We Did It!!

October 22nd and 23rd, 2011

Day One 98 Miles

Cardon Children's Hospital

The Law Firm of Cheer & Tumble handling all your gymnastics mishaps and suing that mean girl who kicked you off the Cheer Squad!

The long, hotuphillandnotwinding road (apologies to The Beatles)

Best Western parking lot after 98 miles

Day 2 off to Beads of Courage Headquarters! 40 more miles to go! And it's all downhill from here....NOT! Who said that anyway?

Team Beads of Courage Tucson members came to ride with us

The finish line!

Jean gave us a real Tour de France style podium moment complete with the double cheek smooch! That was really brave of her considering we hadn't showered yet.

Next Team Beads of Courage Ride - El Tour de Tucson November 19th, 2011! But first my ample fanny needs a break. :)

Fashion is important

So with the ride in less than two days we have to present the Carol's Challenge Fashion Report because everyone knows that looking good is as important as riding well!

First off, the Beads of Courage Beads in Space Jersey - the official jersey for Team Beads of Courage! (No, really, this isn't a mug shot!)

Next, we have the lovely matching hair fashion by Carolyn Muir. The pink and blue feathers match the jersey perfectly! Carolyn's shop can be found on Etsy under Dragonfly Glass and she is offering a discount to Team BOC riders!

Our spokesmodel is sporting a Beads in Space replica bead by Marcy Lamberson of Studio Marcy. This guy went on the Tour de Tucson last year, but his counterpart, the real deal went into outer space on the Atlantis space shuttle!

Next we have the matching Beads of Courage bracelets:

And last, but most importantly, the Carry A Beads for the kids. These are the cherry blossom beads Kiersten and I will be carrying on the ride. Yes, our spokesmodel is also a beadmaker. The beads will go to a child in treatment and become part of their treatment strand!

The Amazing Vanessa at Landis Cyclery

Say hello to Vanessa Cianci:

In the Beads of Courage program, there is a bead for The Wingman or a person who flies beside you and helps to support you so you're not alone on your journey. Vanessa is a wingman....er....wingwoman to Kiersten and I because she helped to get us set up on our bikes so we could start this journey together.

When I was strong enough to ride again, I went to Landis Cyclery, our favorite bike shop and Vanessa helped me pick the perfect bike. It was love at first ride.

So thank you Vanessa for being there for us! You are the best.

If you want to sponsor a wingman bead for a child in treatment, you can go to the Beads of Courage website and sponsor one bead or a whole flock! Just click here!

Kiersten Remembers

Friday September 9th, on a whim I went to the Tempe Center for the Arts. It just so happened that it was 9:30am and they opened at 10am, so I walked around the lake. I was enjoying the cloudy and windy weather, watching the birds and taking photos of our man made lake. As I started was walking, I saw a lot of American flags in the distance and was drawn to them. As I walked closer, I saw that there were hundreds of flags blowing in the wind and it was quite a sight. I discovered that this was the Healing Field honoring the nearly 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks presented by the Valley of the Sun Exchange Clubs Foundation and the City of Tempe.
As I walked around I could not hold back my emotions and I began to think about our freedom and tragedy of the men, women and children that were killed in the attacks.

Once the wind stopped blowing and the clouds dissipated, it began to get hot, and I worried about being in the sun since I did not apply sunscreen that day, so I started walking back to the Center. Along my walk, I started thinking about the rest of my day, and my training for the Beads of Courage ride to Tucson. I began to dread the heat and started thinking of blowing off my training ride, but then I began thinking about freedom and the lack of freedom that the children fighting cancer and other childhood diseases have. They are tethered to their beads in hospitals, on medications that may be saving their lives, but make it impossible for the kids to be kids, to play, to run, to ride, to be free.
So, I came home early, got on my bike and rode my training ride, thinking of those kids the whole way, and grateful for my freedom.

Zombies Don't Like Pizza

That is my interpretation of what we found on the road today during our training ride. When you find not one, but two pizzas, one completely untouched, abandoned by the road within 3 miles of each other, you have to start making assumptions because, come on people, this is suspicious!

So my first and most logical assumption was, last night, while we slept, the Zombie Apocalypse happened. Upon finding these perfectly good pizzas while munching on the brains of hapless pizza delivery guys, those aforementioned zombies pitched those pizzas right out the car window. Probably couldn't stand the smell of pepperoni (see first photo).

So I'm going to fashion myself a necklace of pepperoni and start wearing it just in case.

