May flowers and sunshine

Wow, it is finally May and we are now about a month and a half away from departure.  The weather has changed for the good and we even have had a couple of very hot (for Seattle) summer like days to assist my training.

Here are some update:

1.  I have found a foster for Apollo for the summer.  After significant contemplation, we have decided it would be best for him not to endure this trip and to have a stable home.  He will be staying with a high school girl and her mother near Gig Harbor.  Susie fell in love with Apollo upon meeting him and calls him the "Gentle Giant".  She lives in a safe gated community and it is a 5 minute walk to the beach, he loves the beach.  Plus he will have several dog friends that he can play with.  Susie is already planning a birthday party for him and has invited his new friends.  I will need to get him a bow tie to wear to this event.  I will take him to Susie on June 16, stay with him for some time to help get him settled in.  Then I will drive away with tears in my eyes fore I really love my dog.  But these will be good tears cause this will be much better for him and therefore me during this trip.  I already look forward to getting him back to Edmonds in September.  On a side note, Pipi will be very happy he is gone for the summer.  Man does she boss him around!

2.  The trip is going to more likely take me 10 weeks to get to Yorktown.  After checking blogs, highway maintenance, weather, my muscles, etc I think I will be arriving into Yorktown by Labor Day weekend.  Chelle will come out and meet me at the end.  We will say good bye to Tami and Loren who will fly home.  Then Chelle and I will start the drive back to west coast which will take about 2 weeks.  So, those who are planning on meeting us along the route, account for our estimation to be about a week later than originally planned.  I will also be in touch once I start and get used to the riding.  This will help guide my pace.

3.  My Grimes bike is now going to be a Niner.  Just needed a smaller frame which does not exist in the Grimes line of frames.  So Franco is going to send the Niner to me and I will get the parts switched over.  I still will have a great bike to get me across the country.

4.  Training is going well.  Last weekend I rode 70 miles and felt good.  I read training a great suggestion on the Adventure Cycling Association forums.  One guy posted "only ride so much each day that you do not feel you need a rest day.  If one rides too much and feel a rest day is necessary, time to cut back a bit."  My average will be 70 miles a day which is very doable.

So, May is a very busy month.  I am having an RTA (Ride to Astoria) planning meeting on May 18 at Karen's house with those going with me to Astoria.  I will officially leave west coast on June 20.

Thanks to everyone who have supported the trip on GoFundMe!  I truly appreciate this act of generosity and kindness.  Today I will call the Alzheimers Association to get them in the loop about my trip.

More soon.

Laurie

Armpits and Aluminum by Max Taylor

I remember off-white painted walls, and dull fluorescents. Stucco and old pain. It was not a good building, this place. People had a tendency of fading away, of sweeping their humanity underneath the cheap carpet.I was younger than I am now when I visited my grandmother in her Home. Not her home, where my grandfather lives in Wichita Falls, Texas, but the place she stayed once she couldn’t take care of herself- once she forgot most of the things that made her a person. It was called the House of Hope, which even now seems like a cruel twist of the knife. This was the place in which my grandmother died.  

She had this way of cocking her head and making vague little affirmations, as though she couldn’t really understand what was happening but wanted to appear confident. She was aware that something was wrong, that she should be able to remember the name of the woman in front of her- nearing the end she forgot my mother and much earlier than that she had forgotten me.

That doesn’t surprise me- with the vast distance between our two worlds, we were never incredibly close. She, the wife of a good christian, homemaker and docilely submissive. I, a young and burgeoning atheist seattleite. There are pictures of her holding me, and I cannot help but wonder what she thought of the tiny, squirming body in her arms. I will never ask her.

My grandmother cooked for her husband and daughters their whole lives, so we originally thought her Alzheimer’s had come from the aluminum in her cooking pans. For years afterwards I remember using this natural deodorant that smelled vaguely sappy and wouldn’t do a whole lot. We were careful in the kitchen.

You can imagine our relief when we found out that it instead had come from within- an incredibly rare gene passed on to her by her mother. That feeling only became more pronounced once we understood that it could be passed on to my mother and her siblings the same way. The gene that killed my grandmother is called “Presenilin 1”, and it’s a rather unusual one, as far as the world of genetics goes. Alzheimer’s is usually associated with the very old- doddering men and women forgetting where they are- but Presenilin 1 isn’t quite the same. As a gene mutation it expedites the process, and so the eventual buildup of plaque in the brain begins in the early fifties, rather than the average age, which is decades later. My grandmother began to show recognizable symptoms when she was fifty three. A lot of things about my mother’s mother began, then, to make more sense- the difficulty she had with performing certain actions, or recalling incredibly simple memories.

