Creative way to fun academic research

One of our fellow "southern tier" bicycle tourists is using his tour to gain some funding to support his research, training med students with simulations (I will post a link to his page on our blog). I've been thinking he's got a great idea. With NSF, NIH and industry funding getting more and more scarce, funding academic research through sponsored miles bicycled is a great alternative! At $5/mile I could fund a graduate student for a year. And what better research topic is there to fund through a bicycle tour than Bone an Joint Biomechanics?! Anyone interested?