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.