ride nick ride

green schools

Saul Griffith is one of my new heroes. check out his blog, http://www.energyliteracy.com

just gave a great presentation on the need for energy literacy to the Vermont State Legislature. Very cool. http://www.veep.org

Thinking about our new house in Jericho VT

The ride is over.  Two days, over 170 miles, countless LARA bars (unofficial food sponsor) and Emergen-C’s downed, and nearly 5000 dollars raised to support the fight against cancer.  We did it!  This year’s edition was harder than last year’s; Hopefully a more-active winter will help me be stronger for 2010.  Special thanks to the Merrow cousins for putting me up, keeping me fed, and making sure my early morning send off included a hot cup of coffee.   And a deep and heartfelt thanks to all of you who contributed to this year’s edition of the PMC, and our team.  I feel that we can share a little victory here, a moment of focus not so much on this disease, but on the greatness of the human spirit in adversity.   We can endure; We can ride bikes; We can tell jokes;  We can see beyond ourselves and make room for others in our hearts.  We can refuse to let this illness mean we give up living.  Thank you!

The first leg, Wellesley to Bourne via an 85-mile backroads route, is over.  Finished in the top 10, although without a watch or computer I have no real idea how long it took.  Something around 4 hours.  We had great weather, beautiful sun and dry conditions (yes! dry!) made for a lot of happy riders.  Very excited to be writing this at 2 pm from beautiful, peaceful accommodations at the Converse Point Farm, where Sam’s cousin and my good friend Charlie Merrow is hosting me for the evening.  I’m tucking into two bagels with cream cheese and a cappuccino; every long ride should end like this.

My sister, Nikki, deserves a super shout out for designing and maintaining this site, and helping me to post this today.  Thanks Sis!

Quick reflections:

• Dad got up at 5am to drive me to the start (wisdom getting the best of valor this morning) and will be meeting me to ride back from Wellesley to JP on Sunday (valor will have its moment, too).
• Lots of cool bike gear, way more gear than legs to ride it!
• As the Star Spangled Banner was sung over the microphone the sound of 2,000 people softly singing along…. I’m not one for this pageant but it was pretty cool
• Good-natured competition; lots of attempts to get organized into something speedy, then lots of fair play moves that broke it up; just right for the day
• Ran into Uta Pippig for the second year in a row.  We rode together and chatted for a good stretch of the way.  What a champion.
• What a difference a year makes.

Ted Smith joins the Jersey Crew, welcome Ted! Brings us to about the 3K mark, awesome.

Sending thoughts to the brave people of Iran now standing up against the regime, and to the liberal leaders who have followed their lead

add Charlie Merrow to the Jersey Crew list, and total for PMC is now 2490! Way to go PMC team! Raining in VT, no bike today, but hoping…

We’ve recently gotten word out to a whole new group of folks about the ride, people who are my Dad’s friends and want to give support.  Since Dad and Nancy do work all over the country (and the world!) their friend network is everywhere, too.  Pretty cool, we’re starting to get support from Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, etc.  I know Dad’s done some work in Sweden, so I’m waiting for the first donation in krona.

Seriously though, very excited to see that we have made this effort more global, giving more folks an opportunity to be involved.