Everything around us becomes better too.

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I spent the past weekend riding my bike with 3500 other people. 46 of them, plus a few extra others who joined us during the weekend, are really special to me. Many of them are in this photo. 

Stacy's Cycling Supporters 2018

These riders and our team tent volunteers have gone outside of their comfort zones in their own ways. For some, it is the training and riding that is hard. For others, it is signing up for a two-day event with people they don't even know (a lot of our riders were introduced to us by a friend, or a friend of a friend). For others, it is setting an ambitious fundraising goal and asking people to donate. For others, it is skipping their kid's birthday.

My teammate Paul made this super cool video that shows a lot of our team and explains why we've done this for the past 9 years (or, in the case of Dave S. one of our two fundraisers extraordinaire, even longer):

https://www.facebook.com/paul.noll.16/videos/2098940423468512/

Matt and me finishing Day 1

Mark from the MS Society came to our tent
to tell us how our great team is.
We knew it already, but it still felt pretty fantastic,
despite the sedate look on my face.

My friend Jen, who is in the health care field, told me about a patient she saw today - a single mother in her 30s with children, who has MS and needs her mother to care for both her and her children. The woman wants to improve enough to be able to do a BikeMS event. If the woman is able to ride some year, we'd be honored to have her on our team. In the meantime, I will add her to the list of people for whom I will be riding during the Ride Across Minnesota in July.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/Maggie2018TourDeMN