15 thoughts from the road

15 great things about the trip!

Day 1 – hanging out for the day with a childhood friend and meeting 39 people that would become like family.

Day 2 – realizing I’m actually doing this and it hurts

Day 3 – biking through washigton to Spokane, coming down onto a canyon and seeing wild horses running along the ridge.

Day 4 – Rivers of montana, beautiful state, beautiful open roads, Oh yeah and a tad bit chilly!

Day 5 – wow Montana is a big state, and everyone seems to be wearing camo! Oh and I woke up to feed the horses.

Day 6 – climb up to yellowstone, saw some up close nature… As in that bison is crossing the street in front of me. A long way up for a hole that blows smoke!

Day 7 – rolling into our shelter for the night to realize it was a hanger and we were expected to sleep on cement floors. Ouch ~ Instead heading to Vernal Utah and stopping on top of this climb for a little scenic view.

Day 8 – Rolling into Utah. Wow, route 128. I have no words to describe the beauty of this place. Pictures will have to talk.

Day 9- Santa Fe – Mmmmm… I didn’t really feel safe there, but the mountains and landscape coming in was breathtaking. I also think we got shot at from the distance!

Day 10- Roswell New Mexico… Little town with green aliens, generous town who pitched in to get us hotel rooms, I made the local paper! Oh and the biggest storm I’ve ever seen, hail, broken windows, flash flooding etc!

Day 11 – Arriving at a church in San Angelo Texas after a long day of dodging tarentula’s on the bike for a stretch of 112km of straight open road with a headwind of 50km/hr to a great BBQ with brisket, corn bread and homemade BBQ sauce. This long boring day was a good one to remember who I was riding for and why. Helped me finish the day.

Day 12 – Biking further into Texas, seeing signs for Austin! Woot! Biking passed a camel farm… Camel farm???

Getting to the finish line in Dripping Springs and realizing you’ve done it!

Day 13 – what? A day off? Ooooh…. What’s that pain? Longhorn game, local scene, bed later than I thought!

Day 14 – Livestrong challenge in the morning, Lance is pretty fast, but I caught his teammate Levi for a picture.

Good bye dinner with new found friends, oh, and hanging out with Kelly Gruber who I’m pretty sure had no idea where he was!

Got an award for working the GPS and pushing out asthma drugs to my teammates!

Ladies of the trip (+Gruber)

Today: I guess I am still wrapping my head around what happened. I look back from the moment I signed up for this, everything that went down and how really, it was a life changing experience. Looking back, I guess it really wasn’t about the bike. Met some incredible people, learned a lot about myself and now, today… I’m busy finding the girl that I left behind a few months back. I am looking forward to seeing what the next challenge will be and what will unfold in the months ahead.

The Real Winner

 

The real winner,  my friend Judy…  I am a proud friend today,  I am proud of her,  of her strength, of her battle.  Yesterday Judy finished her challenge.  I know she’ll come around soon with an update.

She still has 2 weeks of hard work left ahead, getting rid of the poison that is saving her life.  I wish her courage and strength in this last bout and I am so very proud of her, for never giving up and finishing her challenge.

Judy,  way to go love!  We are all right behind you!

 

Chemo No 5

Well chemo number 5 is done and behind me.  It was truly a milestone in a couple of ways.

The most amazing and profound way is that my dear, courageous and inspirational friend Isabelle was crossing the finish line in Austin, just as I finished the treatment. Isabelle approached me at the time of my news with a card, heartfelt words and an offer to be by my side on this journey in many ways.  Isabelle, was training for her trip from Vancouver to Austin Texas as part of the Live Strong Organization event, and made it her personal goal to raise 10,000 and make the voyage and wanted to do it in my honour. I was humbled and touched and thus we started our journey together. We have drawn strength, courage and a determination from each other and that has served us well in many ways….We are kindred spirits and I am grateful to have her in my life. Isabelle was victoriious on so many fronts and then some….and she continues to support me as only she could……I would like to take the opportunity to mention Isabelle’s group of riders, who too, rode in my honour for a leg of the race, and victorious in their jouneys.. Thank you from the bottom of my heart….
The other milestone was getting number 5 under my belt, with much trepidation and anxiety.  The side affects from last treatment were much more difficult to deal with and i worried whether it would be worse.  It wasn’t long when those symptoms experienced after the last treatment started to return.  I recognize now that the last 6 weeks will be the most difficult for me to deal with and I may just have to rest…lol…what a thought. Again, I have the most amazing support system, and my dear friend Rosanne made the trip for this treatment.  I know how hard it has been on those who love me and how much they want to be here, and those treatments with friends and loved ones mean so much. I really could not have got through them without each and every one of you…. Our chemo day was good, all went well, and we had a great visit and some laughs……Rosanne cooked an unbelievable birthday dinner and Pete joined us for supper.  It is so important to try and maintain some sense of normalcy and experience life and what it has to offer each day….. and that continues to be my focus..

It is interesting that it takes you almost an entire couse of treatments to know what you should do, what you can do, what will come next, is this normal, why didnt they tell me this the last time, I am just now finding this out and i have one treatment left………The experience is like no other, and is so different for everyone, where is your point of reference, why is there not a better guided reference…maybe there is where is it…….I have learned so much and it is all information i hope i never need again, but yet there are so many …just starting out…..food for thought….what will i do with this experience……For now, I am working through the side affects of this treatment and focusing on one more treatment and a time, in the not so distant future, where I will feel fabulous and ready for my next adventure..

