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

It's a new year and another ride! WhooHoo!

Just a note to let you all know the 2010 Ride Ataxia season is about to begin! The first 3 years were tied to the annual National Ataxia Foundation conference. After last year's riding in the rain, hail and cold for 3 of the 4 days the organizers looked to this year with the conference being held in Chicago, in March, and they were worried with good reason. The weather around Chicago in March is completely unpredicable and tending strongly toward really bad. It was time for a change in strategy. So they regionalized the ride so more people more locally could participate in the ride. And they dissociated the ride from the conference timing so the regional rides could optimize the seasonal timing in their area. Last October Phillie had a ride, one is planned for April in Florida and the LA area will have one this Fall. For our region, since Kyle Bryant is from the Sacramento area he took the leadership role in organizing this year's Ride Ataxia Nor Cal for May 15 - 16 starting in Folsom and swinging up to Grass Valley and back, a challenging route.

Yes, I will be riding again. My bike is hanging in there and so far so am I. The battle to defeat Friedreich's Ataxia is being won, the tide has turned in our favor with 7 FA clinical trials happening right now and more are planned soon. Now it is not that time is money, it is that money is time saved. The more money applied to the battle the sooner it is won. And Brianne needs a sooner rather than later victory in this war. So yes I will be riding.

And I hope you all will be riding with me too! This ride has always been about generous donors and gathering bunches of money to throw (intelligently) at FA. So join me by becoming a financial sponsor at
https://app.etapestry.com/fundraiser/FriedreichsAtaxiaResearchA/norcal/individual.do?participationRef=4786.0.121601057 ; click on "Sponsor Me".

Or ride with me and gather sponsors of your own for this grand bike ride!

You can get more details of the ride at http://www.rideataxia.org/norcal/ .

Enough for now. Thanks for reading! I'll write a bit more as I get organized.