The Beloved Bike Robin Williams Donated Just Weeks Before He Died Raised $20,000 For Charity

Robin Williams loved cycling. He rode all the time. He traveled to see the Tour de France in person. When asked how many bikes he had he said "too many to count," according to CNN.

A few weeks before Williams' death on Aug. 11, he donated a beloved custom-made bike to help raise money for charity. It went for $20,000 on Saturday night, and the funds will go to a Bay Area education charity called 10,000 Degrees, PageSix reports. This is the bike:

As The Hollywood Reporter's Soo Youn wrote, "Williams made his passion clear in a 2013 Reddit AMA: 'My favorite thing to do is ride a bicycle. I ride road bikes. And for me, it's mobile meditation.'" He told a friend at his local bike shop that cycling saved his life.

Williams' collection was said to have 100 bikes, but he donated many of them.

The bike auctioned Saturday was made by cult builder Dario Pegoretti, who's something of a god in world of custom bicycles.

When Williams met the fashionable Italian for the first time Pegoretti was suffering from lymphoma, The Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay reports. Williams gave Pegoretti strength and "beautiful memories."

In this video, Pegoretti demonstrates his frame-painting technique:

In a 2013 "Daily Show" episode, Jon Stewart told Williams he looked amazing, and Williams replied: "I've just been riding my bike. It's been pretty sweet."

The world will remember Williams as a great comedian and actor. Cyclists will also remember him as one of their own. Williams told The Journal that cycling was the closest you could get to flying.

Watch this moving clip from ABC:

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