Groung hog day…

So this morning when someone turned on the lights in the room where we were all sleeping on cots, the first thing I heard was “it’s groundhog day” and he was right.

Each day is amazing, biking through surreal scenery but each day is also very much the same. Get up at the crack of dawn, find food, bike, get in the van to find more food and a place to stay for the night.

We are on hump day now, tomorrow is day 7 which is supposed to be the hardest day for all.

I have a millions stories to tell about this beautiful trip, but everynight I make it in I’m so exhausted I just want to crawl on my cot and go to bed!

Until you ear the stories from me, you can check the FB album I’ve been tagged in, I’ll let the photos do the talking

Day 0

Coming from a fun and different evening out with Geoff… We got dressed up to attend a 50′s party then proceeded to go carb load dressed from a different era, I Woke up early and scared.

Stomach full of knots as we drove to the airport, broke down crying like a kid when I had to say goodbye. (please don’t tell anyone, it was a bit embarrassing!

I’m usually a pretty brave girl, not very much makes me scared but I have to say thats the main emotion I felt this morning and for the past few days as well.

A good kind of scared, kind of like the scared you get in grade 5 before an oral presentation.

Knowing myself, I’m going to keep feeling like this probably until we start getting underway. Race jitters but on a much different scale that I’ve ever felt before.

To keep busy on the flight I was reading our safety procedures when encountering wildlife. They defined what to do for bears, bisons, coyote and wolves. But my favourite one was the one associated with a deer:

“try not to run into it, it’ll hurt you more then you’ll hurt it.

On this note, I’m resuming trying to not get spooked by a bumpy flight; looking forward to arriving in Vancouver – my good good friend Marie is picking me up for a little bit of an adventure before I hit the road.

xoxox

ISA

Start of day 3

Hi everyone!

You’ll have to help me out and tilt your head to see the picture, my iPhone ain’t that capable!

Yesterday we made our way into Spokane, we had a long, not that steep but long climb on the bike. The last 60+km were on a never ending slope. Somehow that was more painful then the short and steep (like the 1km pink lake equivalent we had just ahead of us on this picture).

I am seeing breathtaking views already, we had a pack of wild horses running on a high ridge beside us in a canyon.

My knees are killing this morning, the only satisfaction is that I know that once I get on the bike and the first 25km’s wear off I’ll be feeling good!

Today we head into Montana, heading to Missoula.

Should be a fun but cold day

Catch you all in the next time zone!

Tap here to begin writing.

Ooooo! Tired legs!

Not much time (or wi-fi) for a long update! We just rolled into Sultan WA a little bit ago.

All I can say now is that I’m a tad tired and I want to hit the pillow.

Day was great, we crossed into the states, rolled in the dark for a while but thankfully had a police escort for the last 30km’s or so.

I ate a lot of cookies, drank an insane amount of H20.

Okay, night –

Day 0

Coming from a fun and different evening out with Geoff… We got dressed up to attend a 50′s party then proceeded to go carb load dressed from a different era, I Woke up early and scared.

Stomach full of knots as we drove to the airport, broke down crying like a kid when I had to say goodbye. (please don’t tell anyone, it was a bit embarrassing!

I’m usually a pretty brave girl, not very much makes me scared but I have to say thats the main emotion I felt this morning and for the past few days as well.

A good kind of scared, kind of like the scared you get in grade 5 before an oral presentation.

Knowing myself, I’m going to keep feeling like this probably until we start getting underway. Race jitters but on a much different scale that I’ve ever felt before.

To keep busy on the flight I was reading our safety procedures when encountering wildlife. They defined what to do for bears, bisons, coyote and wolves. But my favourite one was the one associated with a deer:

“try not to run into it, it’ll hurt you more then you’ll hurt it.

On this note, I’m resuming trying to not get spooked by a bumpy flight; looking forward to arriving in Vancouver – my good good friend Marie is picking me up for a little bit of an adventure before I hit the road.

xoxox

ISA

The final hours

Here we are, the final 24 hours before I start on my journey to make my way to Austin, TX!  I’m leaving for Vancouver on a 7am flight and we start cycling as a group of 40 towards the Peace Arch Border Monday morning at 8:45am.

I wanted to thank everyone for helping me along the way,

To everyone who contributed either financially or with supporting equipment and with time in helping me organize events, thank you, my efforts would have been futile without your generosity.

Judy,  thank you for your strength and courage, you continue to amaze me on a daily basis and I am so grateful to now be able to call you a lifelong friend.  Stay strong cookie!  I’m doing this for you!

Mom-Dad-Cat:  I promise to stay safe and come back in one piece.

And last but definitely not least Geoff,  thank you for the months of being my side, helping-encouraging-supporting and loving as I’ve been trying to do my best at getting ready for this.  I couldn’t have done this without you, I hope you know that.

I will be blogging along the way, uploading pictures of the route etc…  Stay tune for updates and if you want to follow my next 2 weeks, use the subscribe button of the blog!