CHEESEHEAD CENTRAL RIDE - DAY DOS

Man - Mr's Clark's favorite son is beat! Long day - up @ 6am, unloading the truck by 7:30, Bike Room work pretty much all dang day, interspersed w/ Coach Stuff, planning for the Lake Tahoe Ride (!!!) and such. Not it's 10-fiddy here-time and there are cyber-miles to go ere I sleep.

240 riders here, plus the crew, the staff, the volunteers......all gathered here on the muggy hot banks of the Mighty Miss-a-sip to take another crack @ giving ol' Type 1 a swift kick in the junk. I met New Team Guy Justine, talked w/ Back w/ Us and West Mi Riders Forever Mike and Jamie Colgan (I believe the exact quote from Mike was " There could be a local chapter next door - we're members of the West Mi team forever") and broke bread w/ Kevin O. I also met Alan - the first ever rider to represent the Metro Detroit Chapter! Met staffer Lauren too, a real go-getter that is all about doing the Program on their end of the state. Can't help thinkin' that's a good thing.

What a blast! Hugs and familiar faces, new bikes and old ones, Barry and his weird-ass saddle, John and his funny accent, crew guys I've only ever known in this context.......the whole giant enchilada. Damn - I love it and still can't believe they let me do this!

Tomorrow I'm gonna ride early w/ Mike M and Bill Marshall, then the coach's meeting @ breakfast, the rider's meeting, the tune up ride, the other meetings they have me doing, dinner, presentations......it'll be a full on sorta day to be sure.

And then.......on Saturday.....we ride.

We ride for all the reasons ya'll know all too well.

For people we love.

For folks we've not yet met.

For ourselves and 240 other utterly valid reasons.

I get all goose-bumpy just thinkin' about it!

I'll check in w/ you guys tomorrow - there oughta be tons of pics on the Ride FB page tomorrow too!

Good night from La Crosse my friends.

MC

La Crosse Ride - Day 1

I did such a lousy job of keepin' y'all posted when I was in VT last month that here I am - with not all that much to say....still, I promised my-own-self that I'd do a far better job this time 'round so.......here I am!

Jeremy, John J and I (w/ help from The Hellkaat) loaded up the truck this morning about 8:30 and headed west, bound for LaCrosse Wi and Ride to Cure #2. W/ my compadre Tim St Clair suddenly unavailable I go t"promoted" to Head Coach Guy for the weeked so J2 kindly offered to fill my flip-flops in the Bike Room w/ Berger. Given that we have 240 riders headin' this-a-way I lined up Noel Kegel (of the legendary Wheel and Sprocket Kegels) to meet us here as well. The Bike Room oughta be fine.

Hotter n' Hell here....92 when we pulled in @ 5:30pm. Tomorrow we set up the Bike Room and start settin' up bikes. I need to find time to drive the route and then there'll be that welcome dinner and all that and the whole dang shebang revs up again!

Whew!

I'll drop y'all a line fillin' ya in on the proceedings as they unfold. Stay tuned!

By the way - once again as I hang w/ JDRF Nat'l types I'm struck by the level of esteem w/ which our team is held in the General JDRF Universe. Sure is easy to be proud of bein' a member of our team! I wanted to take a sec to call out the members of the Ride Committee 'cuz they've been bustin' their butts for years now and all-too-often covering mine lately!

Anyway - I wanna thank 'em and when you run across 'em @ the next ride or whatever you might wanna too!

Long time Committee guy and now Co-Coach Derek "Did" Dykstra
Current Committee Leader and past Coach Nicole Nelles
Long time Committee Leader and web-whiz Katie Clark
Long time Committee Member and Van Andel architect Cindy Aley
New this year Committee Member and $ guy Tom Miller
New this year and legal eagle JD Stone.

I'd be remiss-as-all-get-out to not call out past members John Jasker, Rob Andro & Sarah Andro as well!

Sigh - It's late, been a long day and it occurs to me that I'm virtually guaranteed to forget a name or 2. I'll fix it later.

So - keep riding, keep rising $, keep hangin' w/each other, krp caring, keep being the extra-exceptional folks you are!

See you soon.............Coach Mike

Team Ride Approacheth yet again

HiHo, did the coach here, quietly melting in the 400% humidity and thinking wistfully of the nice dry desert air... aaaaah, dry heat. So nice. Barely two months away...

Anyway, gotta keep riding, eh? So, Team Ride this Sunday, August 15! Sadly, we'll be minus Coach MC, as he'll be rolling home from the LaCrosse, Wisconsin ride - but then again, he's going to a JDRF Ride Event so my sympathy is somewhat limited.

