Paul's Post-rideATAXIA NorCal Rid Report

Saturday was a good day with good memories!

Financials:
- As of now the 2020 NorCal total is $91.4K! Hoo-Haa!
- The donors to Team Blue Skies achieved $4,150 toward finding treatments for Friedreich's Ataxia! So sweet and how wonderful! Thank you, Thank you!

Saturday:
   Friday night was my night with Brianne so at 8am the next caregiver came early so I could get the last minute details done for our 25 mile ride around RP and Cotati. We were ready to go shortly after 9am!

   At 11pm Friday night the weather report was still a 70% chance of rain. Two of my in-laws (see our team page at https://secure2.convio.net/fara/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=4411&pg=team&fr_id=1633 ) joined me in the ride in spite of the threatened rain with Susan as SAG and lunch-chaser. A close-friends couple 'fessed up to being fair weather riders but promised to drink hot chocolate for us that morning. ;-) (I'm fibbing on the chocolate, but it sounded good, and I could have used the chocolate! lol) The rain largely never appeared during the ride except for 2 drops apiece around the expressway and Redwood Ave. intersection. Immediately after the post-ride party broke up at 2pm we did get a wet-the-ground shower though.

It took us right at 2 hours for the ride, averaged 12.3 mph and had a maximum speed of 21.5 mph (the long downhill to Petaluma Blvd.). Here's the route. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/32798726

Yes by the end I was weary, and I was using all the gears to get up that "big" hill at mile 16! lol The last uphill went from Petaluma Blvd north up Old Redwood to Petaluma Hill Rd to home. That's an almost 5 mile uphill pedal and had me worried because what little stamina I had would pretty much be gone by then, BUT enter the northbound wind! I helped push me and us along to the finish! Done at 11:08. Whew! Richard breezed through the course and Karen pedaled right along. Good teammates!

Susan arrived home moments after us with JavAmore sandwiches for lunch on the front yard gravel drive with social spacing. During lunch two more BIL's joined us. A nice birthday lunch.

About 12:15pm my phone rang with the message from organizer Felicia that they were singing happy BD to me in the Noon celebratory Zoom meeting! Oh gosh, I was so distracted by the attention at lunch I had forgotten the Zoom meeting! So I excused myself and logged into the meeting of about 30 people to see Kyle playing some kind of number guessing game. A few minutes later our Zoom meeting was CRASHED by about a hundred uninvited people!  LOL! While I was sorry for the disruption to the meeting, what a singular happening! I had just read about this happening! We were told to leave the meeting and re-enter to see if that would "fix"it, so I did. Now it was all of THEM and none of US. For a moment it was funny until the XXX video was launched! That ended the experience for me! HaHa. So I went back outside to report to that group what they had missed. They were OK with missing it.

A few minutes later daughter Miranda called to say she was a couple of minutes from arriving and to hang around in front. Mmm?? Indeed shortly there she was with a caravan of cars tooting and shouting HB as they slowly crept by. The two grandsons were very excited to be participating! Last Monday they were in their driveway as we were part of the HB caravan for Kieran's BD.

Shortly after everyone went home, we rescued the chairs, tables and popup from the starting rain and retreated to our assigned positions in the house, I in front of my computer and Susan by the TV as she worked on her art projects. We had pork ribs for dinner, watched a fact-based movie called "Breakthrough" and at 10pm I called it quits. Shoulda put on my favorite Leslie Gore party song as I was brushing my teeth! lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIsnIt1p978 I don't know why I've always liked it (since 1963). I slept 11.5 hours Saturday night. I was wearied.

So let me thank all of you that provided good thoughts, prayers and your support for Brianne and Team Blue Skies this year in the search for treatments for Friedreich's Ataxia! See the latest research status here, https://curefa.org/pipeline . Progress continues to be made in spite of the coronavirus, and the momentum FARA has built up will help carry drugs to FDA approval! We've gone from "never" to "someday" and now to "soon". :-)

The Ride continues. It's not too late if you want to support Brianne, the 6K of FA'ers in the USA and the 15K world-wide. https://secure2.convio.net/fara/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=4411&pg=team&fr_id=1633

God bless everyone, stay safe and stay well!

Team Blue Skies

Tomorrow's the Day! Last Pre-Ride Update.

Well it is 2am on Friday morning! The ride for us is 1 day and 7 1/2 hours from now. I thought I'd give a last update.

We are presently both an informal team of 5 and a formal team of  5! lol Saturday morning at 9:30am 5 riders should be rolling away from our home to accomplish a 25 mile ride around Rohnert Park/Cotati, and separately there are 5 registered team members actively fundraising (https://secure2.convio.net/fara/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=4411&pg=team&fr_id=1633).

There are two routes we have mapped. Tomorrow we'll need to choose which one.
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/32798726 runs Snyder Lane to Petaluma Hill Rd and back to Todd Rd and around (25.2 miles), while
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/32801159 runs from SSU to the Smart Train bike path, North to Golf Course then further North to Todd Rd. and around (24.8 miles).

Oh, did I mention Saturday's chance of rain is about 75% right now? Yep. Yesterday it was 91% so it's lookin' better!

The organizer Kyle Bryant said he wanted us to do a "challenge" ride. On a personal note I'll be riding on my 75th BD using a completely unconditioned body and a 40 year old Schwinn road bike for 25 miles in the rain. I ask, should I pray for rain, Kyle?! lol It will be fun and I've been wet before. The pic to the right was part of the 2 1/2 days of rain of the 4 day Portland to Seattle Ride Ataxia. THAT was wet!

