― Shorinjiryu Ryujin Kenpo
Sunday was the first of the four BikeMS events I'm doing this year. Watching the looming forecast, Alicia and I were texting each other: "Which route are you doing?" "Are waterproof socks really waterproof?" "Do you put nitrile gloves under or over your other full-fingered gloves?" "How many layers are you wearing?" And, "Why do we do this?"
We decided that MS doesn't take a break, people with MS don't have a choice about whether they're going to deal with it on a particular day, MS doesn't care if it is 40 degrees, rainy, and windy. And, so, neither were we.
Well, thankfully, the MS Society decided to cancel the long route due to potential flooding and then cancel the next-longest route due to the fact that hardly anyone would ride it and they didn't want to punish their volunteers. So, we did a fun, albeit cold, wet, windy short ride around the cities with our teammates Andy and Mike, running into some of our other teammates along the way: Carmen, who designs our team logos, and Saunya and her two children, who were wearing the most creatively designed garbage-bag-and-duct-tape rain gear.
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| Kelly, the woman in orange, volunteers for all the rides. She's awesome. |
Andy lives near me, so he and I decided to ride the 4 miles to the start of the bike ride. We were pretty chilly and wet when we got there, due to the fact that he got a flat tire roughly 1 mile from my house, but were surprised and happy to see that Alicia and Mike waited for us. (p.s. Why it can be good to ride with others: Andy inadvertently had packed the wrong type of tube, so needed mine. Plus, we were able to share some pump-pumping arm energy and each take a turn prying the edge of the tire over the rim.)
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| Andy, looking for his flat-fixing stuff. |
All was better after the ride, because the MS Society had moved all of the post-ride events to inside the Surly brewery, instead of in the tents in the soggy field. We had donuts, beer, coffee, and pizza - - way more food than we needed for our caloric output, although I think I did use more calories shivering than biking.
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| Saunya and Alicia. Their energy and humor in one week is equivalent to an entire lifetime of my energy and humor. They make things fun. |
So, this experience serves as a reminder that this could happen again, as it has on the MS150 and on the Ride Across Minnesota, and that I will survive - especially because it *should be* warmer during those rides and hopefully my Raynaudsy hands and feet will get a break. (Although with temps in the low 30s last night, I'm done trying to predict what is normal weather.)
I also acquired a fun event t-shirt to add to my collection!
Here we go - - - BikeMS season is underway! Just a couple of weeks until the MS150!
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| Cannot take selfies and smile. Too hard to do both at the same time. |
Here we go - - - BikeMS season is underway! Just a couple of weeks until the MS150!
(p.s. I've never done the Twin Cities Ride before, only the longer, multi-day rides. It's a great way for people who can't commit more than a few hours to make a difference in the fight against MS. It is sort of a one-off for our team: most of our riders just do the MS150, but we raised about $3000 for the MS Society with this ride (1/3 of which was raised by those little kids!), which isn't too shabby.)
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