We got scared, and we got tested. Well, I didn’t.

My aunt Laurie was the first to get her results back.  This summer she’s biking across the country, and I think she understands the relevance of this. It’s her way of saying that she hasn’t lost to this. Her defiance of the plaque that will eventually build up within her brain. She’s fifty three this year, and we act careful. We try to let go of our clenched teeth when she forgets the keys or some other minutia. Alzheimer’s is the sleeping giant we tiptoe around.

I didn’t enter this equation until last year, when I sat on my deck with my mother and her husband Loren. We were waiting for the call from the man who had run the tests on my mom’s blood. Sitting there, I contemplated the branching paths of my future. Presenilin 1 is an autosomal dominant gene. This meant that if my mother had the gene, there was a one in two chance that I did as well. I didn’t want to be selfish; I knew that in the next few minutes I would have to be a beacon of support, but the idea of having a semi-permanent expiration date slapped on me was to say the least, fixating.

The phone rang, and I watched my mother pick up the phone, and crumble. We held her as she spoke to the other line, her body calm. She was a doctor, she knew how this worked. She had delivered a verdict like this many times before.

My birthday is on the eleventh of March. I will be eighteen in less than a month, and as an adult my first act will be to have my blood drawn, and sent to a lab to be tested for the presence of Presenilin 1. I’ve thought about whether it could be better just not to know. I know that I could never live like that. My body is mine, and I couldn’t close my eyes to something that might be a part of me- and it’s interesting, because it’s not cancer. People know what to do with cancer, how to feel about cancer. A young man with cancer is a tragedy, he gets to make a wish. A young man with Alzheimer’s is an outlier, a ticking bomb that takes decades to go off.

I’m a poet by nature, and I find a lot of tragic beauty in Alzheimer’s. It’s almost a theatrical device, it’s so perfect. It’s not dirty or gruesome, like some torture porn movie bought for cheap. Alzheimer’s is a tasteful fade to white, an art student’s wet dream, losing individual part of yourself, chunks of your life and the relationships you’ve formed in them. Faces, voices, touches. What it tasted like to have someone bite your lip on purpose. Feeling old leather inside of a closet. Being drunk and dancing. Being drunk and making mistakes. Falling. Climbing. Singing out of tune but feeling wonderful. I’m so afraid of losing that, and I’m terrified of the next thirty days.

And sometimes I hate my grandmother because she died and forgot what I looked like, but still managed to stick around for my eighteenth birthday to give me a present. Somedays I feel like a schroedinger’s cat, and the moment I open that box the four walls in my brain will fall and all of my life will pour out like old soup. Most days I just feel itchy.

But I’m proud too. Of my grandmother, who suffered for a long time but didn’t know why, who did the best that she could. Of my aunt, who still manages to be more hardcore than anyone I’ve ever met- who climbs mountains and eats trails for breakfast. And of my mother, who has a hard time being good enough for herself but is sure as hell trying harder than you are to be a good person. Who succeeded a long time ago but will never stop trying. Who makes me proud to be her son and proud to share in her struggle.

I don’t know how to end an essay about Alzheimer’s on a happy note- it doesn’t bring people together, or summon up any revelatory knowledge. It just sucks. This whole thing just really sucks. There’s love in me, and I feel it and I try to give it as often as I can. Alzheimer’s doesn’t change who you are- it just takes it from you.

This is something I wrote awhile back. It’s about all of this.

Alternate Names for my Grandmother

1.     wife of Joe

2.     dead wife of Joe

3.     ex-wife of Joe

4.     a Good Christian

5.     breather of rustbucket dust and aluminum scrubbing pans

6.     femininity restrained

7.     wife of Gooder Christian

8.     A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND

9.     jar with label- “Linda-good till the last drop”

10.  THE LAST DROP

11.  unfortunate, unintentional regifting

12.  from her to my mother and my mother to me-a ladderbacked plastic slide that crumbled beneath us

13.  or did she sharply snap?

14.  you’re Synapses         slowed down

15.  you’re Disease                        is in me now

16.  i know it’s not your fault but it's your face i see when i pound walls at night

17.  couldn’t remember my face- hers is fading now

18.  i think she had a nice smile           the days she knew she had a mouth.

APRIL!!!

A beautiful final week of March helped me put in some outside road miles.  Keeping up to date with my training schedule.  Hopefully the April showers will not make my April training too miserable.  We will see.

We are about 2 1/2 months from departure.  Looking at the calendar and the miles I'm now thinking tht I will finish is Yorktown VA Labor Day weekend.  I think this will take more like 10 weeks to cover the 4500 miles.  I will know more once the effort commences and I see how the legs do with the daily miles.  One thing is for sure is that I'm stubborn and I will push to achieve my goal.

