Arrival Day…

After a restless night sleep I rode to the airport with four other dedicated riders. We had an uneventful trip to the airport, and an easy flight to DC with a great flight crew from United Airlines. They were gracious enough to announce that we had a large contingent of people from Cal’s Angels on the flight and the purpose of our upcoming ride.

After we landed, I had the pleasure of spending some time with my good friend, Stewart Reed, and his beautiful family. Stewart offered to cook steak and roast potatoes for lunch if I agreed to bring him a couple loaves of sourdough bread. That was obviously an easy decision for me. 🤣

I won’t get much time to visit, but this is my first trip to DC. The weather is actually beautiful this afternoon and the views of our nations capital are spectacular.

We have a pre-meeting at 5 PM and I need to get all of the routes loaded onto my Garmin computer. I’m hoping to get a better nights sleep, but I’m not sure it’s possible based on my excitement to start charity ride.

I’m still astounded by the lack of funding for pediatric cancer research, and the number of kids that are diagnosed with cancer every year.

Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among children under the age of 15. In the United States, about 9,910 children are diagnosed with cancer each year, and about 1,040 children or 10.5% will die from the disease. There have been significant advances in pediatric cancer treatment in recent years, but there is still much work to be done. Research is needed to develop new and better treatments, and to find a cure for pediatric cancer. That's why I'm riding for a cure. I know that every dollar donated to Cal's Angels will help fund research that could save the life of a child.

Closing out with excitement and some nerves, but this is such an amazing cause that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 3…This is for you Ava Olson!

Image
Day 3 - Cal’s Angels W.A.R. on Wheels Today we rode for Ava Olson. Ava suffered from  an incurable form of cancer called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) which is an aggressive type of childhood cancer that forms in the brainstem. They are very rare and almost always occur in the pediatric population. Ava died 6 months and 10 days after her diagnosis.  I had the pleasure of riding with Ken Olson and the rest of the Cal’s Angels crew today. Ken told us that Ava loved “Do Rad Shit” and he wore a “DRS” hat today in her memory so when I was side by side with Ken as we descended a very steep road at over 45 miles an hour battling serious crosswinds that almost blew us off the bike and heavy traffic, Ken turns to me and says….”Ava would have loved this!” Today’s ride was special because Ken was riding with us. It was a challenging ride at times with long descents. For the most part drivers were courteous, but we got coal rolled by some jackass, and he absolutely covered us in...
Read more

Day 9…Molly this is for you!

Image
Molly…Today we rode 90 miles in frigid temperatures and hellacious headwinds. We were all bundled up with everything we packed for the trip and most of us were still cold. The effective temperature at our riding pace was 11° for the first few hours and the American flags decorating the country roads were absolutely pinned because of the 25 mile an hour winds! We decided to ride as a group today so no one would suffer through stiff winds on their own. We recognize that the suffering we put ourselves through today and over the last week does not measure to the pain and suffering that you and your fellow pediatric cancer patients have faced. I am humbled by your resilience. I am not sure I could fight as long as hard as you did, if it had any resemblance to the suffering that we’ve managed through over the last week. Molly…I will tell you that outside of doing our best to ride in your honor, was when we visited Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. We met with the doctors doing resea...
Read more

Day 6…This is for you Liv!

Image
For those that feel compelled to donate to the pediatric cancer research… https://charity.pledgeit.org/WOWV Liv…we rode 81 miles and ~2,500’ of elevation in your memory. I have to admit, we are all grateful for your day because while today’s ride was tough out of the gate…we faced rain, wet roads and cool temps with two big climbs of 13% and 14% right at the start. There was silver lining in that we were able to get 90% of the hard stuff out of the way over the first 30 miles and then it was like you guided us downhill for the last 50 miles and you were kind enough to blow on our backs which is allowed the group to finish together for the first time over the last six days. I’m sure you saw it from heaven, but riding through Amish country was beautiful and we got to see a handful of Amish folks leading their horse and buggies down the country roads. Their beards are something else and the land mines the horses left us created a bit of an obstacle course 🤣.  We had a wonderful lunch...
Read more