Team Blue Skies is at $3100 and the overall NorCal total sits at $73,105 right now! Whoo-Hoo! And there's still time to join in! Go to our link above!

One Week from The Day

One week from The Day and I'm rollin' now! My friend Dave Wait and I just did a whole

16 miles looking at a possible May 30th Rohnert Park route and to make sure my classic 1978 Schwinn (think T-bird) hasn't frozen up from last year's ride. 

Neither it nor I froze up so 2 or more of us will pedal away from my house May 30th at 9:30am on my 75th BD to synchronize with all the rest of the 23 milers! Since our RP Outback will not yet be available for outdoor dining we will support the Penngrove JavAmore with a sandwich socially-distanced lunch on us in my front driveway afterward while we watch Kyle's Noon presentations! Whoo-Hoo, a good morning that will be!

Remember YOU are invited to ride in this year's really local RA NorCal. Just give me a call, Email or text that you will be a my house by 9am so we can take off by 9:30am. You might preview JavAmore's online menu, https://www.javamorecafe.com/info/cafe_menu  . 

Our fundraising has had a good start springing up to $1,150 almost overnight! Goal is $2,000. Help keep it climbing:

   - hand me cash (or throw it from 6'. I'll sanitize it later), 

   - mail me a check (1921 Alice Dr., Penngrove, 94951) and made out to "FARA", or 

   - go to our Team Blue Skies web page where you can decide who to sponsor (Brianne, Paul, Richard or The Team). 

https://secure2.convio.net/fara/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=4411&pg=team&fr_id=1633  

Now that I've stretched and challenged my riding muscle groups I think I'll let them rest until next Saturday! Good strategy, eh?! ;-)

I hope to see you then!

It's the Pandemic RA NorCal Bike Ride Fundraiser for FA Research!

What a first 4 months of 2020 for our families, city, state, country and world!

• - Pandemic, COVID-19, Shelter-In-Place, Masks and Gloves plus Sanitizer galore! 
• "The Flu on Steroids" as it has been called, to date has killed 57,000 Americans out of 1 million (5.7%) of those who got this virus, and we're not nearly done! Susan's and my condolences to any of your family or friends you have lost.
• And who are especially at risk?! The old and infirm ("underlying medical conditions"), like many of us retired folk and certainly every Friedreich's Ataxian! That USA 5.7% overall death rate swells by a times 3 factor at least among this demographic.
• The ever-present danger to first responders and hospital staff! Today's heroes!
• And all those temporarily or permanently put out of work?! Businesses that won't recover. A sad day for the economy. Recession or depression, you pick the term. 
• And what will the New Normal look like? Even after this virus will we look at "the flu" differently as we newly realize many thousands die of it each year? 

So now I've painted this somber backdrop to FARA's 2020 NorCal Ride Ataxia fundraiser. But FA continues to kill young men and women far short of their expected and deserved lifespan independent of and in addition to COVID-19, and so we continue this battle in parallel with the virus battle. 

Brianne won't last much longer, and it will be the miracles of miracles if she is in time to get a drug that can pull her back from the brink. But she continues to want to win this FA fight for all the FA'ers coming after her. And so we will, all of us, for her and those coming after her!

I'm disappointed to share that, like many other public events, the May 30th NorCal event has been changed from a real-time get-together to a Virtual Challenge Month of May!

  - Each rider now will decide on a COVID-19-environment-appropriate challenge to complete. 

  - Mine will be to complete my originally planned 23 mile ride on or before my 75th birthday! (which would have been on the event day of May 30, 2020!) 

So what challenge strategy should I follow??

   - I could ride .7 miles every day for 30 days and finish with a rousing 2.7 mile ride on the 30th! No it wouldn't be very hard on my body, but "the challenge" would be to do that ride rain or shine (what rain??) every day for 30 days. The additional REAL challenge would be to get YOU to ride with me every day! Oh, I hear you. Yes that would bring us back again talking about Miracles. lol

   - Or I could ride once a week for 5 miles and make a strong finish in the last week of 8 miles! Mmm, 5 or 8 miles on a bike is not very much and managing to ride 4 times in the month of May isn't much of "a personal challenge" either. I think this option will be scrapped.

   - The third option is to do the whole 23 miles on or very close to my birthday! Either the 29th or 30th. I'm in such out-of-shape shape it would certainly be a challenge to finish in one ride! Let's do that! Yes, I did say "let's". The Rohnert Park/Cotati/Penngrove route I will ride offers several shorter mileage "return-to-home" options that we can discuss closer to the day of the ride. 

So that's it! A local 23 mile ride for me (or shorter for you) on the 29th or 30th of May with 6' spacing and masks as needed included. Let me know if you would like to ride with me. It would be great!

And of course this is a fundraiser for the cure and treatment of Friedreich's Ataxia so if you are in a lucky place in this economically strapped Springtime I would love for you to sponsor me, and/or if your will ride with me and want to gather sponsors for yourself that would be grand! We'll get you officially signed up with the Ride (no entry fee for this virtual event).

To sponsor me you can 

   - hand me cash (or throw it from 6'. I'll sanitize it later), 

   - mail me a check (1921 Alice Dr., Penngrove, 94951) and made out to "FARA", or 

   - go to our Team Blue Skies web page where you can decide who to sponsor (Brianne, Paul, Richard or The Team). 

https://secure2.convio.net/fara/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=4411&pg=team&fr_id=1633 

There are 4 weeks in May! Our team is at $0.00 now but we hope to make the goal of $2,000 by my birthday. Sponsor me instead of a present! I'm good with that! :-)

May you all stay safe during this time!

Paul