40 miles = Memorial Day weekend

Memorial Day weekend was filled with lots of housework (inside and outside) as well as a fun ride. Here are a few shots from our weekend.

1. The Super Beer Bag from a quick trip to Marshes Liquor store to start the weekend.

2. Megan gearing up for our 40 miler around the South Shore. We stopped in Scituate at the Coffee Corner 1/2 way through our ride for some more fuel. Jelly donuts, yum!

3. A little Memorial Day weekend celebration at TK O'Malleys prior to seeing Indiana Jones 4.

Orientation

Last week, we spent an evening at PMC headquarters in Needham MA. It was for a required orientation meeting that focused on logistics, training information and inspirational stories. To be quite honest, I was thinking that this would be a waste of time, but I went in with an open mind. As everyone filtered into the back part of the PMC's office, basically a large warehouse, Megan and I looked around to see what other PMCers looked like. Most were what you would expect: white, heterosexual, mix of male/female, 40s - 50s, primarily white collar. There were also some that were much older and much younger in the group as well with a few different races sprinkled in there for good measure. Megan and I did feel quite young: bonus! But of course, it's not about who is participating, it is simply that there are 5,460 people riding this August with another 1,865 volunteers.

At the end of the night, I found that the most valuable portion of the night was indeed the inspirational stories. We heard a variety of stories from the beginning of the PMC to a cancer survivor to someone who works day-in and day-out with kids at Dana Farber. I stand corrected and was glad to have been in the presence of such inspirational, hard-working, compassionate people.


June is almost upon us and this will signal a ramp up in both training and fundraising as the number of sunny days increases (fingers crossed).

Cross Training 3.0

So Megan and I had very ambitious plans this past weekend! We were on tap to babysit our two nieces (ages 8 and 2) and our nephew (age 5) as a favor for Megan's sister and brother-in-law. They were escaping for a much needed getaway to Maine. We brought up "the boys" and with their dog, Jake and cat, Max, we were responsible for a whopping total of 3 children, 3 dogs and 1 cat. Somehow we thought that we'd also bring up our road bikes to squeeze in a ride, and I brought my surfboard since we were so close to Hampton Beach.

Little did we know that, Mother Nature and scheduled activities prevented us from doing anything related to outdoors excursions. The minute that we arrived, we were immediately immersed in teeball practices, softball practices, teeball ceremonies and softball ceremonies. The weather didn't exactly cooperate with us since it was either raining or had just rained or was about to rain pretty much the entire weekend.

Of course we had a blast with the kids! They were awesome, and we all had so much fun. I definitely feel that we had a physical and mental work out keeping up with the kids. My arms and lower back are pretty sore from lots of carrying kids, picking up toys and running after dogs. Mentally we're both shot from trying to keep track of them.

We'll have to send a note to the PMC that they should add babysitting to the list of activities in prepping for the ride.