Dream Weekend

Im finally on the road! I have been in San Diego since thursday night and I have had a great weekend, maybe the best ever...

The day before I took off (Wed), I had an interview with Good Day Sacramento. They showed up at my house at 7am and they stayed til 10. We did 3 different live spots and we taped a piece that played at 4 and 6 that night. It was a lot of fun.


As we were driving down on thursday I got a call from Ryan Burnett at Scripps Research Institute who told me to Call Marisela Chavez who gav e me the number of a reporter at a radio station. I called KPBS and the reporter recorded our conversation to be aired at a later date...

The next morning I visited the Fox studio in SD and had a 5 minute live interview that was a lot of fun. I hung out in the green room and visited with another guest who was going on to talk about the demand for nurses and the nurse shortage in the San Diego area. I went on the set with crazy lights and cameras and anchor people, they were hea ily promoting the Monster Truck Jam...Check out this link to watch the interview: http://www.fox6.com/mediacenter/#top


That day I also visited the research team at Scripps Research institute. I went in and we chatted for a while about all the great things that are happening in FA research right now. The whole team at the Joel Gottesfeld (I hope I spelled that right) lab is great and I am glad I got to meet them and check out their lab. They are working on a certain compound that htey have found that can reverse the effects of FA in their cell models, it is very promising because it has not been found to be toxic at this point and they are constantly improving their product.


A sweet San Diego sunset on a Friday night:


That night some friends showed up and we went out in Downtown SD. We went to this Irish pub and about every 25 minutes someone new would show up, someone that I hadnt seen in a couple of years, it was a trip. I took my first rickshaw ride back to the car that night...


Saturday we hung out at Ocean Beach at my good buddy Sean Farrell's place and played Beer Die, foosball and frisbee. It reminded me of Pine Lane in Davis...(by the way, thanks Farrell, for letting us take over your pad for the weekend). That night we went out in OB and Adam got kicked out of a bar and we all had a great time...



Just before we went out that night, my parents showed up and got settled in at Mr. and Mrs. Farrell's place in Coronado. Thank you, Denny and Eilene, for your hospitality.


Sunday morning I got a call from a local ABC station who wanted to do an interview that day. I told the anchor person that I was going to lunch with friends at 11am. She told me they would be over in 30 minutes. The interview was a lot of fun and I made it to lunch fashionably late.


Sean is a Brewer at Coronado brewing company so we had lunch at his brewery and everybody enjoyed his hand crafted brew and the informative tour that followed...

All of this led up to this morning...the departure. The day was finally here, after a year of planning, it was go time...

I showed up at Scripps Research Institute at aboout 8:05 and was flagged down by an anchor for KUSI, a local news station. He had me jump out of the car and we did a live in terview about 15 seconds later. After that, I was greeted by all my friends and family along with the research team at Scripps, thee head of the lab Joel Gottesfeld, the head of the National Ataxia Foundation San Diego support group Earl Mclaughlin, and the president of the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance, Ron Bartek. Ron told me that he is working with NAF (National Ataxia Foundation) to fund a joint project where both organizations will research, review and fund the project. The money that I raise will be shared evenly between the organizations to get this project started. I received an email from Mike Parent, the head of NAF saying the same thing. I couldnt be happier with the outcome of this effort, both organizations have meant so much to me in the past couple of years.


Now we are on the road...finally. Today we started in La Jolla and rode 37 miles to Lakeside, CA. We started with 9 people including a few new friends. We started out in La Jolla and rode down hill for about 25 miles. The last 12 miles were slichtly uphill and toe=ward the end of the ride we ran across a guy who said "u headed to Lake Jennings? Thats quite a climb." however, it wasnt too bad. Right now we are at an elevation of 500' and tomorrow we will end up at 3800'...hooray. The weather was great, the company was better and I am ready to do it again about 50 or 60 more times.