On that note, hey, our bus driver extraordinaire Kevin Owens will be over there, as will Justin Barnaby from Ithaca, MI and our suburban Chicago father-and-daughter teammates Mike and Jamie Colgan. Someday, we will all meet the Justin and Colgans; until then, hey, they're part of the greater Us and so... propel them with your thoughts on Saturday!

So, how 'bout all y'all come riding up my way this time? How 'bout we ride from Lions Park (mappity map: http://tinyurl.com/LionsParkWhitehall) in Whitehall? We ain't never done that before! How 'bout we plan on... well, hold on a sec, here. New concept in team rides!

I have two loops. One loop is a bit shy of 41 miles, and goes South of Whitehall in to North Muskegon. It's basically flat, and pretty scenic. You'll see Lake Mich-e-coli up close.

Loop two is a bit shy of 31 miles, goes North up to New Era, and is... rolling. Now, none of the big hills are as vicious as the ones I subjected my wife too last Friday (I was the recipient of some emphatic non-verbal communication after those), and in fact are very reminiscent of Jubilee Pass in terms of grade, if not length. They're good training. Really.

So, how 'bout this: if you want to hit the hilly route, be at the start at 9:45 so we can roll out at 10 am. Note that due to this route being basically out-and-back, you could cut off some of the hills quite easily.

If you not feeling like you wanna bust an up, or if the early start doesn't work for ya, be at the start at 12:15 and we'll shoot for a 12:30 pm rollout for the 40-something Beach Route.

The two combined will be about 71.5 miles of really nice riding.

And then we'll sit around and do some noshing - not gonna grill or anything, but feel free to bring some of the usual snacks and stuff.

Clear as mud? Smart as a rock? Tight as a... not very tight thing? Contact me if you've got questions; my info will be in your email, if you don't have it already...

**********************************

NOTE CHANGED RIDE START POINT!!!!!

Goodrich Park is the site of the White Lake Maritime Festival - they'll be cleaning up from that Sunday morning, so we'll start the ride from a park basically across the street from there. Once we're done riding, Goodrich Park should be available so we can all go over there and play on the playground equipment.

ANYONE WANNA RIDE TOMORROW?????

So - as you might be aware - we're throwing a big all day ride here @ the shop on Sunday. On the off-chance that the idea of a 200 mile ride is less than compelling I wanted y'all to know that there will be several shorter options.

Here's the scoop:

We're rolling @ 6:40am (approx, 'cuz everything about a Shut Up & Ride Club ride is "approx") to do a loop of the Holland Hundred from 2006. That'll be a somewhat different route than this year's to allevate boredom, plus we'll probably go backwards as well. So you could join us for that..or a portion thereof.

We'll be rollin' back to (or at least near) the shop sometime in the early afternoon.....hard to say exactly when 'natch....and then we're heading up to G.H. so you could climb aboard the train for that chunk as well. After we get back from G.H. (Nope - no hill repeats!) we;ll see how many miles we need and probably head out N.E. of Zeeland.

Feel free to gimme a call as we roll through the day to see when/where you might could hook up w/ us. 616-610-0334

Whether I have the pleasure of your company tomorow or not - you guys re-define "rocking" and as I head out to don my Head Coach Cap @ the LaCrosse Ride next week I promise to never forget that first, foremost and forever I'm a proud member of the West Michigan JDRF Ride Team. Y'all have a great, safe and fun training ride next Sunday - I hate like hell to miss it! - and I'll try and regale you w/ tales of Cheeseheads and all things Wisconsin-ish!

Ride on you rockstars!

Coach Mike

Wine Wednesday: Unofficial Ride Report

Last night's gathering, while not on the 'official' ride calendar, might rank up there as one of the best rides yet (If you don't believe me, go to my Facebook page and see the comments on the photos).

15 of us gathered after the ODRAM (have you registered yet?) committee meeting at Tom and Mary's house. Now...It's my understanding that Wine Wednesday (WW) started out as a little neighborhood thingy with Tom & Mary and the people on their street, then us JDRF peeps started coming too (No neighborhood people came last night. I wonder if we've scared them off?). Well, we're sure happy they invited us...15 people, 19ish miles, 40-45 mph max speeds on 7 Mile hill, lots of wine and ridiculously yummy goodies on the patio afterward. Bliss.

My favorite part was when we were chatting through our 'agenda' for the weekend in DV coming up...from the 'necessities' stop in Pahrump to when pool time happens to the date grove dinners to the warm up ride to anticipation of seeing MC in those plaid bibs to a retelling of the time I spewed mojito all over Tom & Mary... HOW many days till we get to leave?

