So here we are a few hours under 7 days 'til our 6th year in a row to Ride for a Friedreich's Ataxia treatment at Davis, CA!

Preparations have been made by the FARA-Ride Ataxia NorCal team and execution will begin in the next few days! Food, lots of food, paper of all sorts, pop-ups, tables chairs, pencils, magic markers, multicolored route markers, bike repair parts, etc and etc, whoo are all coming together! We are ahead of last year's stats and that's good!

And what has changed/not changed for Brianne and I since my last blog?
   - Well perhaps a change of note is Brianne's broken leg she got on Mother's Day (the mothers were not impressed with this "gift".) by ramming her parked van bumper. Oh yeah! It is still quite painful after 14 days so the jury is definitely still out about her riding with me next Saturday. This Tuesday/Wednesday she and I will take a 15 - 30 minute pilot ride to see how see does. I give it a 50/50. The ride will take 1 1/2 to 2 hours, a long time of bumpity-bumps.
   - What has not changed? 3 weeks ago I told myself I needed to do 2 practice rides a week and I'm still doing barely 1 a week. Sigh  Retirement is SO busy and the grass keeps growing so fast! If there is no or little wind I thing I can eke out another finish but if that 22mph monster wind is coming out of the North, I am so toast. lol As Kyle Bryant, our master Ride Ataxia leader, says, "keep turning the crank!". And so I shall.
   - I am smelling a 70th BD recognition after the ride Saturday. My good FARA friends will not be able to resist. It's very nice of them. "Play it again, Sam!". :-)

Thank you for all the sponsorships so far. I am truly blessed by the good people that surround me, and Brianne likewise has been blessed in her 37+ years, FA excepted of course. But then if she had never had FA (which I could have accepted easily!) she would never have met so many special people in this "different" road she is on.

One other change since I blogged last is that Brianne is a star! That's right, a star. In 2010 I was part of the support team (RV driver) for 4 young men (2 FA'ers) that participated in RAAM, Ride Across America and a video team accompanied us to do a documentary. They also interviewed a number of FA'ers, Brianne being one. The film will have its world-wide intro June 6 in the Chinese Theater in Hollywood and we will be there. Here is the new trailer for the movie, https://vimeo.com/127990377 . Brianne and I appear for a whole 2 seconds at the 39 second mark.

See you at the starting line!