September 19, 2009

Yo DaVitans!

It has been awhile, no time to write on the Tour DaVita, plus it is difficult to do laptop stuff in a tiny tent!

First, the bottom line on my weight here on my first morning home … I don’t know. I rewarded myself with pizza last night, which means I always retain a lot of water for a couple days. So I will next weigh myself on Monday morning.

The Tour was GLORIOUS once again. We had 221 riders from all over the country, and in all positions within the Village. Most of them rode far more than they EVER thought they could or would. They have raised about $450,000 so far.  The Tour helps to support The Kidney TRUST charity, which is dedicated to building awareness to fight kidney disease.

I got in Sunday night about 10:30 p.m., and was shown to my tent. Reveille was played at 6 a.m., so we all crawled out into the early morning chill, ate some breakfast and got the outline of the day’s ride. We gathered at the starting point, did one final loud “One for All & All for One” and set out on an 81, that’s right, an 81 mile ride.

It is important to emphasize that it was NOT important to ride every mile. The ONLY important thing was to ride as far as you could, with every mile leading to more contributions for a great cause. In fact, in camp, a totally fine answer to the question “How far did you ride today?” was “As far as I could”.

We called that “The Spirit of the Ride“. Each day we would ask ourselves three questions — What will we create? What will we respect? What will we remember? The answer to each question, yelled out by 221 wonderful teammates, was “The Spirit of the Ride.”  That phrase means many things, among them the fact that on the ride we would watch out for each other, help each other, support each other, be a strong community and a moving Village.

And it happened! Just like last year! People made new and great friends; people picked each other up right when they thought they could not go another mile.

After the first day, people showered, ate a good dinner and then met in a big lodge for an evening meeting. Each night we had some “We Are Here” cheers and an “open mic” (microphone) session where people could share their experiences and thank teammates who were Special to them that day. Beautiful stuff….

The local TV stations and newspapers covered the launching of the ride (and each following day as well it turned out), which made it very Fun.

More on the ride in my next entry, have a good day!

One for All,

KT