Bike MS

Just wanted to do a quick recap of my bike MS journey with my dad.  I signed up to ride on the Dream Team lead by Charlie N whose wife has been living with MS for many years.

My dad Joe and I at the start

 The other thing that was neat about fundraising with the Dream Team was Charlie's decision to try and find a person who has MS for every mile we rode.  We were looking for 100 people.  In the end we ended up with 88 (if you know a few more people let us know as our goal is to have 100 by next year.)  He called the effort Mile and Miles 4 MS.

As you may remember I did the MS ride last year with Joe.  We did a quick 25 miles on roads in the Ames area.  This year the ride was out of Ankeny and all on trails.  I fully expected I would be riding alone as most of my team planned to do the 100 mile route.  I mentioned it to my dad, husband and a few of my training buddies.

In the end one of my Marching Band alumni friend's signed up to do 25 miles and we met him at the start.  Even better my dad, who is riding RAGBRAI later this month, decided to keep me company on the ride.  We planned to do the 50 mile ride and just go easy and have a nice time together.

A week or so before the ride one of the MS Society liaisons from the metro reached out to me to introduced herself (Molly) and we had a nice email exchange telling our MS stories.  It was great to finally meet her at the ride start.  As I mentioned last year one of my goals on these rides is to make new MS friends.  I did have the opportunity to meet a lovely couple when we were at Woodward.  As you may notice in my photo some of the riders with MS have a jersey like mine that says so.  I met John from Humbolt as we were getting ready to make our return trip to Ankeny.  He is also new in the journey but was enjoying the day on the trail like we were.

It was perfect weather.  The trail was full of RAGBRAI trainees and MS riders and it was a friendly group of folks we encountered.  When we got to Slater around mile 38 we ran into my MS friend Bob and a couple of other people from my MS support group who have progressive forms of MS.  It was great to see them out on their trikes keeping things moving.

We wrapped up our ride, very hungry, at the Firetrucker Brewery in Ankeny.  My band friend pulled me aside when we got there to meet and interesting couple Dave and Koreen (who has MS).  They are doing MS rides in every state and Iowa was their 38th state.  You can check out their FB site here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Koreen-Bike-the-US-4-MS/220645411329692?fref=ts

All in all it was a great day.  There is still a couple of days left for folks to make a donation to my team's fundraising effort.  If you are interested check out this link.  Thank you to all the wonderful friends, family and coworkers who donated this year.  With your help we will find a way to repair, stop and cure MS.