jimsjournal
| Chad & Dad -- 09/05/02 |
I vaguely recall mentioning (but can't find where I might have mentioned it, so I'll just mention it again) a website (HudsonValleyclickhere.com) that my brother built, partly as a sideline to the web design and computer consulting that he does and probably partly to give him another place to provide publicity for JDRF (You may remember them as the JDF -- Juvenile Diabetes Foundation -- but they have renamed themselves the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in order to underscore that the purpose of the organization is not to distribute educational pamphlets, but to fund the research that will find a cure). The reason I bring this up is not just to stick in a plug for JDF (although I can't resist noting that this is a fantastic group that has raised millions and millions of dollars for research into finding a cure for diabetes) but to put in a plug for a one hundred mile fund-raising bike ride that my brother and my nephew have entered.
| The Chad and Dad Bike Ride |
On October 26th, my brother Charlie and his son Chad will participate in a JDRF fund-raiser, a bike ride across Death Valley. Actually, there are three different courses that day: "Backwater and Back" -- 36 miles; "The Metric Century" -- 62 miles (100 kilometers); and "The Century Challenge" -- 105 miles. So guess which one Charlie and Chad intend to ride? Yes, the 105 mile route. After my brother had a pacemaker implanted, his wife made him promise to stop running marathons. (He tells her not to worry, this is easier because he can do it sitting down.) Chad is thirty and has had Type 1 diabetes since just before turning two (in fact, he celebrated his second birthday in the hospital where he had just come out of a diabetic coma). He hasn't let that slow him down any. He was riding two-wheeler bikes while still nursery school age and quickly got into BMX-style bicycle racing (as a teenager he was perennially one of the top ranked riders in New York State). For years their back yard was filled with a huge wooden half-pipe ramp for skateboard and bicycle stunt practice. The half-pipe was taken down several years ago, but Chad has expanded his repertoire to include mountain bike racing, running, and triathlon competition. (Professionally, he's a graphics designer.)
[Need I mention that both Chad and Charlie look years younger than their actual ages -- but Charlie is only three years younger than I am, having turned 56 at the end of August. Oh, yes, and my sister-in-law has the patience and forbearance of a saint.]
They've pledged to raise a minumum of three thousand dollars each through donations and pledges of support. If you are so inclined, clicking on Chad and Dad will bring you to a brief description of what they are planning... and that, in turn, has a link to a pledge form that you could print and send in with a donation.
I worked from home today. This means that I started working before 6 a.m. and didn't wrap things up until almost 10 p.m. But don't think that I spent sixteen hours slaving away.... I went out for a nice four mile run around noon time, took a shower, ate lunch, returned some books to the library, got four loads of laundry done, fixed dinner for me and Nancy (my son and a buddy of his played video games after school and then split a pizza and had gone off to their scout meeting around 6pm)... oh yeah, and I wrote this entry... so figure I actually only worked about eleven hours... but I mostly worked at my dining room table (the first couple of hours I was at my desk in the den) where I have so much more room to spread stuff around than I do in my DilbertCube and can work much more efficiently... and saved driving forty-one miles round trip and also saved having to feed the Newport Bridge Troll two tokens.
previous entry