So, for today, I will go for a run with Apollo.

Excited!

Go Fund Me link

Here is a link to the GoFundMe page.  Check it out!  We welcome support for the trip.  Help us buy a tank of gas, breakfast, propane for the travel trailer, etc.  All proceeds from trip will be donated to the Alzheimers Association.

Thanks!

Laurie

Go Fund Me

Now we are in March!  Another month closer to the departure of the "Big Ride".  Remember my departure is June 18!  I thought for this posting I would write down my training schedule in case anyone is interested or would like to follow along.  My goal for the training is to get me to the Flying Wheels Summer Century which is on June 4.  https://www.cascade.org/rides-major-rides/flying-wheels-summer-century   Let me know if you want to do the century with me!

Anyway, here is my schedule.  Mon-Fri is my base workout.  Weekends are for longer rides.

Monday's:  run 5-7 miles or ride 20-24 miles depending on weather
Tuesday's:  ride 20 miles + 30 min abs class+ 30 min high intensity class (at Harbor Square gym)
Wednesday's: Spin class at gym (usually 15-20 miles on bike in class)+ run 4-5 miles
Thursday's:  run 1-2 miles + 30 min abs class + 30m min high intensity class at gym
Friday's:  run 4-5 miles or ride 20-24 miles depending on weather

Saturday's and/or Sunday's: ride long---
March 5= 25 + miles
March 12 (no riding fore traveling to Texas to visit family)
March 19=25+ miles
March 26=30 miles
April 2= 40 miles
April 9= 50 miles
April 16= 60 miles
April 23= 30 miles
April 30= 70 miles
May 7= 50 miles
May 14= 80 miles
May 21= 80 miles
May 28= 90 miles
JUNE 4= Flying Wheels Summer Centuary!
June 11= 50-60 miles
JUNE 18= Begin ride to Astoria!  About 80 miles on day 1!

Here is a link to the bike I will be riding on this trip:
Franco Grimes bicycle


Here is a link to the route:
Transamerica Bicycle Trail

February 2016 (Getting Closer!)

Feb. 9, 2106

Beautiful day here in Edmonds.  I'm feeling the spring energy around the corner.  It is time to start putting down some information about the ride.

Coast to coast bike ride 2016!

This is a ride that I have been dreaming of since I was a kid.  I'm lucky that I get to just ride my bike on this trip fore my sister, Tamara Evans, and her husband, Loren Evans, and my dog Apollo will be my support crew.  They will be driving our Toyota van and pulling our Aliner travel trailer.  Some of the nights will be in an extra tent, some in the trailer and some in a hotel just depending on how we feel.  We will be on a budget but we will not make ourself miserable.  Since the route goes through small towns we will just have to wait and see what our options will be for a nights rest.  I plan on riding an average of 80-90 miles a day.  I'm not in a race but do need to get to the east coast in 8-9 weeks.  Once we approach the east coast, Chelle will fly out to meet up with us.  Then Chelle and I and Apollo will catch and drive Route 2 all the way home to Edmonds.  Tamara and Loren will then fly back to Seattle after spending some time on the East coast.

Here is a link to the route and route information.  I will be catching the Transamerica Bicycle Trail starting in Astoria and finishing in either Yorktown Virginia or in Virginia Beach.

https://www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/adventure-cycling-route-network/transamerica-trail/

I will start on June 18 right from my house in Edmonds Washington.  The first part of the trip will be the credit card ride to Astoria which will take 2 days.  Tamara and Loren will meet me in Astoria with the van and Apollo on the 20th of June.

For the ride to Astoria, I will ride to Seattle, meet up with folks who are doing the credit card ride, and head to the Bremerton Ferry.  Once in Bremerton we will ride on highway 3 and other side roads to Montesano.  This will be where we stop day one and about 70 miles.  We will stay in a hotel that night and eat and any restaurant we can find.  Day two will be from Montesano to Astoria mostly along Highway 101 and be about 80 miles.  This is where we will end day 2.  Options will be to stay at a hotel that night or Karen's (good buddy of mine) parent have a place we can stay.  Lots of great food and beer choices in Astoria.  Logistics as to how credit card ride participants will get back to Seattle are still being worked out.  Stay tuned for this.

On Monday, June 20, I will now be on the Transamerica Bicycle route and start my journey through Oregon.  I will be emailing folks that I know along the way to see if we can "plug in" at they house for a night.

Stay tuned for more information to keep trickling in...

Cycle on!