Chris’ Journey

Wow. I cannot believe that I am done. It was an amazing trip and an amazing experience but I think I’m glad it’s over. Parts of me wish it never ended and parts of me couldn’t wait for it to end. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me along the way.

Today started off bright an early with an amazing breakfast made by the Cannone’s. We woke up around 6 and were at our starting point by 7:30. It was cold, cloudy, and exciting. My sister and her friend Kim drove in around 7:45 with my friend Brad Jurga, Steve Tirpak, and one of my best friends, Jake Shoemaker. It was nice to see some more familiar faces and finally made me realize that i was almost home.

Unfortunately today was no walk in the park in terms of riding. Shortly into the ride we began to encounter some pretty tough climbs. It was nice to have so many people around me motivating me. Dustin and Andrew were a little sore from yesterday and decided to ease off the pace a little bit and save up for the end of the day. We had a deadline to finish by 2 PM so we had to push the pace a little bit more than I would’ve liked. That pace had to be a little bit faster because we took about a 6-7 mile detour away from the route. We were suddenly in catch up mode and began to hammer our way back towards Holliston. I was extremely lucky to have everyone riding with me and helping me to the finish. Brad and Jake helped me so much all day after Steve decided to ease up for the finish as well.

I put everything I had into the climbs and the flats to try to get back to Holliston by 2. We did just under 6000 ft of climbing today which was the second most I had done in any day. It was a struggle. Luckily when we got within 20 miles of the finish another cycling friend of mine, Ian Rusk, came to the rescue and pulled us all towards the finish. We were in serious pain.

Ian, Brad, Jake, Andrew, Dustin and Steve finally made our way onto familiar roads as we entered Hopkinton. I was running on pure adrenaline at this point. My legs had no energy left in them and I probably wouldn’t have finished without the help of everyone riding with me. As we neared the finish we were joined by a few more cycling friends of mine from MRC. Cookie, Todd Savage, and my Aunt Judy all joined us for the last few miles. It was nice to have a big group to roll into the finish with.

The finish itself was awesome. The number of people who came out to welcome Aislinn and I back was unbelievable. Thank you so much to everyone who was there, wanted to be there, called me after I got there, anything. It was so nice. Two of my best friends, Adam and John, held up a big paper sign for me to ride through at the finish. I braced for impact as I hit it but luckily it tore very easily.

I then had the pleasure of meeting everyone who came out and supported me. I hope I was able to thank them all enough because I owe them all so much thanks for everything. Especially to Mary O’Donnell and Dr. Comenzo who came out to welcome me back. Mary O’donnell is the President of the Amyloidosis Research Foundation and has done so much to help me organize everything. She has been wonderful. And Dr. Comenzo is one of the best Amyloidosis Doctors in the world and we owe so much thanks to him for everything he has done for people like my mom. It was such an honor to finally meet them both.

I also need to thank everyone who rode with me today. Some of them woke up before 4 AM so that they could ride the whole day with me. It meant a lot to me that they were willing to give up their entire day to help me.

There are so many people I need to thank and I will never be able to thank everyone. I will try to over the next few days as I do my “Ride Summary” and my “debrief” and my “Thoughts” and “Reactions” and “Impressions” and “Observations” and a total sum up of the trip. I will write a post tomorrow during the day and a few more spread out over the next week or two. And Aislinn will be doing a post as well.

Until then I am going to sleep. Here are the pictures from Day 15. Aislinn will upload the pictures from Day 16 tomorrow.

Day 15

Thanks for reading. Thanks for everything.
Stephen

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.