September 20, 2008

Yo DaVita !!

I did not get to bed until after midnight on Monday — too many operating details to worry about, and it was too much fun to have little conversations with teammates from all positions around the Village.

Therefore the 6 a.m. LOUD wake-up music over the campground felt early, especially given it was 4 a.m. California time.

Tuesday’s ride was a tough one. It was the shortest of the three full days, “only” 67 miles. But there were a reasonable amount of hills, and a WICKED headwind for most of the day. In addition, the afternoon was much tougher than the morning, which is always psychologically challenging, especially as we did not know this when we rolled out from lunch.

The highlight of the day for many of us was visiting the Shawano clinic. One of the nurses, Renee Heder who was present at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Shawano clinic in 1992 is now the FA of our Titletown clinic in Green Bay. One of the city officials actually had a copy of the newspaper article and picture from the groundbreaking so we could see what Renee looked like in 1992. Renee was also on the ride, so that was great fun. Many of the teammates in these clinics have been in dialysis for more than 15 years!

One of the Shawano patients had some beautiful thanks to convey to his caregivers. The Mayor and Town Chairman also conveyed much gratitude for our local care giving and the awesome contribution the Tour was making to fight kidney disease in America. The local school band did a great job of welcoming us as well, they seemed to get a little nervous as 221 dirty riders surrounded them more and more closely with each song.

The evening brought us to Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Our first night ever on the Tour where riders stayed in motels/hotels (by the way we had five nephrologists on the ride, and many spouses!).  Lambeau Field is impressive. Donald Driver, our outside speaker, was a big hit, although he took a lot of shots at little old me!  I can’t understand why the audience seemed to like that so much, it only encouraged him to do more….. We did an open mic, we did some “We Are Here” cheers, we conveyed thanks from a DaVita Village Network (DVN) recipient and more.

Donald and his agent were so “impressed and moved” by their DaVita experience that they offered to go to the Packers the next day and request donations of Packer stuff for DaVita to auction off to raise money for the DaVita Village Network.

All in all it was a full day!

One for All,

KT

(Funny thing in life … both those that say they can do something difficult, and those that say they can’t … are usually right)