Getting Cold Feet and Adjusting My Attitude

Big week!  Katelyn earned her Great Cycle Challenge jersey for hitting $500 dollars in fundraising

There are only four more weeks until we hop onboard a plane and fly north at 400 miles an hour only to turn around and take a much windier route back south at 10 miles an hour.  I really feel like I'm a bride and this is my wedding; and I'm now second guessing everything: did I pick the right dress, are people going to show up? Should I have gone with the fish instead of the chicken?  AM I REALLY READY TO  GET MARRIED?  There are certainly equivalent questions about our trip.   Did I really need to get a trailer?  How am I going to manage these hills?  What if we burn out on day three?  ARE WE READY TO DO THIS?   The answers to all these questions  will of course work themselves out.  But as to how I get past my cold feet brings me to the real thing I want to write about today: really awesome people.  Let me explain.

All smiles before our weekly Monday night ride with 40 other riders

I  spent this past week really finalizing our itinerary.  We have had to tweak a town here and there in order to ride between towns and not get caught where we could not find food or lodging.   This was the part of the planning I  least looked forward to.  I knew that spending $$ on 30 nights of lodging was going to really hurt our trip budget--especially when we would be eating out all of our meals.  There was a traveler, however, from years ago that rode for a charity and suggested that we contact hotels and ask if they would be willing to offer a discount rate since we were riding to raise money for a good cause.   So I started making phone calls and emailing the motels/hotels in our route.    And you know what?  I found that my heart melted when I realized that on our ride, we have people cheering us on and rooting for us to succeed.  Almost every person I spoke to was willing to provide a discounted room. And it wasn't reluctantly, it was enthusiastically!

Tired legs means short walks to the ocean from the Hallmark Resort!

Then, the flood gates of kindness flung open.  I spoke to Dee Harguth who runs the Sheltered Nook on Tillamook Bay--they have the most awesome tiny homes you have ever seen--and she wanted to support our cancer ride by offering us a complimentary home for the night!  I was kind of blown away by that--just the kindest thing to do.  Then, more places of lodging also offered to allow us to stay as sponsored guests--The Holiday Inn Express in Astoria, The Hallmark Resort in Newport, The Pacific Reef Hotel in Gold Beach, The Sherwood Forest Motel in Garberville, and Hotel Via in San Francisco!  That list does not even include the other locations that offered us really generous discounts as well.  I really look forward to meeting these people and sharing more about them and their locations while on my trip.

Who would NOT want to stay in one of these Tiny Homes!  Can't wait to visit Tillamook!

One more story.  In one of the resorts I contacted,  they shared that one of their employees was currently going through chemo and radiation AND had a two year old daughter with a rare form of breast cancer.  This ride is no longer faceless to me.  It isn't about raising money for some non-profit.  It comes back to what I said in the beginning: I get past my cold feet by thinking about the people we will meet in the next town that believe in what we are doing just as much as we do; and then the people in the town after that.

So what is our commitment level to seeing this through?  We are ALL IN.

here's the link--hope you will sponsor our ride!

I am seeing my reason to ride a little differently now!