Monday, September 25, 2006

Ride Ataxia Events: International Ataxia Awareness Day

Today was International Ataxia Awareness Day. We had two fundraising events, at two different places. One event was held at Round Table Pizza in Grass Valley (Lake of the Pines), and one in Martinez. My cousin, Angela organized the event in Martinez.

We had a great turnout at both locations, raising about $1,500 at each location. The line for ordering Pizza was out the door for about an hour. I will total up all the donations up to this point to see where we are at, I think we should be close to half way to $30,000.

Thank you to everyone who came out to support the cause, it was a good night.

In the spirit of International Ataxia Awareness Day, check out this article on the promising new Friedreich's Ataxia Research:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-08/sri-srt082106.php




Monday, September 18, 2006

Lots Going On....

It has been a while...Since the last post we have had a few meetings, A poker tournament, a trip to Alaska, a couple weddings, lots of work...and not much riding. But things are changing. I rode to work three times last week for a total of about 65 miles during the week. However I was very sluggish because I had not been on the trike for about 4 weeks. This week I am finding all sorts of excuses not to ride but hopefully I will make it at least 2 days.

A few weeks ago, my friend Lindsey came over to help us get organized. Lindsey is in grad school in rganizational Studies so she helped us get all our ideas out and on paper, then we assigned specific tasks. It was great to get all the stuff out of our heads where everybody on our team (Me, Mom and Dad) could see. By the end of the night we had covered the entire dining room in butcher paper.


The Ride Ataxia Poker tournament at Brown and Caldwell, Sacramento was a blast. We had about 20 participants and raised over $600. It was more successful than anticipated. Look at those intense Poker faces:


The day after the poker tournament, My Dad, My Brother and I left for Alaska for a week of fishing. It was a killer trip to the middle of nowhere. We did not catch as many fish as we thought we would, but we caught the biggest fish I had ever seen in person, I layed down next to it for some perspective:


International Ataxia awareness Day is coming up. We are having pizza night in two locations that night(September 25). Obviously I cannot be in both places, so yesterday I filmed a video to send to Martinez so they can pretend I am really there. Hopefully the video will turn out good, I am sure it will because we have the best in the business (Matt Pegler of Brown and Caldwell) doing the editing.

Thats all for now, I would like to update more often and I will have some details about the actual ride soon. Don't forget International Ataxia Awareness Day September 25!