Thanks Tom and Mary for having us. And sorry if we've scared off the neighbors.

Linda T-P

Amy F-F

Our lovely hosts Tom, Mary and Ian (no wine for you, mister)

Coach Did

Stewart

Nathen

Cindy

Chris R.

Mel

Sarah

Tom

Jeff

me

Adding some color to the blog

RIDE REPORT FOR 8/1/10

Y'know - I kinda don't wanna post this in a way......here in BlogVille the latest post always gets top billing and I sorta hate to push Did's uber-eloquent prose down the page. (If you wanna go read it again right now it's cool - I'll wait)

However - as we all know, life (and this Team), rolls on so on Sunday we gathered down @ Teresa and Mike Howard's in Wayland to do just exactly that!

In attendance were:

Coach Did and Ultra-Special-Guest Kirsten
Cindy and Steady-Special-Guest Greg
Tom, Mary and Ian
Becky and Chris
Linda and Scott
Tom M
JD
J2 (ask him about his new dance!)
Chris R
Mike H
Queen Linda
Steve (where's my water bottle?)
Walt (aka Mr Goldfish Crackers)
Brand-New-Special-Guest Penny
and...umm.....oh yeah, me.

So - off we went, bound for points south. 'Twas an ambitious bunch w/ 90.047% of the group opting for the longer 52 mile loop while Mike H and Linda C volunteered to cut it short to get the grill ready. (Way to take one for the Team guys!)
Misdirection reared it's ugly head fairly quickly for the lead group. We chose to venture off-route and add on 5-6 miles to avoid some fresh chip-seal (this is where Did chimes in w/ "kill it with fire!!!") and to hit a Shellmart 'cuz LPT was outta peach ring gummy candy stuff to adorn her bike with. Shortly thereafter we "missed" a turn, (okay - it was gravel but still.....we missed it) and found ourselves adrift in the wilderness. Correcting that oops required a furious chase of the leaders by yours truly but 'twas soon all good and onward we went. (By the way - if Did or Cindy try to sell ya a bill of goods by claiming to be in possession of a certain voice mail from me - it's a scam!)

Careful modification of the route allowed us to not only get back to Howards w/ the correct mileage (well - most of us) but also led to a regrouping of the 2 groups for the final 8 miles or so.

Nifty, eh?

Post-ride fellowship was observed breaking out almost immediately over hot dogs, mouthwash-promoting fresh salsa, various salads, many cupcakes ("mini" too!), pies and a B-Day cake for Greg. The less said about our rendition of Happy Birthday the better I fear.

And I'm still not sure if I'm bummed or relieved that Did spared that watermelon!

Seriously - this was just exactly the perfect way to close what has been a challenging and emotional week for many of us and I thank you all for that. Those of you that showed up Sat morning for the memorial - I thank you for that as well. I know for a fact that it meant the world to Stacey @ that time of imeasurable pain.

From the heart I say again - you guys rock.

So - the next Team Ride is on 8/15. It will be hosted by none other than Coach Derek and his team of eves waaaaaaaaaay up north inMontague and is not to be missed! Alas - I might be doing just that, since Berger, DeputyBikeRoomDude J2 and I will be comin' back from the Wisconsin Ride but we'll see.

Watch your inbox for an e-mail in the coming week or so w/ all the details.

So - we are less than 2 weeks from Wisconsin and less than 10 weeks from Death Valley! How are you doing? Fund Raising on track? Letters out? Feeling good on the bike? Got'cher hydration and nutrition working? If so - GREAT! If not - let us know, okay? Coach Derek and I are always right here to help w/ any bike or fitness related issues and the entire Ride Commitee stands poised to help w/ anything else.

Also - this here TeamBlogThingy is for all of us to use - to share rides, jokes, salsa recipes - to ask questions - to share stories or tall tales that might embarrass J2 - to talk to one another about way we're doing this Grand Thing and what it means to us. I'd r-e-a-l-l-y like to see a bit more activity so if you've been holding back............and you have something you'd like to share w/ the rest of the class - speak up! If you need to get set up to post here contact Katie Clark and she'll do her thing on the keyboard and.........voila! Off you go into the Blog-o-Sphere. (Your teen aged kids will be amazed!)

I for one would like to hear what'cha have to say.

Okay - enough for a Monday morn methinks. Keep up the Good Work, keep doin' what'cher doin', keep on keepin' on.

I pretty much love you guys y'know.

And am proud to be a memebr of this team.

See you soon, be safe!

Coach MC