This is all that is left of the poor pepperoni pizza delivery guy.

Back in the Saddle

The Aerosmith way.

Cranking it up, getting back on the road and keeping the rubber side down!

How much fun can you have in a wheelchair?

It all depends on who's driving!

In true idiot girl fashion I did a full Tsukahara with a half twist in the shower and mangled my foot. After getting stitched up, drugged up and recovering my crutches from Jeff, with whom we have an injury timeshare, I promptly went home and did the e-mail version of drunk dialing. I sent a lovely graphic photo of the aforementioned mangled foot to my in-law family with the caption "Five stitches in the foot Bitches!" and went to bed. This left my poor spouse to host the subsequent Q&A session. Lucky for me they all have an excellent sense of humor which is why I love them so.

So now off my bike until further notice, I was going crazy and could feel my fat cells chuckling with glee over their new expansion program now that the zoning ordinances had been temporarily lifted. And what goes better with bad, trashy TV when you're stuck in the barcalounger than junk food?

Dave decided to take me to the Phoenix Art Museum and drive me around in the wheelchair for the afternoon. They offered me a Hoveround which I assured the guard was not a wise move on his part so I got the basic model. We navigated through shoals of field tripping gradeschoolers, jaws agape at the decommissioned chubby middle aged woman sending out mental sonar waves of "touch my foot and die horribly" ahead of her.

We found a ramp on the 2nd floor and Dave asked "where do you think this goes?" "Down?" I postulated slightly irritably, sensing with dread what was about to happen. "Hang on!" he whispered gleefully in my ear and he hopped on the back of the chair and off we zoomed down the ramp with him braking Fred Flintstone style toward a block glass wall. We came to a stop inches from the wall only to encounter a second ramp to the first level. OOOOOOHHHH NOOOOOOOOO!!! We flew down the rest of the way and arrived at the bottom with me giggling, cursing and disheveled. We were lucky we didn't get booted out for using the museum as a skate park.

Then I flew to Denver for a friend reunion. We went to see the Denver Botanical Gardens and my wonderful girlfriends spent the afternoon pushing me around in the wheelchair. We went up ramps, off road, over flagstones all the time giggling and snorting and making bad driver jokes. I trust them with my life, but I bought lunch just in case so they would feel extra guilty if they decided to dunk me in the lily pond.

Sorry Johnny Hoogerland, Crashing Through Barbed Wire is So Last Century.

Yep, that's right Johnny. I made crashing through a barbed wire fence on my bike cool before you were even born. Okay, so riding your bike to band practice with a clarinet hooked over your handle bars isn't exactly riding in the Tour de France but this might be my only claim to cycling crash fame. It was pretty cool too because according to one completely horrified neighbor, you could lift the bottom part of my nose right off my face like some awesomely crafted gross Halloween mask. 32 little micro-stitches applied by a bad tempered plastic surgeon to sew that sucker back in place.

Sorry, but there is no You Tube video footage - just ask my mom, she'll tell you in gory detail.
Just in case you missed it Hoogerland's attempt to steal my thunder.

Carol's Challenge is Official!

Two Women, two days, 140 miles through the desert from Cardon Children's Hospital in Mesa, Arizona to Beads of Courage HQ in Tucson! October 22nd and 23rd, 2011 we will be riding for the children of Beads of Courage to bring hope and healing.

Show the love by making a donation on either the Crowdrise Carol's Challenge Ride page or by sponsoring a bead kit on the Team Beads of Courage page. Scroll all the way down to Team Beads of Courage Supporter, select "Send to Team Member" and then select "Carol's Challenge" in the second drop down. Kiersten and I will be sent beads to carry for the strands of children in treatment!

El Tour de Mesa

April 16th, 2011. Kiersten and I rode this one together - it was her first organized ride for Team Beads of Courage! She killed that hill on Usery Pass.

Spring Is In The Air!

The sun is shining, the birds are tweeting, the acacias are blooming and my bones are warming - 79 degrees yesterday! Having Fibromyalgia means having a painful time with winter and I went into hibernation for awhile. But now that the weather is warming up it's time to ride! I went out yesterday with Dave to stretch my legs and enjoy the sunshine.

My friend Kiersten and I are riding for Team Beads of Courage in the El Tour de Mesa this year. Kiersten is amazingly brave and beautiful and strong and one of my heroes. She beat breast cancer and is riding her bike and kicking butt! GO Kiersten, GO!!