TL;DR version: Ride was awesome! You can still donate to Sarah's fundraising at:
every penny is appreciated!
Long-winded but potentially more entertaining version: My older brother Frank was diagnosed with MS in 1993. Since 2003 I’ve ridden in the Bike MS fundraisers, and my older daughter Sarah has been asking for the last few years when she could ride with me. Minimum age is 12, and she turned 12 in December.
So I signed us up for the Maryland chapter’s “Chesapeake Challenge” and bought her some gear. We did not train much. Last Friday we embarked on a four-day daddy-daughter weekend which included:
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10 hours in the car Friday
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Dinner with brother Frank, neice Colleen, and sister Jo at Adam’s “The Place For Ribs” in Edgewater MD Friday night. In my book, it's "The ONLY Place For Ribs". Sarah crushed a half-rack platter with mashed potatoes and broccoli. My tapeworm and I enjoyed the full-rack platter with applesauce and baked potato.
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34 miles of road riding on mountain bikes Saturday (Sarah’s bike has slicks, mine does not)
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BBQ Saturday night
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30 miles of road riding Sunday
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BBQ Sunday lunch
Then we drove to Ocean City MD to spend the night at sister Terry’s condo at the beach, and had dinner at a restaurant on Assawoman Bay. Through the magic of Facebook I found out that my high-school buddy Charlie was house-sitting nearby, and he volunteered to take us out on Assateague Island National Seashore in his 4x4 pickup for a drive on the beach and a sunset bonfire. Assateague is populated with wild ponies, Sika deer, and some kind of “purple plover” (iirc) which is an endangered bird that is currently mating there. Sarah goes to horse camp in the summer, so she nearly went through the roof of the truck when she saw the ponies aimlessly wandering around. The plovers kinda bummed us out because the rangers closed a portion of the beach due to the hatchlings wandering around. Like the home-schooling dorks that we are, we talked to the rangers for about 30 minutes and learned a bit about the birds and their population status over the last 20 years.
Our fire was doused prematurely by a rogue wave, so we packed it up and headed back to the condo, but not before trying to help some high-school kids who did not avoid the rising tide and sunk daddy’s 2014 F250 up to the axles in Assateague sand. We were unable to unstuck that behemoth, so we bailed and left them to pull up their big-boy pants and deal with it themselves.
Monday morning we hit the salt-water taffy store, then made the 11-hour trek from Ocean City to Canton.
Overall, I’m very proud of Sarah. She chose to do something she had only heard described as “pretty hard”, she gutted out some tough miles bucking a headwind on Saturday, she did not complain or talk of quitting, and she saddled up on Sunday to do it all over again. Together, we raised nearly five grand for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. And more importantly, we spent four straight days together, saw some cool stuff, and built some memories that will (I hope) last her a lifetime. :-)
Donations deadline is Jul 31, so if you're still on the fence about contributing, I hope this ride report pushes you over. To the donation side, I mean. ;-)
Link to donate to Sarah's fundraising effort:
every penny is appreciated!
Donors to Sarah's effort can look for her ride report in about a week.
