart, to surprise Lauer about 24 miles into the day’s ride.
Day three will take Lauer from New London, across the Long Island Sound to our neck of the woods, Orient on the North Fork! His ride will conclude in New York City on Thursday, May 21, also known as Red Nose Day. Started by Comic Relief as a way to combat poverty in the United Kingdom, Red Nose Day has been a cultural phenomenon for 30 years which asks people to have fun and laugh for charity. This year marks the first in which Red Nose Day is being celebrated in the United States.
To celebrate the occasion, NBC will air a three-hour entertainment special with comedians, musicians and Hollywood stars from 8–11 p.m. on Thursday. Several Hamptonites and Hamptons visitors are scheduled to appear on the program. Among them, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin and Coldplay, Simon Cowell, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Julianne Moore, Peter Dinklage, Nick Cannon, and, of course, Matt Lauer.
Check out these photos and video from Lauer’s Tour de Red Nose ride! (It turns out #GoMattGo is also a popular hashtag and slogan for professional wrestler Matt Justyce.)